India seeks to block most cryptocurrencies in new bill, government says
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Re: India seeks to block most cryptocurrencies in new bill, government says
#2How are they going to be doing that? China seems to be banning all crypto every year.
Re: India seeks to block most cryptocurrencies in new bill, government says
#3Easiest way would be to block exchanges. Though one could go to another country and withdraw and convert the money, the more countries that block exchanges, the more targeted one could be towards the remainder for money transfers.
Re: India seeks to block most cryptocurrencies in new bill, government says
#4Easiest way would be to block exchanges. Though one could go to another country and withdraw and convert the money, the more countries that block exchanges, the more targeted one could be towards the remainder for money transfers.
Wouldn’t that just lead to a black market? Especially in a country that loves its informal economy like India?
Re: India seeks to block most cryptocurrencies in new bill, government says
#5Well, they can try, but even with centralized exchanges, a VPN will do. And then there are decentralized protocols.
Once you have some of your money in cryptocurrency there's no real way for anyone to stop you from moving your money around however you like. The only points that can be controlled are interfaces with banks.
Re: India seeks to block most cryptocurrencies in new bill, government says
#6Easiest way would be to block exchanges. Though one could go to another country and withdraw and convert the money, the more countries that block exchanges, the more targeted one could be towards the remainder for money transfers.
Wouldn’t that just lead to a black market? Especially in a country that loves its informal economy like India?
It's not as easy to participate in the informal economy as it used to be. Everything from one's bank to one's mobile number and govt id are linked. If you want to deposit funds in an exchange, you'll need some form of KYC--barring which your bank debit/credit card is linked anyway.
The banks, even before the ban (which has yet to come), were keeping track of customers making payments to exchanges. In some cases, they customers a letter, erroneously citing an central bank order banning cryptocurrencies that had later been struck down by the Supreme Court. Despite no regulation, they've been denying services to exchange, preventing their cards or UPI payment addresses being used to transact either. Most mobile wallets followed suit.
The only option that remained then was P2P. I should caveat that I'm not sure I fully understand how that works in this case, though.
The issue is there's no real anonymous way to pay someone besides cash, unless you already had a crypto account with a wallet that had been filled. So an informal economy will need a safe way of turning physical cash into crypto and vice versa, in a regulatory environment where it may be banned to transact cryptocurrencies.
Crypto adoption is a gradual curve where people will only slowly start putting their savings or investment funds into a crypto account.
Re: India seeks to block most cryptocurrencies in new bill, government says
#7Well, they can try, but even with centralized exchanges, a VPN will do. And then there are decentralized protocols. Once you have some of your money in cryptocurrency there's no real way for anyone to stop you from moving your money around however you like. The only points that can be controlled are interfaces with banks.
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Re: India seeks to block most cryptocurrencies in new bill, government says
#8Well, they can try, but even with centralized exchanges, a VPN will do. And then there are decentralized protocols. Once you have some of your money in cryptocurrency there's no real way for anyone to stop you from moving your money around however you like. The only points that can be controlled are interfaces with banks.
The interfaces have almost been reduced to a couple of options: A single mobile wallet, or P2P.
A ban would force the wallet's company to stop allowing its use on crypto exchanges.
Re: India seeks to block most cryptocurrencies in new bill, government says
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn’t that just lead to a black market? Especially in a country that loves its informal economy like India?
It's not as easy to participate in the informal economy as it used to be. Everything from one's bank to one's mobile number and govt id are linked. If you want to deposit funds in an exchange, you'll need some form of KYC--barring which your bank debit/credit card is linked anyway. The banks, even before the ban (which has yet to come), were keeping track of customers making payments to exchanges. In some cases, they…
Would turning cash into crypto outside of the banking system not be considered money laundering?
Re: India seeks to block most cryptocurrencies in new bill, government says
#10Well, they can try, but even with centralized exchanges, a VPN will do. And then there are decentralized protocols. Once you have some of your money in cryptocurrency there's no real way for anyone to stop you from moving your money around however you like. The only points that can be controlled are interfaces with banks.
Banks can block accounts of centralized exchanges (and have done so in the past when govt asked them to). And once conversion from and to fiat money is disabled, there's very little value left in cryptocurrency.