As Centre readies cryptocurrency bill for Parliament's Monsoon Session, here's what you need to know
FirstpostThe government has talked about banning all cryptocurrencies in India but that has not stopped millions of Indians from trading in the digital asset After narrowly missing out on being tabled in the Budget Session of Parliament earlier this year, the cryptocurrency bill is reportedly ready for being taken up for debate during the upcoming Monsoon Session. In a bulletin for the Budget Session prepared by the Lok Sabha Secretariat, the bill’s key purpose was described to be the “creation of the official digital currency to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India”. News agency Reuters had cited an unnamed government source to report during the Budget Session said that the bill would represent “one of the world’s strictest policies against cryptocurrencies would criminalise possession, issuance, mining, trading and transferring crypto-assets”. In its answer to a question in Parliament during the last Budget Session on whether there was a ban on “bitcoin trading in the country”, the Union finance ministry had cited a Reserve Bank of India circular from April 2018 that had “advised all the entities regulated by it not to deal in” virtual currencies.