Topic: India makes ownership of Bitcoin criminal offense - How to respond? - page 5. (Read 1481 times)

I don't get the bill though. It says that they will prohibit the use of Private cryptocurrencies in India but they are willing to promote the technology behind cryptocurrencies. Does that mean as long as you publicly tell the authorities that you are using cryptocurrency, it's ok? since it's not private anymore and you won't be able to hide it.

Or maybe they are prohibiting the use of other cryptocurrencies but willing to let people know about the use of cryptocurrencies because they want to create a cryptocurrency of their own for the Indians to use.

@ eaLiTy, they are winning elections after elections, and this proves that the ruling combination enjoys widespread support. In 2019, they won the states of Arunachal Pradesh and Haryana. Last year, they won Bihar by such thumping margin despite 15 years of anti-incumbency. During the 2019 parliament elections, BJP alone won 37.4% of the vote, which is a ground breaking achievement. So we need to admit that they are very capable of winning the elections on their own.

And one of the reasons for this rise is the poor performance of the opposition parties. They don't even have any capable leaders. And every time the BJP set up some trap, the opposition politicians just fall in to those traps. Take the case of Pulwama for example. Some of the opposition politicians made wayward statements and BJP managed to paint those statements as "anti-national". I don't want to divert from the topic.. so I am not going in to detail.

So our primary concern is about the proposed bill against cryptocurrency and how to respond to it. amishmanish in one of his posts warned that if this thing gets political, then Bitcoiners will lose out. I have to partially agree with him. If Bitcoiners organize themselves politically, then the BJP and its supporters in the media will claim that those who are doing illegal activity have now decided to defeat them in the elections. These people are very expert in pushing fake propaganda. So whatever we need to do, it should be done discretely.

What i don't get here is why "Criminal Offence"?  i heard that in Nepal using Bitcoin is also a criminal offence things that made me think , How that this become criminality when you are only Having a Virtual Money that you gather either payment for a Job or you Bought by your own money ?
how this violate the rules of every country like india and Nepal?
actually this has been running for years and years yet there is no clarity about what's the Indian Government stands really .

So you saw minority appeasement when UPA government was ruling, why did you fail to see people getting killed for having their food of their choice during the BJP reign and you will see many FIR in which minorities getting killed because the RSS and BJP factions thought they were carrying beef. I am living in this country for a long time even though i travel outside from time to time but i have never heard these sort of situations earlier where people are killed for reasons beyond any comprehension.

The only reason the BJP came into power is simply because of the Pulwama attack and have you visited those places, i have and you cannot carry weapons and there will be checking point with soldiers with automatic riffles at designated distance every few kilometers and you think someone could carry huge amount of explosives and knowing the route map of the vehicles and timing so that a bus load of army personal will be traveling so that they could create a blast .    

I have no idea in what lens you are viewing the country, if you are looking at the polls conducted by the BJP media and their IT propaganda cells you will see them having the majority, can you show any independent polls conducted by neutral agencies. Since you already know that majority of the national media is a propaganda tool for the ruling party i would like to hear about that.

Since you touched upon this topic, CAA was diverted into the Hindu Muslim issue by the ruling party and they know how to tackle these protest, the same they are doing it with the farmers protest, they are trying to paint them as Khalistan movement and Hindu Sikh issue. They only know to divide and rule that is an age old agenda by all the warlords. Majority of the people now understands the true color of the right wing nationalist who have no history in freedom fight movement but try to rewrite history by different means necessary using power and i bet they will not win another election anytime soon.

Cryptocurrency legalization in India is still lacking. The court removed only some of this country's central bank's restrictions on banking and financial institutions as a whole with any crypto currency related operations. Therefore, there is no legal regulation of cryptocurrency in India in general, and the attitude of the government to it not entirely clear, given the fact that the special commission created by it recommended that the country be completely banned from cryptocurrency. We need to see what crypto currency laws will be adopted there.

The government itself knows that no matter what sort of laws they come up with, the complete eradication of cryptocurrency usage is not possible. That is why they want to terrorize the users with such harsh prison terms. Just imagine this. If this law is passed by the parliament, then anyone owning a particular code in his computer can be imprisoned for 10 years. On the other hand, the punishment for attempt to murder is also 10 years. Violent rape is punishable by a term of 7 years in jail. According to the Indian government, if you own cryptocurrency in your personal wallet, then you deserve more punishment compared to the rapists and murderers. So the intention is very clear. They are imposing disproportionate punishments, in order to create a feeling of fear in the mind of cryptocurrency users. And they believe that it will result in 99.99% of the cryptocurrency users selling their assets.

Maybe you gonna be safe as long as you don't detected by government of using cryptocurrencies. AFAIK, if you only make transaction with company that operates outside India the government not gonna find out and since they seem to ban Bitcoin meaning there won't be any local exchange which actually acts as detector to find out who uses bitcoin thus you gonna be forced to use global exchange.
However, the punishment seem too harsh, so many years just for owning bitcoin that you buy with your own money, if the government don't feed their citizen why they need to make such harsh punishment.

If the Indian government is stupid enough to make the proposed bill in to a law, then there is no doubt that we will see a lot of companies offering such services to the Indians. They will trade with cryptocurrency in countries where it is legal (i.e all the other countries apart from India) and then they will send the fiat funds to the Indian user, marking it as "software purchase" or something similar. Cryptocurrency wallets can't be tied to a particular individual, and therefore the government won't be able to do anything in this case. But don't be disappointed. They will come up with even more idiotic laws.

Find a friend that you trust outside India, best with an LLC, and sign a contract with them to 'manage their crypto actives' with a salary of 1000 rupees per month.

This is valid for every destination where crypto is forbidden or heavily taxed. There are other options, but this is the easiest one.

Not specifically pointing out bitcoin. It is referring generally on cryptocurrencies. I think this article only cause panic on crypto holders to sell their coins rather than losing the value and be accused as criminals. How can you be criminal when you invest using your own money. On the other side, maybe the government is planning something better for dealing with crypto but I guess it is somehow impossible to control crypto.

Exactly. They also have many uneducated people & often use religious doctrine to excuse some of their behavior. One of the worst places to live. They can't arrest anyone because they don't know who is holding crypto.
It is impossible to track. There many things that are illegal and still done. They have quite a few other problems they should probably be focusing on that but I guess money is number one for them and the fact that so many people are unemp[layed doesn't matter. Maybe they should be planning to educate the country better rather than this.

Of what difference is this from a dictatorship? To me, they are the same exact thing, just redecorated. Otherwise, what do you call a system that has no respect for fundamental human rights, a system that doesn't allow free will or permits you to ask questions! I feel for the people of India even as I cry my continent!

Sometimes I begin to o wonder if those in places of power and are antibitcoin aren't observing trends of Elion Musk who happens to be the richest man in the world now and a proud supporters of bitcoin and cryptocurencies. These are proud opportunist and business moguls that are able to see the future of potential commodities and how to exploit it.

Sadly the Indian government has planned to subject it's citizens to a high level of poverty than they have it today. Aren't these leaders supposed to aid the people's suffering? Bitcoin empowers more than any government can ever do and it never segregates as per status. Imagine the lots of users running signature on the forum.
It's just sad for Indians.

You have no idea about the fascist government that is ruling India, they will jail anyone that they seem to be challenging their views, if you look at the current situation you have no idea how many news reporters are in jail as well as comedians who made jokes against them, only a fascist government can sent people to jail without committing any crime and that is what they are doing.

That's too inconsiderate.
There are worst crimes than this. I don't understand why government making life difficult for citizens.
Instead of creating this kind of law, why not regulate it.
At the long run, I feel they will still come back to Bitcoin, so why all this.

I think they (Bitcoin users in the country) would do well if they rely on the fundamental laws in the country that prevent people (esp those in position of authority) from abusing their powers. I believe there are laws in the country that recognize the right to own good assets like Bitcoin. What people in position of authority should focus more on is regulation and the prevention of abuse/misuse of good cryptocurrency. If they could jail people from using crypto, they could aswell jail people from using any other asset they don't like whether the asset is good or bad.

Have read the article but haven't seen anything that means criminal offense but maybe this was just a misunderstanding. I hope that it wouldn't be the case because I don't like the idea of bitcoin being labeled illegal to be possessed which makes it to the same level as drugs. This legislation wouldn't be a problem for the people in India that uses cryptocurrency in the long run, Indian government has always had this on and off relationship with cryptocurrencies for the long while and most of the time those legislations didn't even last that long, I may not be accurate with that but I think that it is evident that each legislation doesn't have a permanent fangs to enforce the law which is a good thing for bitcoin community in India.

It is ridiculous. But the situation is not as favorable as that in the developed nations. The cryptocurrency market in India is quite large, with somewhere around 5 million to 10 million active users. But when compared to the overall population (1.4 billion), this would look like minuscule. 90% of the population doesn't have enough education to understand what is cryptocurrency and the technology behind it. If the government claim that cryptocurrency is being used for illegal purposes, then these people will support the government's stand. So forget about the users rioting, or even protesting against the move.

A better option is to travel to some other country, so that you can trade with your cryptocurrency holdings. But I guess stompix has already explained the impracticality of any such move in one of his posts within this thread.

This is freaking ridiculous. I am sure that there will be riots later on if this bill has officially passed and come to fruition. I am also feeling that Indians may have to relocate themselves to another country by applying a working visa or even change citizenship.

If I were born as Indian and currently staying there, I would panic and plan ahead to move to another country where it’s crypto-friendly and will apply for a change of citizenship permanently.

It is ridiculous to blame the EVM for the success of the right-wing. I am a regular visitor to India and I saw before my own eyes how the political scenario changed there. The UPA government of 2004-14 engaged in naked minority appeasement, which caused a polarization of the Hindu votes towards the BJP. The opposition needs to understand that if they want to win elections, then they need to prevent religious polarization. Because if polarization occurs, then it becomes 75% Hindus vs 25% non-Hindus.

And from what I have found, there is widespread support for the CAA and the farm laws. Opinion polls conducted by various news agencies also confirms the same. Once again, the opposition parties made the mistake of giving this a religious color. The media houses (many of which are supportive of the ruling party) seized the advantage and did the rest. They made CAA a Hindu vs Muslim issue. And similarly, the farm law protest is being painted as a Hindu vs Sikh issue.

Lets see how things will go, there are bigger problems the government is facing right now, the farmers protest will be a priority by that time even though they downplay the gravity of the issue and till now they have not announced any recovery package for the economy.

As if the government understands the rest of the issues in India . Take for example the farm law or the GST on how they are implemented or the demonetization or the CAA replicating the Nazi regime, there is nothing the current government did that is helping the common population. All the above mentioned were implemented without much thought process and you cannot expect anything different from them.

Hoping that the voting changes from EVM to the old ballot papers so that they do not tamper with the elections. If not how could they be in power even with all the blunders which includes selling of almost all PSU and we will see more sales by the government in the second phase of the budget.