India to propose cryptocurrency ban, penalising miners, traders -source

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-cryptocurrency-ban/india-to-propose-cryptocurrency-ban-penalising-miners-traders-source-idUSKBN2B60R0

by pseudolus • 5 years ago

65 57 5 years ago

reuters.com

systemvoltage2• 5 years ago

This is huge. India is 6th largest economy in the world and 3rd largest by purchasing parity.

19962• 5 years ago

No it's not huge

Indians will keep their crypto, and wait for either 1) the supreme court to strike down this law 2) a new government to repeal this law.

The cat is out the bag. Politicians in every country like money. They will try to appeal to the populace by pretending to fight crypto ("it's bad for the environment!") while knowing its advantages and trying to keep them for themselves

xwolfi2• 5 years ago

Yeah, I can picture the dude trying to make the national grid something else than a bitcoin input stream...

Crypto isnt bad for the environment, it s more terrible for energy efficiency. I d rather spend what miners spend on an entire justice / police / law system to ensure contracts are trusted and enforced.

The one thing that is sure here is that when people try to collect on their newfoubd wealth, there might be some price pressure making everyone poor again.

bitexploder• 5 years ago

And to try and control their monetary policy. They mostly fear what can happen to their central banks of crypto takes off and they don’t have a “handle” in it.

systemvoltage2• 5 years ago

Sure it won't change for individuals but if you're a business and want to accept Bitcoin, it will be flat out illegal.

wincy• 5 years ago

Ooh doesn’t this provide a legitimate reason to hold Monero? So maybe this will expedite crypto currencies that are intentionally difficult to track.

lordofgibbons3• 5 years ago

This is exactly the perfect use-case for Monero. A transparent ledger (like BTC & ETH) could very well lead to serious legal trouble.

Unfortunately, fiat on-ramp/off-ramp will still be an issue. Not impossible to overcome, but certainly a huge hindrance to crypto adoption in India.

fredfoobar9• 5 years ago

The problem with Monero is the lack of auditability (of token supply), no one knows if there was an accidental bug in the code that is inflating the supply.

ketamine__2• 5 years ago

Unfortunately, fiat on-ramp/off-ramp will still be an issue.

It's a huge problem but not for the wealthy.

smoldesu4• 5 years ago

India's government is due for a reckoning. The reckless behavior of their conservative representatives has crossed several lines, and I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it. If they don't correct course, I think they're going to become even more hermited than they already are, which only gives their government more power to oppress theological, racial and political minorities. Hindu nationalism should be stopped before it causes more harm than it already has.

leereeves• 5 years ago

How is this related to Hindu nationalism?

smoldesu4• 5 years ago

It's a demonstration of the power that conservative and traditionalist interests hold in India. Just this month they threatened to arrest Twitter and Facebook employees for not censoring their platforms, so hopefully this helps foster a discussion about the political happenings over there.

SilverRed• 5 years ago

More people aren't talking about it because they don't know or understand what is going on. I only know about the Indian governments corruption because I worked with an Indian programmer who would talk about it. The majority are busy trying to keep up to date with what their own government is doing.

vthallam• 5 years ago

Hindu nationalism

Bad policies are not Hindu Nationalism. Also, the electricity is very scarce in India, most villages doesn't have 24h power and even big cities sometimes have issues keeping the lights on. With this in mind, banning mining is not a bad idea at all.

Robotbeat• 5 years ago

Oh, there is unquestionably at least a tinge of Hindu nationalism with Modi and company. As another commenter said, I don’t think they’d even deny it.

Rule354• 5 years ago

fwiw, mining would bring foreign currency where keeping the lights on at night does not. That would then allow spending on - keeping the lights on at night.

With this in mind, banning mining is not a bad idea at all.

Well, laws you can't enforce are always a bad idea. And laws with a stupidly disproportional effect. Mining is trivial and requires no on-ramp, so you'll never catch the miners - they can decentralize easily, with one mining rig in each house. What you'll do is cripple the little guy who wants to spend $50 of BTC he earned online.

tomdell• 5 years ago

“ The senior official told Reuters, however, that the plan is to ban private crypto-assets while promoting blockchain - a secure database technology that is the backbone for virtual currencies but also a system that experts say could revolutionise international transactions.”

Flashback to a couple years ago when “blockchain experts” proliferated to attempt to apply the technology to seemingly every domain, benefit or no.

hn_throwaway_99• 5 years ago

This is pretty much the argument I always made to crypto evangelists who touted cryptocurrencies as existing "outside the reach of government": governments can pretty much make anything they want to illegal.

Yes, on some level this would be basically impossible to enforce (you could always transfer your currency to a new "brain wallet" where you just memorized the key words), but on the other, it would mean actually buying anything with crypto, or exchanging it to fiat, would put one at great legal jeopardy.

smoldesu4• 5 years ago

Again, this only really applies if they catch you. I agree with most of what you're saying, but a law like this presupposes that their government can catch you while exchanging it, which is pretty damn hard with most crypto. This is one of those "broken tail-light" laws like piracy, where they basically use it as an excuse to double-charge criminals who get caught transacting with dirty crypto.

ed25519FUUU• 5 years ago

Technology rarely wins against policy. The government can and does use force. It’s no skin off their back to lock you up for a few years of they suspect you’ve got money you’re not “sharing” with them.

In America all they have to do is ask you if you have crypto, and you tell the truth or risk going to jail.

fredfoobar9• 5 years ago

Did you read the article?

"In India, despite government threats of a ban, transaction volumes are swelling and 8 million investors now hold 100 billion rupees ($1.4 billion) in crypto-investments, according to industry estimates."

All they will end up doing is push crypto into the dark markets. They simply do not have the capacity (or are sophisticated enough) to go after the crypto holders.

ketamine__2• 5 years ago

Without a fiat off ramp trading crypto becomes less attractive as a speculative investment.

coliveira2• 5 years ago

People have always been able to trade illicit products. The biggest example is drug trafficking. Would you like to become a drug trafficker? Similarly, you may be able to buy cryptocurrency, but if the government doesn't want it you'll be a law breaker.

Rule354• 5 years ago

Think of all the Jewish gold the Nazis wouldn't have stolen, or even detected, had it been converted into crypto with a passphrase. You buy it covertly when trouble looms and cash it in once in a safe country.

The big problem is government is trying to block, capital flight, can't be stopped. Hopefully this eliminates some of the governmental excesses as they lose their monopoly powers, even if only slightly.

Haters: It's not my fault if you don't know your history. Jews were an attractive scapegoat because they were rich. If they suddenly didn't have any money they wouldn't have been worth 1/10th the effort. If they could have taken their assets across the border covertly they could have fled sooner and with a guaranteed safe landing spot. I know people whose family didn't flee (and died for it) because of trying to protect the family legacy.

ianai• 5 years ago

Seems like a sign crypto might actually welcome. “First they call you fools then they call you an enemy” or something like that.

roflc0ptic• 5 years ago

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/trapped-priors-as-a-ba...

xwolfi2• 5 years ago

Elizabeth Holmes, a few weeks before the collapse of her ponzi fraud ?

fredfoobar9• 5 years ago

Comparing bitcoin to Theranos is just silly.

arcadeparade• 5 years ago

This is the 10th time in 3 years I've read this story. It won't be banned.

trhway• 5 years ago

Related is how mining operations are hunted down in Abhasia. Hitting at mining, the backbone of cryptocurrency decentralization and independence, is an interesting approach in taking crypto under control (the PoW I mean as the PoS is much easy for governments to control naturally).

fredfoobar9• 5 years ago

PoS is not as good as you make it seem. It will create an unbalanced system where the "rich" people get to control the system, this is not what bitcoin is about.

Rule354• 5 years ago

And it'll make a currency easier to control by the authorities. With Ethereum if the feds seize someone's coins they can stake them easily, and with a few seizures could easily have a plurality of the power without spending money.

On BTC to control the network they'd actually have to consume more than half as much electricity as Sweden to do so which would be much easier to detect and interfere with.

thevardanian2• 5 years ago

The recent interview with Nirmala Sitharaman, the current Finance Minister of India, claims otherwise in an interview given yesterday.

Here's the interview: https://youtu.be/kHYQ730R-aA?t=1855

So I don't know who's more senior than the FM of India that Reuters is getting their info from.

sn_master2• 5 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetis...

Is a major reason why Indians should trust crypto more. The government can't just make their crypto worthless literally overnight.

thevardanian2• 5 years ago

That's also an argument for why the government should support btc/blockchain technologies, instead of banning it. Transactions can be open for everyone to see, and therefore easier to audit/account for unaccounted cash and if they're being used or not.

sn_master2• 5 years ago

yes, except for when it's fraud to hide illegal government trades.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/venezuela-petro-cryptocurren...

dang• 5 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25970101

India to propose cryptocurrency ban, penalising miners, traders -source

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