Bitcoin Forum

After posting this yesterday -- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=385566.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=385566.0) -- and getting a handful number of response that everything will be alright, I ignored the rest of the news.

However, today on DNA I see that Enforcement Directorate  raided the premises of Mahim Gupta in Bopal area of the city who provides trading platform through his website -‑ buysellbit.co.in.

The article further states: “We have found that through the website 400 persons have recorded 1,000 transactions that amount to a few crores of rupees. We are gathering the data of the transactions, name of the people who have transacted in the virtual currency from Gupta’s server that is hired in the US. At present, we believe that this is a violation of foreign exchange regulations of the country. If we are able to establish money laundering aspect then he can be arrested,” said a top ED official.

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

What is going on?

The charges are not against using Bitcoin, but ML.
From my understanding, Mahin only bought from people in India and sold to them from that stock which should absolve him of this.

As the document states, he has not yet been arrested.

Exactly, what is going on ?
A customer of mine bought the news to me when I woke up and I thought it was a fake rumor and I thought it'd be a good point to laugh at but now all the links & stuff is making me a bit edgy as well.

But why was he detained anyway ?
and ignore my naive-ness what is ML ? Money Laundering ?

So I am a part of the underworld now ? yay :D ;D

Just spoke to Naavi, seems like this is a standard procedure to investigate if a large Hawala/ ML operation has been kept in place.

He feels that as long as all procedures were maintained, it would take a lot of 'law twisting' in order to hit Bitcoin itself.

This too shall pass!

They come to my home and I'll give them a jar of dirt and sing the Jack Sparrow Song :D

I m a part of the underworld, I m a part of the underworld oh wait .. LOL

"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) rules of the country as central bank does not provide permission to indulge in such transactions."

This article makes it pretty clear that running a btc exchange is illegal.

Not ML, forex. to quote:


I think they are implying that, because the server is in the US, this can be considered under FEMA.

Hey there were two places ED raided, and at second place due to  owner unavailable they have sealed that place.  Was that the place of rbitco.in who is sort of scam person as per other thread.

I think so.

Here's my two bit on this:
1. In the conference held in Bangalore, people - specially Mahim was asking RBI/government to give him a clarification on how his website stood in terms of service. Whether it was financial institution or not? A big mistake, never seek attention of Indian government. They are not very friendly for things they don't fully understand. I used to work for Alpari - a forex broker - they got shafted just for doing this.
2. NEVER, repeat, NEVER run a financial like services in India if you are not ready to do a full KYC. It just opens you up for hawala and FEMA/AML related legal issues.
If you still want to run one and don't have manpower to do a full KYC. Make sure you don't touch Indian currency.
Frankly, out of all the Indian conversion services being run, INRBTC admin should be the safest person. He never took Indian rupees, nor sent Indian rupees (unless he had some of his own trades on the platform).

+1

In my opinion banglore conference attracted a lot of attention of India Media and Government.
Ps: INRBTC used to buy/sell before but he did changes and converted it into a p2p trading platform.

Yes. I agree with it partly.
The bitcoin conference did a lot of good as well as bad things. Do you think, the conference could have waited until RBI took a clear stand.?

It attracted a lot of media attention even abroad that India is the first country to host bitcoin conference. Nowehere they mentioned that it was some traders in India who were hosting it. By reading the news article (headline) atleast, media portrayed as though Indian Government was hosting it. Am sure that has pinched someone in the RBI.

And more reports are coming - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/First-time-in-India-bitcoin-traders-raided-in-Ahmedabad/articleshow/28008526.cms

this article says that buysellbitco's company was registered at a fake address   :o

Some days ago someone reported that there was a RBI guy in conference. I am not sure what people (speakers) said about bitcoins there, but I guess they took "Anonymous transactions" "decentralized" features as a bad thing and this kind of action was expected as buysellbitco.in's monthly turn over was pretty huge.

This may go against the Bitocins.

ED officials claimed that Gupta's company was registered on a fake address.

The officials also sealed the office of rbitco.in after its proprietor Nilam Doctor was not available. (Hope just at that time he was not available and not running away like his site rbitco.in) else there may arise a big trouble for bitcoin community.

the articel mentions a turnover of rs 20-30 crore spread over 400 ppl..dat is rs 7-5 lakh per person on an avg

all these 400 users wud be subjected (i am guessing) to questioning...that is how the article sounds !!!

Read the comments on that page. NilamDoc has commented saying he is frantically trying to contact the ED officials at the contact details pasted on the door of his office.

Lets give him some benefit of doubt rather than jumping into conclusion that he is hiding. He is a reputed member of Indian Bitcoin Community.

I dint read any comments. Just read the article.

Well I am not jumping on any conclusion for you information, there is a separate thread which claims he is a fraud as far as rbitco.in. Also it may not be surprise after some days we need to to even co-relate the things. Lets hope this is not the case.

I agree this is larger than one individual.

I donno much about BTC, but it seems there were some conference regarding Bitcoin in India and since then authorities have gone mad about it. Dint u ppl arrange proper meal for them ?  :P

Food was awesome! :p

It seems like Nilam Doctor and Mahin Gupta ate all. I have seen even big companies keep special arrangement for even a CA and u treated them like normal Bitcoiner and shared the food !!! Very bad. Now, the big brother is angry on the whole community  :'(

Any one who knew these guys tried to contacted them and asked what is happening currently?

Don't think that they would be allowed to talk to anyone at this stage.
I tried to ping and call Mahin, but no response.

 Rs 20-30 crore spread over 400 people! That's kind of extremely huge transactions. I hope he was not actually involved in money laundering. The average user's transaction comes down to Rs 750,000. I don't think transactions like these will get ignored by banks in India.

What i think they did was look at his btc address saw the total transaction and then calculated it with the  highest point btc was at. he did have over 1000 btc when he started 1.5 years back

But if it is not just a speculation and he had been doing some ML under the hood, then there is serious prob for indian bitcoiners.
Even though it would not affect the long term future of BTC in india, we'll face difficult hurdles for the near term.

This is scary. The DNAIndia article projects as though Bitcoin is a foreign currency and also says it is illegal.

I just sold my first 0.25 BTC 2 days back through buysellbitco.in and now its scaring the hell out of me.  ???  ???  ???

I think we need a website like CoinDesk but specifically for India with various domain experts (including Bitcoiners) writing articles on Bitcoin vis-a-vis Indian law (lawyers can be of help here), technology behind Bitcoins (crypto/software experts), advantages of adopting Bitcoins (economists) etc.

We need articles from early Indian adopters too. Their experiences, stuff that they want improved, life-changing apps they are working on or even using bitcoins to enable job creation etc. Let the media/government know that the people who use and deal with bitcoins in India is the smart and honest common man and not goons from the underworld (Silk Road pretty much dominated the Bitcoin press the whole of 2013 and we need to change that at least for 2014). The government needs to also be cautioned about attempting to ban Bitcoins as it will only push the technology towards criminals and out of the hands of honest people who want to do good with this currency... in other words the lesser the number of good people in control of bitcoin the more dangerous bitcoin is for the society.

The Indian media seems to be least interested in doing some proper research before publishing articles (esp the one from DNA). But for them to do that we need a site that incorporates a basic "for dummies" like approach to explain all the concepts surrounding Bitcoins (creation of coins, decentralization, pseudonymity, miners and fee collection, blockchain analysis) and dispel all the FUD that seems to have engulfed the Indian media/government.

Its not that any of the stuff I have written above aren't available in any other foreign media site(s)/blogs. Looking at how lazy our media/government is when it comes to doing research a site which collates all information into one place (and properly categorizes them into beginner/moderate/advanced) is the need of the hour.

I'm wanting to start a site along these lines... to raise awareness and use it as a tool to dispel FUD.

Anyone up for this? Ideas welcome! If you guys want to brainstorm we can catch up on email/skype (ping me to get in touch).

Reach out to Benson, we already have one which he is working on.
A few new writers for the paper would be really helpful.

Also, you can always start a blog on www.abitsocial.com (Social network for bitcoiners)

I do have the indiabitcoin paper.li, but if someone can gimme a platform like Coindesk, I will definitely be glad to be on the board, and get articles.

@Benson : why not use abitsocial.com with its inbuilt blogging platform.
Let me know if it needs anything and we can try to get what you want on the platform.

While that does work awesome, I would prefer a Coindesk approach as this is a large business. We were planning to launch Bitcoin Magazine India as  a dedicated piece, but was too large to cover unless there was a dedicated effort. That effort is possible at this point.

If there is enough support generated, it would be good to explore if the abitsocial blog can handle magazine capabilities and if it can be accessed from a separate URL as well.

I agree. The mainstream media is either not dedicating enough resources to research on bitcoins or is plain not interested. Nothing against abitsocial.com but I want it to be similar to Coindesk/Techcrunch/ArsTechnica/Quartz (i love their design)... possibly even more minimalistic and solely dedicated to addressing issues related to Bitcoin and India. Willing to code up something along those lines (plus get a host and domain) if you and others are willing to join hands!

Am definitely in for this.

Awesome :) Was about to go offline. I'll ping you in a couple of hours (as soon as I'm back) with my email & skype ID.

Somehow what I had thought is proving right. After reading http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/Bitcoin-may-be-used-by-hawala-traders-Officials/articleshow/28067184.cms
he seemed to be declared as absconding by ED. This will only worsen the scenario as ED started feeling something is fishy.

Also the comment which was posted by Americandesi that ' NilamDoctor has left the comment below', so then why is Nilam declared absconding as per ED still and they are saying he might be in Mauritius though in his comments he never mentioned taht he is out of India and coming back to India to help the ED in investigation.

Things are going from bad to worse.