India makes ownership of Bitcoin criminal offense - How to respond?

[jamesde]

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.

[eaLiTy]

~
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.

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 .    

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.

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.

[kotajikikox]

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?

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.

actually this has been running for years and years yet there is no clarity about what's the Indian Government stands really .

[Vishnu.Reang]

@ 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.

[meanwords]

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.

[Ozero]

WOW, that what I call harsh legislation!

Are you sure about making the ownership a criminal offense?! I read the news in Coindesk - https://www.coindesk.com/india-would-ban-private-cryptocurrencies-under-proposed-legislation, and they didn't mention anything about criminal offenses.

This is likely. If cryptocurrency or some of its types are outlawed, it will be on a par with drugs and other similar items that are withdrawn from civil circulation. You are not defending your ownership of drugs, are you?
I don't even know yet how the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will react if a law is passed in India banning cryptocurrency. On the one hand, without India, cryptocurrency may well exist and develop further, and on the other, this can be an example for other states.

[newIndia]

Now what are the options that we have?

https://indiawantscrypto.net/

May be, update this in your OP.

Details: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5314760.0

[Sithara007]

Now what are the options that we have?

https://indiawantscrypto.net/

May be, update this in your OP.

Details: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5314760.0

This is a very good initiative launched by Nischal Shetty (CEO of the Wazir X exchange). I have emailed my MP explaining briefly why the usage of cryptocurrency should be encouraged and how India could lose out in the future with such regressive attitude (fortunately the parliamentarian who represents me is very well educated, unlike most of the illiterates in the government). Social media can be a very powerful tool, if we want to make our opinion heard. And from what I can see, it is already trending in Twitter:

[Xinarae*]

If crypto has not yet been legalized in India it will take a long time for india to create ownership of bitcoin criminal offenses. Crypto and bitcoin are out of control although India wants to make bitcoin differently out of self-interest, it has not yet been legalized in the courts of their country. That's why you can't hide anything about crypto and I agree with you that if India wins a lawsuit it is one of the tools to spread social media news information about everything in their activity can be found.

[torrantz]

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.

I think so too, it's mainly fear mongering just to open up capital and market to their own CBDC, but still the 10 year punishment still too harsh, as you mentioned it's even heavier punishment than rape WTF? I wonder how indian people respone to this kind of law.
But i bet majority of btc holders who uses it silently gonna be fine since no one know, and I doubt the government could fully detect all the people who uses BTC,other countries have tried but also seem to fail. I wonder what kind of method they gonna use.

[Vishnu.Reang]

I think so too, it's mainly fear mongering just to open up capital and market to their own CBDC, but still the 10 year punishment still too harsh, as you mentioned it's even heavier punishment than rape WTF? I wonder how indian people respone to this kind of law.
But i bet majority of btc holders who uses it silently gonna be fine since no one know, and I doubt the government could fully detect all the people who uses BTC,other countries have tried but also seem to fail. I wonder what kind of method they gonna use.

They remained silent for so long. Only when the exchange rates shot up from $10,000 to $37,000 within 12 months time, they rose from their deep slumber. Now the government want a slice of the pie and they are attempting to do that with their CBDC shitcoin. The problem is that these guys don't have enough education or intelligence to understand the factors behind the rise of cryptocurrency. First, they need to understand that cryptocurrency became popular mostly because of its controlled supply principle and decentralized nature. The CBDC version of cryptocurrency won't be having any of these qualities and as a result it is doomed to fail.

[larus]

In my opinioin, soon we will see the same laws in other countries. Govs dont like money that they cant control

[bryant.coleman]

In my opinioin, soon we will see the same laws in other countries. Govs dont like money that they cant control

Too early to say that. There are a number of governments out there, which have taken a much more positive view about cryptocurrency. Japan is a prime example. They were the first country to fully legalize Bitcoin and the government attitudes haven't changed since then. The only issue is that the tax rates in Japan are a bit higher compared to the other territories and therefore we don't see a great deal of crypto-related businesses that are based there. Japan is having a very strong national currency and therefore the government doesn't have anything to worry from the usage of cryptocurrency. The same can't be said about third world nations such as China and India, where the national currency is heavily manipulated.

[eaLiTy]

@ 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.

Reports are coming out regarding the Bihar elections, they did not manipulate the EVM but the accusation is coming out in regards to the Form 20 used by the returning officer when calculating the total votes. Usually the returning officer calculate them and then the observer monitors everything and then the results are announced but in the Form 20 uploaded in the website the some of the returning officers signed the document well after results are announced and that is not how elections are done.

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. 

I completely agree with you on this part, the opposition is not strong enough and they always fall for the trap the BJP set for them and they do not have a strong leader who can articulate things nor they are promoting people who are capable enough to take the leadership roles.

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.

Take a look at the history in which how the government always approach any protest, they try to make them anti national, if we set out to protest then they will make us the dark net drug suppliers and money laundering group and they can make our life a living hell in the name of investigation.

[Sithara007]

Take a look at this article:

https://swarajyamag.com/economy/why-india-should-buy-bitcoin

Why India Should Buy Bitcoin 

India should launch a digital rupee — and back it with digital gold. More broadly, India should champion decentralised cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum to safeguard national security, prevent deplatforming, attract international capital, strengthen monetary policy, deter financial fraud, accelerate technological development, and hasten India’s ascendance as a global power.

This was the topmost article in Swarajya, a news website that is run by a right-wing group that has close links to the ruling party. This may be an indication that at least some circles within the government are not comfortable with the proposed ban on cryptocurrency. And I believe that it is a good sign. And the article was one of the best I have ever read, which supports the legalization of cryptocurrency. And this figure caught my attention as well:

It claims that India is having some 2 million active cryptocurrency traders (don't ask me why figures for China are missing).

[libert19]

When this draft was leaked couple years ago I panicked but now I have learned not to, we'll figure when it becomes a law, pretty sure they will give enough time dispose crypto if implemented.

Bill doesn't say about any criminal offenses tho.

[Vishnu.Reang]

When this draft was leaked couple years ago I panicked but now I have learned not to, we'll figure when it becomes a law, pretty sure they will give enough time dispose crypto if implemented.

Bill doesn't say about any criminal offenses tho.

A country-specific ban can never be implemented. Because cryptocurrency is easily transferrable from one country to another, since it is a digital asset. If Bitcoin is illegal in one country and legal in another, then the users will simply use markets in the other countries where it is legal. Also, cryptocurrency is decentralized and it is not possible to link a particular cryptocurrency wallet with a real identity.

If India bans the ownership of cryptocurrency, then most probably the users will ask their friends in other countries to claim the ownership of the wallet (the authorities don't have any way to find out whether a particular wallet is controlled by the Indian national or the foreigner). That will happen, even if the passwords are not shared with the other person. When there is a requirement to sell the coins, the foreign national would do that and send the proceedings as a gift to the Indian national. In the end, the Indian government will lose tax money that they could have received from the sale of Bitcoins. 

[ubercool]

If you compare the WazirX BTC/INR chart with Binance's BTC/USDT chart, you will know why we get these kind of fear mongering statements or Ban statements happen in India from time to time.

Most of us knew that in the current situation of India(Covid), The finance minister and all the other high ranked politicians have better things to do. There was nothing of such regulations were going to come in the budget this year.

Personally, it was a great dump for me to buy BTC/ETH, and I did. And as soon as the minister started budget the price went up back to USDT rates. 

[milani]

Response from the users

With a user base of at least 5 million, the cryptocurrency users in India are not some insignificant group. They are feeling helpless, because of the lack of unity. It is worthwhile to note that at least one opposition politician (Milind Deora of the Congress Party) has come out in support of Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency users in India needs to unite and take a political stance against those who are hostile to the idea of BTC. State elections are due in four crucial states in the next 2-3 months (West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam). Bitcoiners need to use their votes effectively, in order to defeat the political factions that are in favor of the Bitcoin ban. Tactical voting needs to be undertaken.

In my opinion the key moment in the fact that very often politicians uses lots of moot points in order to manipulate with votes and appreciations of voters. The situation with cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin in your country is not the exception. The saddest in all this that users are as always suffer from it the most. Hope the situation will change for the most suitable variant for users.

[Kakmakr]

Well.... follow the lesson learned from the Prohibition of Alcohol in the USA. the Prohibition in the United States was a nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933 Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States

So, when they banned it, people started bootlegging (doing it illegally) and the government lost Millions in taxes. All smuggled goods evaded taxes... so the government eventually gave up and they lifted the ban.

A ban makes the use more appealing to a lot of people and the developers will cash in on this opportunity to develop more decentralized services to cater for this need, which is almost impossible to stop.