India had a deadline for deciding the faith of cryptocurrency-related trading in the country. The deadline expired today, on the 5th of July and the Reserve Bank of India decided to ban all cryptocurrency-related activities.
However, the new decision affects Indian citizens to the extent that they will not be able to transact on exchanges, so that if they want to trade cryptocurrencies, they will have to do so through P2P networks.
In the spring of 2018, the Reserve Bank of India announced that the Bank will no longer be providing its portfolio of services to customers who dealt with cryptocurrencies in any way. The decision that came out today does not relieve the people who will be affected by the ban.
Another hit from the cryptocurrency sector in India will be the fact that all cryptocurrency exchanges and businesses will not qualify for any type of financing from banks within the country.
According to CoinTelegraph, one of the major Indian cryptocurrency exchanges, Zebpay, will be “freezing freezing Indian rupee deposits and withdrawals before the ban came into effect”.
The entire ban will come into effect from July 6th, 2018, only a day later after the ban was announced.
It is interesting to follow India’s position on cryptocurrencies and, eventually, on the country’s positioning in the blockchain “game” when compared to peers.
Once Bitcoin began rising tremendously at the end of 2017, when the coin was trading for around $20,000, India began blocking cryptocurrency exchanges from performing operations. The primary concern of the Indian government was that cryptocurrencies are used to finance illegal activities, such as prostitution, funding of wars etc.
The limitations that India is putting on blockchain and cryptocurrencies may seriously affect the country’s long-term positioning in the fintech world.
A partner at Morgan Creek Digital Assets commented through his Twitter account the following regarding the ban that India just initiated:
“This decision puts India at a tremendous strategic disadvantage regarding innovation around Blockchain. India Trashed Rupee notes to expose corruption. They banned crypto to control the people.”