India’s government will introduce a law to ban private cryptocurrencies and create a framework for a central bank-controlled digital currency, Parliament announced on Tuesday (23).
The law proposes “to seek to ban all private cryptocurrencies in India”, an announcement made after Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday presented these virtual currencies as a risk for young people to fall into the “wrong hands”.
In September, China banned cryptocurrency transactions.
In India, the virtual currency market soared after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a similar ban in April 2020, with an increase of more than 600% in the last 12 months, according to the specialist firm Chainalysis.
It is estimated that between 15 million and 100 million people have cryptocurrencies in the country, which has 1.3 billion inhabitants.
The Indian central bank announced in June that it was working to introduce its own virtual currency from the end of the year, while expressing its concerns about private platforms such as bitcoin, ethereum and others.
The law, which is due to be presented to parliament starting next week, will allow exceptions such as promoting the underlying “blockchain” technology, the Parliament note said, without providing further details.
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