[Zebpay]

Hamstrung for months by the Indian central bank’s diktat disallowing banks to undertake any cryptocurrency-related transactions, Zebpay said it was shuttering its exchange.

“The curb on bank accounts has crippled our, and our customers’, ability to transact business meaningfully. At this point, we are unable to find a reasonable way to conduct the cryptocurrency exchange business,” Zebpay said in a blog post. “As a result, we are stopping our exchange activities.”

https://qz.com/india/1405918/zebpay-a-major-indian-bitcoin-exchange-is-closing/

Link to official tweet: https://twitter.com/zebpay/status/1045568047971352576

P.S. The Zebpay wallet will continue to function even though the exchange will stop operations. So no need to panic withdraw.

Also check the tweet replies. Rival exchanges (Wazirx and Koinex) have seized the opportunity to strut their stuff

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday said that it is looking at the possibility of introducing a 'central bank digital currency'. Briefing the media at the end of the two-day meeting of Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the RBI, Deputy Governor B P Kanungo said, "While many central banks are still engaged in the debate, an inter-departmental group has been constituted by the Reserve Bank to study and provide guidance on the desirability and feasibility to introduce a central bank digital currency." The report will be submitted by end-June 2018, he added.

This is after RBI has given out repeated warnings to Indian citizens to refrain from indulging in cryptocurrencies. This is the most confusing piece of news I have read in recent times. Even in this statement they have "directed banks and regulated entities not to deal with or provide services to individuals or businesses dealing in virtual currencies". Either banks and governments are totally confused how to deal with crypto or they are deliberately moving to outlaw it.

Read more here: https://m.timesofindia.com/business/india-business/rbi-may-introduce-its-own-version-of-digital-currency/amp_articleshow/63627093.cms

[Scope of Project:]

Recently got to know about MarineCoin (https://marineco.in/) where you need to Signup and verify your Account. Thereafter you need to do a promotion of the project (which is like a bounty program) and submit photo and ID proofs along with proof-of-work (promotional efforts to spread the word) and you get 450,000 tokens free.

The project was live in 2013-14 and got stopped for some reason and has now been restarted. The website says that it is a community project with a total token count ~9 billion (pre-mined).

Scope of Project: Payment technology that claims to be ~5 times faster than the Bitcoin blockchain

Risk: Low (no investment; ID proof and proof-of-work to be submitted)

I don't see any downsides in the project yet. But I'm not sold completely. What do you guys think?