If you go by the description, it looks like the government is just going to ban all private cryptocurrencies. You had earlier tweeted that the good thing is that a lot of people in the government now finally understand how cryptocurrencies work. So does the description really come in as a bit of a shock as we were hoping that there is going to be a middle path?
The most important thing is that crypto as a topic is being discussed on a national level now and you rightly said that there is far greater understanding around this topic and subject throughout the country and within the law makers. Whether this is something to be alarmed or not, we will understand once we see the contents of the bill which is not yet public. There is a lot of speculation around the definition of private cryptocurrency. What exactly is private cryptocurrency is hard to understand because Bitcoin or other crypto assets are on the public ledger, on a public blockchain, not owned by any particular company to make it a private crypto.
We are thinking about looking at it from a payments use case, which has been something of a contention point. So maybe crypto is competing and trying to be a payment mechanism. That is where the prohibition might be coming in and that is a possibility. But again, till we do not understand what exactly is the definition of a private crypto and what that means, there is also the second part which is there will be exceptions and there will be use cases around blockchains where crypto can be used.
So we need to wait and watch how this evolves but I think the good thing is we are still discussing regulations and that is a positive move for the entire industry.
What makes you so confident because if you just go by the prime minister’s statements, he is really concerned over the usage of cryptocurrencies and he wants to ensure that it should not land in the wrong hands.
The first most important thing is what happened towards the beginning of this year where our finance minister said that India will take a calibrated approach towards regulating crypto and that is a very important and significant statement. As far as our prime minister’s statement is concerned, that again talks about ensuring that all the malpractices or whatever wrong that can happen with the new technology like the way it can happen with even internet should be curbed. As an industry, we stand by that and we are doing all of the right things and the right checks and balances are in place to prevent that. The solution to that does not have to be a ban. The solution is proper regulation. Bring in KYCs, AML policies. You put in curbs and checks to make sure that the bad actors are not in the ecosystem and at the same time you can promote innovation in the sector.
The other aspect is the meetings that have happened recently with the law makers where they have heard presentations from different parties. They have asked questions. There have been various other discussions at different levels both public and private discussions. All of these things point to an effort to understand this sector. We have over 15-20 million people in India in crypto and about $4-5 billion worth of crypto assets being held by them.
So it is a significant market. Overall it is a $3-trillion market globally with large companies getting into it. Knowing that the ecosystem exists today, proper regulation is going to be the natural path towards this and I believe that is where we are headed as a nation. A bill can be and should be brought in and it will be debated and based on the industry participation, it can be tweaked. What we should be excited about is at least we have begun the process and that is the most important part for us right now.
