Topic: Reserve Bank of India Governor, Raghuram Rajan, Speaks about Bitcoin (Read 3242 times)

Oh no, are they tracking me?

I wonder if they are looking at individuals and tracking their assets. I haven't put any cash into it yet partly to stay away till it gets on a sound legal footing.

I had a small conversation with K C Misra in 2013 who is now retired as the general manager of RBI. So rest assured, it is undoubtedly clear that RBI officials at high levels are well aware of Bitcoins and its usage in India.

I didn't know that governor knew about bitcoins.

The youtube video in OP is not working...

Oh well done the smart student!!
I am actually shocked to hear this. I didn't know that governor knew about bitcoins.
He is a wise man, he understand the potential of things and takes steps after giving lot of thought.
Hope we keep on getting such positive results.

Mr. Rajan has an uncanny ability to predict things in financial world, before the rest of the world. He also predicted 2008 recession while serving at IMF, while everyone opposed him.

Would unocoin be contacting these guys and asking them to accept bitcoin?
If they accept it, it would be a world wide revolution and bitcoin price will actually go up because then people will start using btc as an actual currency! This would also bring a lot of demand for bitcoin in India.

I would like to see these guys accepting btc too:
5) Shopkeeper near my home
6) Big Bazaar
7) The Mobile Store
Everyone

I'd prefer to see bitcoin merchants coming up rather than FIAT giants accepting bitcoin as it will only result in heavy dumping and thereby will bring down the bitcoin price. An alternative of Airtel in Bitcoin world is not readily possible and I have never heard of Ola. But, Flipkart and Cleartrip alternatives are definitely possible on top of a solely bitcoin economy.

A reasonable view of the situation.

We would like them suddenly declare they are all for Bitcoin, we have to understand that they can't take decisions lightly. Besides, when the warning was issued last time, I thought it was not so bad, after all if it made some Indians stay away from investing at that time, it saved their money. So in hindsight they made the correct announcement.

What about laxmi Coins?I think they are of RBI itself.

What about laxmi Coins?I think they are of RBI itself.

you mean a central bank created that coin
i never heard about this, if it was backed by a central bank of country then it should be a boom

What about laxmi Coins?I think they are of RBI itself.

We would also love to see people be able to buy food from their favourite grocery store with bitcoin.  Let's make it happen!  Which grocery store should we approach?  I'm guessing an online, nation-wide, grocery store may make the most sense.  They could use Unocoin's merchant gateway to process their orders.  By processing their orders through Unocoin, the business can have their clients' bitcoin turned into INR deposited into their bank account in less than 24 hours. 

Let's get a list together of all the merchants we would like to see accepting bitcoin in 2015.  I'll get it started...

1)  Airtel
2)  Flipkart
3)  Ola
4)  Cleartrip
5)  ?

See here for more details:  https://www.unocoin.com/merchants

We would also love to see people be able to buy food from their favourite grocery store with bitcoin.  Let's make it happen!  Which grocery store should we approach?  I'm guessing an online, nation-wide, grocery store may make the most sense.  They could use Unocoin's merchant gateway to process their orders.  By processing their orders through Unocoin, the business can have their clients' bitcoin turned into INR deposited into their bank account in less than 24 hours.  

Let's get a list together of all the merchants we would like to see accepting bitcoin in 2015.  I'll get it started...

1)  Airtel
2)  Flipkart
3)  Ola
4)  Cleartrip
5)  ?

See here for more details:  https://www.unocoin.com/merchants

We would also love to see people be able to buy food from their favourite grocery store with bitcoin.  Let's make it happen!  Which grocery store should we approach?  I'm guessing an online, nation-wide, grocery store may make the most sense.  They could use Unocoin's merchant gateway to process their orders.  By processing their orders through Unocoin, the business can have their clients' bitcoin turned into INR deposited into their bank account in less than 24 hours.  

Let's get a list together of all the merchants we would like to see accepting bitcoin in 2015.  I'll get it started...

1)  Airtel
2)  Flipkart
3)  Ola
4)  Cleartrip
5)  ?

See here for more details:  https://www.unocoin.com/merchants

You're welcome.  Just curious, what makes you believe that there are only 5k people involved in bitcoin in India?  We (www.unocoin.com) alone serve nearly twice as many customers.  (And that number is growing exponentially!)  

Don't quote me on this, but I feel that the number of bitcoiners in India could be closer to 25-30k, quite a bit higher than 5k.  To your point, I still think it's very impressive that Mr. Rajan is speaking so intelligently about bitcoin, I have a ton of respect for him.  Let's not stop here, let's all use this opportunity to educate the Indian public even further.   Bitcoin truly has the potential to bank the unbanked (or unbank the banked), to reduce the cost of inward remittance by an order magnitude, and bring about micro-financing in a way never seen before.  Let's not get left behind.  The bitcoin movement is happening, each and every one of you can make a difference.  

Just like how many Indian people were able to leap frog wired phone lines and go directly to mobile.  Bitcoin offers us a similar opportunity, leapfrog traditional financial services and take part in one that is open source, decentralized, and as the smart student refers to it as:  'free banking'.  Love it!  Go bitcoin...

This is really interesting. Only about 5k+ people are involved in bitcoin in a country of 110 crore+ people and the governor of the central bank is talking about it.

Thanks for sharing it Sunny...

This is really interesting. Only about 5k+ people are involved in bitcoin in a country of 110 crore+ people and the governor of the central bank is talking about it.

Thanks for sharing it Sunny...

Join the discussion on reddit...

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2qiumb/reserve_bank_of_india_governer_raghuram_rajan/

We just hit a landmark moment with respect to bitcoin in India.  Fast forward to [22:30] to hear Reserve Bank of India's Governer, Mr. Rajan, speak eloquently and articulate his position on bitcoin:

http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/india-forecasts/indian-stock-markets-not-in-a-bubble-raghuram-rajan-to-ndtv-s-prannoy-roy/349983

interviewer:  “anybody here plan to go into ecommerce?”
smart student:  “My question is not exactly related to ecommerce, but to a more important topic of bitcoins.”
governer:  “nothing is more important than ecommerce.”
interviewer:  “oh no, bitcoin is fascinating, let’s tackle that.”
smart student:  “reading your book 'fault lines', it comes out as you are somebody who is not pro government intervention.  Being from the Chicago School of Thought, you propagate more free markets.  So I want to know, bitcoin has specifically very good advantages for a developing nation.  So, I want to know, what is your view as a regulator on free banking, and having more of equitable currencies floating in the market?”
governer:  “See, I think we’re still watching the evolution of these kinds of currencies, one of the problems that we envisaged with bitcoin, one of course was security issues and you’ve seen that they’re not as secure as people thought they were and there have been stolen bitcoins and so on.  But the second issue was the fluctuation in value.  For money, you require something called a stable store of value and something that fluctuates so much is less effective in use as money.  There are some lessons to be learned from the technologies that bitcoin has employed, some of them are useful, some of them are worrisome.  And uh, we have to see how we take on board such technologies.  I have no doubt that down the line, we will be moving towards primarily a cashless society and we’ll have some kind of currencies like this which will be at work.  For us at the Reserve Bank, this may happen in 10 to 20 years from now, but we’ll have to figure out how we make money because the way we generate most of our revenue is through forms of seniorage.  People are willing to hold currency free of interest and that’s how we make money, but we’ll figure that out.  But I think these virtual currencies will certainly get much better, much safer and over time will be the form of transaction, and that’s for sure.”
interviewer: “and India will adopt them at some point?  we’re not going to reject them out of hand?”
governer: “you know, in a sense, credit cards are already performing some of that role.  The amount of rupees that flow through your hands I presume are far less than used to before credit cards.  So this is going to go all around, you’ll have near field devices which you just tap and go.  I mean, all that we want to permit.  
interviewer:  “you want to permit?”
governor:  “yes, we want to permit.  I mean we’re not saying we’re going to lose money therefore we won't do it, we’ll find some other way of getting money, maybe the government will fund us eventually."