out of curiosity was he caught because it was bitcoin related or because bitcoin was only a means of his crime? i don ot understand how people can do illegal stuff while using an exchange that solely uses bank transfers. it would be good to keep everyone aware of even the bad ways bitcoin can get used.

i am not 100% sure about the 3k number, but i remember seeing a tweet like that. i apologise if this is not true. please feel free to delete my post if it isn't true.

all this constructive discussion is to understand the potential of bitcoin in india and how "early" adopters we are/will be. for example, i was pleasantly surprised to hear that there were indians were way ahead of this forum who got into bitcoin early on.

coinsecure tweeted once that they have traded 3k+ BTC in one month.


are you saying one person was responsible for achieving liquidity? how did he get bitcoins?


this is interesting, but quite expected in a country with a billion people and lots of techies. do you know this for a fact or you just hypothesising?

fair enough i feel that if all the bitcoins we trade in india were india mined, then govt will not give any troubles. that will be a superb self sustained ecosystem. govt can later regulate foreign transfers if they want.

and yes, it is obvious bitcoins is picking up seeing how companies like zebpay,unocoin,coinsecure,btcxindia are still up and running enthusiastically
obviously there seems to be a future.

what do you mean by bot based trades? when we see volumes on coinsecure (exchange data) does each transaction mean at least one person involved was a human customer?

by users and partners you mean indian people and companies who had stock of bitcoins that offered to sell on Coinsecure? i am just struggling to understand how "bootstrapping" happened in such an enormous way when the volume of bitcion in india was so little. it was a real challenge, kudos to early bitcoin companies.

bitcoin has recently started picking up in india. i was looking at trade volumes on coinesure and it is impressively high (1000s of btcs).

i am curious to understand how the early amount of bitcoins were available in india? were there so many miners in india who had bitcoins in india even before exchanges started operating?

it is a very interesting concept to discuss, because a decentralized asset (controlled-by-all) spiking adoption in india when no one really owned any earlier is quite a challenge. i really appreciate the people here driving the adoption forward. given how mining difficulty has gone so high in recent times,have people in india mining with so much hardware?

ok. the summary seems to be that using bitcoins for legal purposes is fine, but tax should be paid on the bitcoins possessed when acquired.
any sale of it would levy capital gains tax. so, even if we don't sell bitcoins, we should still declare and pay tax on it.

if after filing income tax,there is an audit and we are asked to prove our possession of the declared amount of bitcoins, how would we do that?
1. we would need to prove how the bitcoins were acquired (purchase invoice, service invoice, etc.)
2. we would need to prove ownership of said address ()

i'm sure the exchanges in India are going through this.  any opinions here?

i understand.

because this is very useful for everyone in the community to know, and the answers will generally apply to everyone, can we as a community approach a lawyer and publicly document the findings? i think it is super useful to know all this.

i also think people considering their bitcoins with reverence to the law will help gain bitcoin some good light. the way the govt. reacts will be very reactive to how bitcoins *are* being used in contrast with how they *can* be used for good. people might looking at bitcoin at a completely "unregulated" system with full freedom which might hurt everyone in the future.

opinions?

the only way bitcoin really helped int his case, was because it can used to make international transfers. one could as well used cash if it were inside India.

i think it is reasonable for the govt. to know who is using bitcoins after all. just because they know who is using it, doesn't mean everyone has done something wrong. i really don't see what is wrong in using bitcoins if not used for illegal purposes. of course, paying taxes is something everyone should take care of.

hi all.

i recently heard about bitcoin and have been curious since.

from my research, i have understood that bitcoin can be classified as currency or commodity.

if it is a commodity, it can be sent abroad without much hassle. but if it is a currency, it would come under FEMA.

what i don't understand is, if we today send bitcoins abroad and buy something for example (of amounts less than today's FEMA restrictions on fiat money), and tomorrow govt. declares that bitcoin is a currency, how would things work then? does it function retrospectively? if for example, they say a tax of 30% is to be levied on all bitcoin transfers made abroad, does that mean people who didn't know about this and made international transfers will be under trouble?

can someone help me understand the various possibilities of developments?

also, i am not clear about FEMA itself. what does it serve to protect?

while it is correct that all this depends on the government's response, there is no reason we shouldn't discuss the possibilities. that could foster some adoption and would stop people from doing stupid things that will harshly affect the bitcoin ecosystem in India.