Topic: India makes ownership of Bitcoin criminal offense - How to respond? - page 3. (Read 1481 times)

So when they outlawed ownership of gold, did that worked? The answer is no. The same would happen this time as well. People would go to any extent to protect their wealth. The COVID 19 pandemic has given national governments an excuse to print banknotes without any limit and thereby reducing the value of these notes to less than that of toilet paper. Corporations such as Tesla are moving to Bitcoin and gold. If the government thinks that they can prevent this by threats and blackmail, then they are just a bunch of fools.

That sounds like tyranny, and they are most likely overstepping their boundaries. Reminds me of a post I read about US making ownership of Gold criminal offense 30years ago or so. I guess If you dig up gold back then and keep it, you'll are considered a criminal?
I wouldn't bother too much if the Indians are limited from buying to much to prevent the devaluation of the Nation's fiat currency. But asking people not to own a currency/asset at all sounds like lawlessness and tyranny.

I have already explained about it here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.56327803

What the Indian government is proposing is not just the prohibition of cryptocurrency, but also confiscation of wealth from the existing cryptocurrency users. As such, it is against the constitution. I hope the supreme court of India will nullify this measure, if it gets passed in the parliament.

And I don't think that other countries will follow such measure, because wealth confiscation is against democratic ideals. Forget democracies, even dictatorships such as those in Cuba and North Korea would think twice before ordering wealth confiscation.

The scenario in India is different, because there is a large group of largely illiterate and brainwashed followers of the ruling party who will stand by whatever policies they make. Most of these people live in slums and have a deep hatred towards successful people who have access to good quality living. Obviously they will support measures such as wealth confiscation. But I don't think that such measures can be introduced in any of the developed nations.

Soon other countries will do the same. We should be ready for it

Turns out that the bill is much worse than we ever anticipated. Even the existing holders of cryptocurrency will be penalized, even if they agree to immediately liquidate their crypto assets.

https://www.livemint.com/market/cryptocurrency/get-ready-for-hefty-penalty-to-legalize-your-crypto-assets-11613064974027.html


The government strategy is very simple. They have run out of money and now they want to confiscate wealth from successful people. From what I can understand from the article, the government is proposing a transition period, where the existing cryptocurrency users will be allowed to sell their assets. But here is a catch. The government is proposing a "heavy" penalty on those who doing so. In the end the penalty may work out to 50% to 75%. One the remaining amount, the income tax of up to 43% needs to be paid. So in the end, if someone is holding $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency, the government will take away $90,000 and leave the individual with around $10,000 in funds.

This is nothing but plain daylight robbery. I don't know what to say about those people who still support the criminals who run the government.

The government seems to be very adamant in banning cryptocurrency. And they want to ban it as soon as possible. The statement from Sitharaman is very suspicious. Why after sleeping for three years, they want to bring this legislation in a haste? I guess their corporate friends have got some ideas on this sector. Most probably they want to come up with some shitcoin and before doing that they want to eliminate the competition. BTW, I want to know who are the members of this Inter-Ministerial Committee (IMC). Given the fact that most of the ministers from the ruling party are illiterate, it would be interesting to know the composition of the committee.

There was clarification from the finance minister (Nirmala Sitharaman), and yesterday she made it clear that any cryptocurrency that is not issued by the Reserve Bank of India will be illegal in India. So if there was any doubt on anyone regarding the upcoming ban, I hope those doubts are cleared by now. For the Indian cryptocurrency users, we need to think about our next course of action.

https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/features/story/is-india-going-to-ban-bitcoin-here-is-story-so-far-1767746-2021-02-10

^^^ If they take the ordinance route, then it will be introduced by this month itself. Because the ordinances can be brought up when the parliament is not in session. And I am a bit suspicious about the haste they are showing. It is like they don't want the Indian cryptocurrency holders to get the benefit of the bull run. Why should they show unnecessary haste, when the exchange rates are rising very fast? That is, unless they have an intention to cause losses to this group.

With Tesla making the announcement about moving a part of their cash reserves to Bitcoin/Gold, I am pretty sure that other companies will also make similar moves. No one want to trust the US Dollar and keep their wealth stored in USD. I won't be surprised if it ends up like the Zimbabwean dollar or the Venezuelan Bolivar. The Indian rupee may fare even worse. And no matter how hard the stupid governments try, no one is going to use their hyperinflated national currencies.

Here is the latest development on this topic:

https://news.bitcoin.com/indian-government-crypto-bill-cryptocurrency-law/



I can't vouch for the authenticity of this article and I didn't find the same news published anywhere else (although they are claiming that it was first published in CNBC-TV18). But if this is true, then time is running out for cryptocurrency users in India. The article claims that the government wants to fast-track the bill, and take the ordinance route.

India has the 3rd largest population density in the world, and for the bitcoin and crypto aspects behind is a big puddle, a long story.  India is not the first time to show disapproval and request differences with bitcoin, but in my opinion, the experience with covid19 has made the friendliness between this country with bitcoin and crypto closer to the goodness.  and the state in which bitcoin and crypto are best against the germs of translation when all is still fumbling for the vaccine supply.
A positive point can be placed on the scale and changed it.

They just simply want to generalize Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as private and illegal. Instead of making these cryptocurrencies regulated, they just simply want an outright ban without even studying their possibilities. They only focused on the bad side of crypto, not trying to dig in with it's real and positive use cases.

There isn't a point in fighting what you intend to clone or would eventually accept in future. Its simply a waste of time and effort. I don't know how these politicians can seat down and instead of deliberating on pressing issues of the country, they just focus there attention on how to ruin with the mindset of replacing with something similar more like forcing it on the people and anything forced doesn't work so well.
Besides, Bitcoin and other Alt coins today are valued as much due to world usage and not some intending crypto that would be bounded by boundaries, it definitely won't work so well as it defies the universality nature of cryptos.

A small correction. The bill that the Indian government proposing is much worse. Chinese government never made the ownership of cryptocurrency a criminal offense. They just prohibited trade between fiat currency and cryptocurrency. But the Indian government wants to jail anyone who owns cryptocurrency. Even the Chinese bill was of no use and it didn't resulted in a decrease in cryptocurrency users in that country.

The Chinese government eventually came up with their digital Yuan and it had some success in being used for international trade. But from what we have seen, the digital Yuan has mostly replaced fiat payments and it didn't had a large impact on the cryptocurrency trade.   

This is really bad, like what the heck is wrong with these governments people? So, they want to follow the same steps like China did, ban cryptocurrency and then introduce their own dumb digital currency which I know for sure is going to fall, because I have already seen a few countries that tried to do this and it never worked out for them, because nobody was ready to make use of a government issued digital currency, like who will even do that?

For a long time now they have been talking about banning cryptocurrency in India and at a time I thought it was over, and now they started it again .

News websites are exaggregating the actual content in my opinion, this is just the old bill and it has been in the pending status and no information about it for this year as well but there were lot of debates going on the internet media that it will be banned and CBDC will be launched for India, blah blah...

India has a long history of harassing the freelancers who mostly receive payments from outside the country. I am not sure about the exact date, but 7-8 years back the government made it extremely difficult for the freelancers to receive salary for their work through PayPal. A lot of restrictions were imposed on PayPal. For example, the Indian users are not allowed to keep a balance in the PayPal account. If they receive a payment in their account, then they should immediately transfer it to the linked bank account. They can't make a payment to anyone using the PayPal balance.. all this crazy restrictions were imposed because the government believed that the freelancers are not paying income tax on the $100 or $200 they receive for their work.

These people don't have any problem when the corporates cheat on their tax dues. India recently reduced the corporate tax rates from 33% to 25%, and even after this there were reports of frequent tax evasion by the corporates, amounting to billions of USD. But when a freelancer receives $50 for his work, the IT department become hyperactive and in no time sends a notice to his house.

There are at least 50,000 Indians who are directly employed by the cryptocurrency industry. Indirect employment amounts to many times that number. What are these people supposed to do now?

Nigeria too had placed a ban on crypto link: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-05/nigerian-central-bank-orders-closure-of-cryptocurrency-accounts I agreed with you that other countries will follow-suit, this is quite disappointing the government should have look inward and tap in some benefits of cryptos in term of taxes of course cryptos serves a foreign exchange for their country , there are lots of developers, traders etc who earned cryptos as income invariably exchanging it to rupees thus boosting their economic activities this an eye-opener to the electorates to vote against leaders who wants to intrudes into their private lives.

I have no love lost for the our current rulers. Least of all for their no-dissent-allowed governance. They have trained a huge section of the population to get offended about cultural identity and can get anything done with the help of that troll army and pliant media, for the time being. What i mean is as crypto community, we should pick our battles carefully. This one is about the financial benefits and benefits to the startup culture that crypto brings.

Eality buddy, I only care about what happens with crypto and not about Modi's politics. The farmer protests in Delhi will go to their conclusion which essentially depends on how much support they can garner. Internet connection has been restored in J&K in a phased manner. Those are all different issues though. What i am concerned with is that I should be able to stay where I am and still work and earn in crypto.
Also, I may have given the wrong impression as I am not into business. I do think positively about it and am aware of what GST did to small businesses. It is what i have to unemotionally call growing pains or collateral damage in some cases.

The language used in this (proposed) legislation is indicative of the education/knowledge level of the ministers and bureaucrats who are involved. As you have mentioned, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum are not "private" cryptos. They are decentralized and all their transactions are available in the public. Here what they mean by "private" is any asset that is not controlled by the central bank (in case of India, the Reserve Bank of India, or the RBI). Now it is not our duty to educate these people. If they are positioned in such high ranking positions, then it is natural for us to expect at least a basic level of education from them.

That's very sad, these kinds of governmental regulations curtail the freedoms of the citizens, and such strict regulations, 10 years in jail, seriously?? It is also very frustrating that cryptocurrencies are nearly the only thing in which Third World countries could keep apace with any other countries, cryptos could've provided opportunities to become more independent, improve the economy, I seriously don't understand what were they thinking...