Slashdot Mirror
India Vows To Eliminate Use of Cryptocurrencies in the Country (hindustantimes.com)
India will move to stamp out use of cryptocurrencies, which it considers illegal, country's Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said on Thursday, launching a no-holds-barred attack on virtual currencies such as Bitcoin. From a report: Governments around the world are grappling with how to regulate cryptocurrency trading, and policymakers are expected to discuss the matter at a G20 summit in Argentina in March. "The government does not consider cryptocurrencies legal tender or coin and will take all measures to eliminate use of these cryptoassets in financing illegitimate activities or as part of the payment system," Jaitley told parliament in his annual budget speech. However, the minister said, the government would explore use of block chain technology proactively to speed the move toward a digital economy. Jaitley's announcement could trigger "panic selling" in cryptocurrencies in India, said Amit Maheshwari, partner at tax consultants Ashok Maheshwary & Associates LLP.
cryptocurrencies are not actually currencies at the moment; they are gambling instruments, in that people are holding them on the expectation that they will rise in value. Are cryptocurrencies actually used as currencies in monetary transactions?
They turn out to be very bad currencies, since their rate of deflation is huge (when the value of a currency goes up, that's deflation, not inflation: goods and services are becoming less expensive expressed in units of the currency.). A currency with high deflation doesn't work well, it makes more sense to keep it than to spend it, and spending is what makes currency currency.
This is good news for Bitcoin!
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
They dont consider it legal tender, but are not looking to emeleate its use, just stamp out illegal use like other countries.
https://yourstory.com/2018/02/...
When you cant win, ad hominem.
I see... an Bitcoin article. Prediction of comments:
Mumble mumble BUBBLE roobarb roobarb TULIPS roobarb mumble CRASH
Folks, time to short BitCoin. Please short this thing to make $$.
to end porn...drug use...and well uhm. Stuff.
Good thing they had picked a worthy pursuit we can all get behind! Seems ending poverty is nothing anyone (with money) cares about.
Bitcoin settlements can be delivered by carrier pigeon, more code or encoded in text/email. -Stopping bitcoin is harder than stopping porn.
I refer to The Simpsons -> http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/i... (Old man yells at Cloud)
Before anyone can stop bitcoin they'll need to at first understand what bitcoin is. Considering some of these entrenched knee-jerk politicians are still coming to grips with DNS & VPN I'd worry in about 20 years...
BTW, BTC will likely touch sub $3k - good time to buy. -You're welcome!
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
I have a better idea.
Eliminate spam.
Spam has a full IP log that anyone with access to ISP logs and armed thugs will be able to follow back to the perpetrator.
Cryptocurrencies have none of that. They have unique ids, yes, but no registry of those ids, so the only person who can prove who has a certain id is the owner of said id - if he wants to. On top of that, there is no way to prove that he doesn't have a certain id, making the difference between "doesn't want to" and "doesn't have one" non-existing.
Wrong on both counts I see..
Poor computah nerds' brains are leaking out of their eyesockets. Truly the shit is raining hard upon them.
My GAWDZ! Been to a beach lately? Turd Dump City. Bears? OK. People. In the woods, when on a remote trip, okay, but on the beach, every day!?
In related news, the Government of India just announced that anyone with Bitcoins must bring them in to be exchanged for "miniBitcoins" worth 1/10 the value or else they will expire next Tuesday.
I wonder how that affects Ripple who has offices in Mumai.
India should eliminate fake degrees and "php experts" first.
Ending internet censorship would be good too.
And 3 hour movies that can be told in 90 minutes, easily.
slashdot really?
fud story...
what was said is that bitcoin is not a legal tender, which does NOT make it possesion illegal...
come on slashdot, this is weak. off the site please or correct the story.
remember, remember....
no single entity can control price of cryptocurrency, only people who have it. therefore, it is crucial not to trade it on the basis of fud news, statements/tweets. Please remove this garbage off your site, keep it up and #HODL
Found the alt-right snowflake!
from 1933 to 1975, when they got the US off the gold standard and onto fiat currency. Whether cryptocurrencies are viable long-term, I couldn't tell you, but governments HATE not having a monopoly on stores of value.
Good luck with that.
"India does not recognise crypto as legal tender" would be a more accurate title.
Check the facts!
And judging by this article the Indian Gov is quite poor. If your not online learning everyday your really falling behind your classmates.
[($)]
It's illegal uses are being cracked down on, not being banned itself. It's all right there in the text. All the headlines say "All cryptocurrencies to be banned"... Which i'm guessing was done to attract readers.
You are 100% wrong. Crypto currencies have a ledger, and the person(s) that own or run the block chain have full access to that ledger, otherwise there is no reason to have a crypto currency in the first place.
I see two things motivating the government: capital flight and undermining redenomination. Regarding capital flight: particularly in developing countries, governments take great steps to restrict the amount of money people take out of the country. The idea is that if you can keep money in country, it'll go to growing the local economy versus investments overseas. Traditionally, these controls have been imposed through government bank regulations. Bitcoin and other "cryptocurrencies" give people an alternative medium to move money and bypass government controls which I'm sure is bothering the Modi government.
The other thing to remember is that India just went through redenomination, where they effectively removed a large number of bills out of circulation (about 80% of all cash value). This was done to shrink the shadow economy, basically the cash-driven underground economy, so that the government can better monitor (and tax) sales, income, etc. It also pushes more money into more traceable electronic transactions, making it harder for corruption payments and criminal funds transfers. Cryptocurrencies however provide another means to move value that the Indian government doesn't have the ability to track (yet), thus the initial reaction to shut it down.
Let's back up 100 years or so. India decides electricity is too dangerous and powerful and expensive and just a bad idea. They ban electricity. Great, nobody getting electrocuted and they save money on infrastructure. Yay! Fast forward 100 years and their country would be a joke, left behind by all other countries and they'd basically be bankrupt for not adopting the latest and greatest in superior technology. Let's imagine the same with computers. Computers are capable of letting people commit crimes so let's ban them. Where would that land for 50 years later? Plugging your ears and pretending that bitcoins don't exist while not letting your population use them is not an effective long term strategy to compete on a global scale.
Amazing how India keeps coming with all sorts of grandiose public statements about all sorts of things, while consistently ignoring the plight of the more than 600 million Indian citizens who lack such basic services as sanitation, running water and electricity. Talk about having a huge chip in one's shoulder.
lol bitcoin peniscoin lol
Is the most abundant gift of Satan.
It's illegal uses are being cracked down on, not being banned itself. It's all right there in the text. All the headlines say "All cryptocurrencies to be banned"... Which i'm guessing was done to attract readers.
The text is:
"The Government does not consider cryptocurrencies legal tender or coin and will take all measures to eliminate use of these crypto-assets in financing illegitimate activities or as part of the payment system."
Presumably this means they want to eliminate the use of all cryptocurrencies in "the payment system". I don't know what that means but I'm sure it's more broad than "illegal uses".
Hilarious- doesn't India understand that banning crypto currencies means that only legitimate users will *maybe* stop using it? The reality is individuals don't need India's permission to use crypto as it is a decentralized system that India can't effectively control. Even if they can get non-criminals to stop by making it illegal those willing to commit criminal acts are going to continue to use crypto because it gets them around government controls. It's why criminals liked it until recently (ie it was not anonymity but control) when other more semi-anonymous crypto currencies took off (and we have anonymous ones now with Zen Cash and Zcash adopting the Zero Coin protocol which is a mathematically sound protocol for anonymity that involves zero knowledge proofs). India isn't in control of crypto and will ultimately lose the war on crime because they've got no effective means of stopping criminals from using it and will ultimately only create more criminals because non-"criminals" decide to continue using it for there legitimate transactions or simply don't know it's illegal.