Topic: After China now Indian firms suspend digital currency trade after RBI notice (Read 1160 times)

@Shinjikenny123 Not exactly because the government has simply warned users of virtual currency against security and financial risks.

I don't know what happened to the website owner's personal coins, but the company had already stopped all orders a few days before the raid, and all pending orders had been executed. So none of the website users lost any money.

It's funny because the FBI is the world's largest holder of bitcoins after the Silk Road raid.  lol

What's criminal, anyways? 

After the raid, what happens to the user's coins?
The government takes it all??

I don't think anyone has actually been arrested. The exchange office was raided in a surprise move, so as to determine the true nature of the company's operation. It may very well be that nothing comes out of this.

Although, there has been no activity on any of the company's social channels. One would expect something like this to garner some social media attention, but either it hasn't, or its all being removed. Its also possible that the company turned out to be a real scam.


In any case, the above line clearly states that the website owner has not been arrested.

I'm a Bitcoin bull, and this was my one caveat to family and friends; if they start arresting people for ever having traded bitcoin, then we may well start to see the price fall. Watch out below. If these arrests in India are led by the Central Bank, and they most certainly appear to be, then one can assume that India is a test case for the global banking cartel. If you haven't maintained total annonymity then now may be the time to get out.

I think we'll see the Bitcoin market shrug this one off, but what if arrests for having ever traded BTC move to another country?

Man that sucks. But given the pace of adoption of Bitcoin around the Globe by merchants I can imagine they'll eventually reverse course on this. Surely the one thing RBI doesn't want more than Bitcoin is to be left behind when it comes to monetary innovation.

A couple of days after the Reserve Bank of India issued an advisory to public not to indulge in buying-selling of Bitcoins, the first raid in India was undertaken in Ahmedabad by Enforcement Directorate (ED) on an entity that provide platform to trade in this illegal but virtual currency.

On Thursday, ED raided the premises of Mahim Gupta in Bopal area of the city who provides trading platform through his website -‑ buysellbit.co.in. During the preliminary investigation, the ED found that it is in clear violation of Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) act.

So Bitcoin transaction with anyone outside of the country = violation of FEMA act = illegal in india .

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-first-time-in-the-country-ed-raids-a-bitcoin-seller-in-ahmedabad-1941187

Great post. As I wrote above, India did not ban BTC and you should get used to this kind of post very quickly, people love to to spread false information (FUD) to cause panic sell and buy lower. Back to your point, ban virtual currency altogether is possible but not doable. Look at the effort they put on music and movie piracy, most tracker are still out there because it's very difficult to filter internet traffic. What they can do is to make it impossible to acquire through financial institutions and banks, and that's what China just did

At no point does the article state that virtual currency is banned in India. All the RBI did was issue a statement talking about the risks involved. These risks are already known to those of us who deal with, or have researched, virtual currency. But those who are new or uninformed, will definitely benefit from RBI's statement.

Every country will try to minimize money-laundering or illegal activities. Virtual currency is very difficult to trace; hence the scrutiny.

When they say that they may create some bitcoin related regulation, they are not saying that its going to be banned altogether. They just said that they are looking into it.


All this is saying that the users could unintentionally breach these laws. Suppose I receive 500,000 in cash from a person. I do not wish to pay taxes on it. Since its cash, its not been reported to the government. If I find 10 to 15 bitcoin users willing to sell me bitcoins for cash, the individuals getting the cash are not getting enough to make ripples and cause the Income Tax department to look deeply into the source. Since I have bitcoins, I now have the ability to spend money that ideally should have been reported and taxed. This situation places the user in breach of the anti-laundering laws.

Similarly, in countries like India, which deal with terrorism constantly, the funding of terrorists by neighbouring nations or other hostile elements is a huge problem. Funding for terrorists is made difficult by keeping a close eye on large value transactions. How easy would it be to, lets say, set up a bitcoin gambling website, and use their funding network to funnel bitcoins (so as to make it difficult to track the source of bitcoins). These bitcoins can then be sent to any country where they can be distributed in small chunks to normal people, in exchange for cash. The people may never even realize that by purchasing bitcoins for cash, they could be funding an operation like this.

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It is not a tool that is illegal. It is what can be done with it. This is the same reason owning weapons is illegal in most countries. You can perhaps trust one person with a gun. Can you trust that when one billion people own guns, no body is ever going to use them for any reason other than self-defense?

Similarly, you can perhaps trust a small community to use virtual currency responsibly, but can you trust everyone in the world to do so responsibly? No, and this is proven by the existence of occasional scammers even in these forums.

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That said, please don't think that I am against virtual currency. I am completely fascinated by them, and am going to start mining them soon.

In my opinion, to completely ban virtual currency altogether, would definitely be a stupid thing to do. But I do believe that regulation in the form of perhaps prohibiting purchase/sale through hard cash, can be useful.


A small group of people who can conduct themselves responsibly may see freedom as an environment without rules. But when it comes to a large group, the same "lawless-freedom" will soon devolve into anarchy.

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PS: I'm not trying to start a flame war here. This is just my opinion.

Let me know what you guys think about this. I would welcome a debate.

Cheers!

No, Bitcoin is about freedom. If goverment ban decentralized digital currencies, it just shows what they think about freedom

It's very political and therefore very uncertain.  The best thing going for it right now is a recovering world economy.  Timing couldn't be better.  But, it's the people in our world that ultimately decide.  If you are lucky enough to live in a place where you vote in your leaders then be sure to tell them where you stand on virtual currencies.

One can use a hammer to build a house. One can also use hammer to kill people. Maybe India will next time declare hammers illegal?

China or India or whatever else are still using the same excuse just because they feel fear of the Bitcoin system.

Not at all, its just we will have 1.3 times the amount of bitcoins being used because of the addition of the black market. Moving money shouldn't be illegal it should be the crime that is illegal but that is an opinion not shared by governments.

bitcoin is even still rising and will keep rising

Viva La Revolution!

Does this mean digital currencies only serve the black market?
what about the vision of everyone using bit coins for a local coffee shop to buying an apartment?

The whole idea of crypto for me is that if it is 'banned' we can continue to use it anyway as what on earth can be done to stop us?

 

You forget that its widely believed that the black market is 33% of the worlds economy, if we can corner that market, others will follow. If we build it, they will come.