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Bitcoin The Almighty Buck Technology

Proposed Law in India Would Imprison Anyone Who Uses Cryptocurrency (indiatoday.in) 116

Posted by msmash from the extreme-measures dept.
Holding, selling or dealing in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin could soon land people in India in jail for 10 years. From a report: The "Banning of Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2019" draft in the nation has proposed 10-year prison sentence for persons who "mine, generate, hold, sell, transfer, dispose, issue or deal in cryptocurrencies." Besides making it completely illegal, the bill makes holding of cryptos a non-bailable offence, too. Given the high chances of cryptocurrencies being misused for money laundering, various government bodies in the country such as the Income Tax Department and the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) had endorsed banning of cryptocurrencies.
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Proposed Law in India Would Imprison Anyone Who Uses Cryptocurrency More

Proposed Law in India Would Imprison Anyone Who Uses Cryptocurrency

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  • Prisindia (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "You thought we were a backwards shithole before? Hold my fermented street-milk.." "The whole point of currency is that it's PINK and you need THOUSANDS OF THEM TO BUY ANYTHING, Bitcoin is fake!"
       

  • I tend to agree (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Subverting a country's currency is the quickest way towards subverting a country's stability

    The CIA is no stranger to this phenomenon

    Bitcoin serves very few purposes that are both (a) legal and (b) could not be done using fiat currency

    • Or Itunes accounts?
        What about pre-paid visa cards?

    • What you say may be true of Bitcoin. But there are other cryptocurrencies with lower transaction fees. How, using fiat currency alone, do you envision to reduce the 30 cents per transaction fee associated with online payment using a credit card or debit card?

      • Remove or rationalize all the regulations which tanked e-gold, instead of just letting cryptocurrencies get away ignoring them.

        Banking regulations, UCC etc. keep international money transfers expensive. Cryptocurrencies are allowed to avoid almost all of those regulations.

      • 7k How, using fiat currency alone, do you envision to reduce the 30 cents per transaction fee associated with online payment using a credit card or debit card?

        You can't aquire Bitcoin with a credit card without transaction fees either.

        If you don't want to pay transaction fees there are numerous legitimate services: PayPal, Cash.me, Venmo... etc that have no transaction fees.

        PayPal might charge transaction fees for business transactions but that's for insurance and effectively Escrow service. Bitcoin doesn't offer that either.

  • Indian politicians and police . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Tuesday June 11, 2019 @04:59PM (#58747098)

    . . . prefer their bribes in cash anyway.

    A friend from India told me that at night police traffic stops an officer might approach your car with a flashlight, and then unscrew the battery compartment.

    That is your cue to stuff some cash inside. Then you can drive on.

    That would be difficult to do with BitCoins.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 )
      That's why India also got rid of cash.

    • then unscrew the battery compartment.

      Which has a camera with a QR reader along with the side compartment for cash, and an NFC pad to accept ApplePay...

      Corrupt officials could really learn a thing or two from the service industry about offering multiple payment options in case you had not hit up an ATM recently or were just on your way to the gym.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      That is your cue to stuff some cash inside.

      Here's a nice tightly rolled wad of cash, officer. Pay no attention to the smoking fuse hanging out of the end.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Come on man, you can't expect a developing country's corruption to be as advanced as America or Europe. They don't have a stable enough system to pull off civil asset forfeiture, public sector unions extorting the taxpayer, advocacy groups that push their interests, and intimidating elected officials with their investigative powers.

      Just shove a 20 in and be glad the inmates aren't running the asylum.

    • they're trying to crack down on money laundering and corruption. India's economy has been fueled by offshoring. That can't last. Automation is going to knock out most of those jobs in 20 years. Their politicians are trying to figure out how to get the money needed to modernize an economy. They look at Venezuela that couldn't survive the price of oil dropping and understand they'll be next if they don't figure out how to get enough money into the gov't coffers to pay for the kind of infrastructure and modern

  • This is the sort of law that makes me want to (claim to) donate a few satoshi to every politician who supported this bill.
    Sure they might say they don't have a bitcoin wallet, but can they prove that?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      The same way a person could hold a Swiss bank account.
      It might not get used every year but a person has access to it when they want.
  • No need to criminalize being a moron. I'd settle for a non-binding resolution calling people who bought and sell cryptocurrency to be morons. The few people who are making substantive money off of it are feeding off the morons. It blows my mind to this day that people like Jack Dorsey still buy a shit ton of BitCoin and similar cryptos. Just once again proves people have huge blind spots and rich people aren't always smart.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vadim_t ( 324782 )

      Bitcoin as a way to earn money, or to use it as actual currency in the case of BTC is a stupid idea indeed.

      Bitcoin as a way to buy drugs or do other kinds of fishy business is somewhat practical though, although I would bet the vast majority of people couldn't consistently maintain anonymity with it.

    • Probably the same reason we've got laws against certain forms of gambling. It's generally frowned upon to trick people out of their money, even if they had it coming.

    • I completely agree with you. I keep my money in a savings account which gives me a 0.1% interest and I feel that's a good, honest way to make money. I also invest in Tesla, Netflix and Snapchat for a higher return. Yes, those companies don't make any profit, but who cares - they are so popular there will always be people (a.k.a bagholders) who will buy the shares off me at a higher price. Overall, I feel safe and secure with my investment choices - between a good 0.1% savings account and a few thousands of

  • What about tourists? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Tuesday June 11, 2019 @05:14PM (#58747156)

    Does this mean that any tourist that has a CoinBase app installed can be arrested?

    Or does it mean you have a cryptocurrency app that has a private key stored locally?

    Kind of a scary proclamation which should do nothing at all to halt the use of crypto-currency.

  • ,,,India has been trying quite directly to reduce corruption and black market trading that steals from tax revenue needed for improving various matters for their populations benefit.

    This is not to dismiss government corruption but even this is part of the issues to resolve.

    • Given their current record unemployment rate of 6% - their highest in 45 years, they need to take a second look at cryptocurrency and allow the population to mine whatever bitcoin or etherium or whatever else they want to mine, so that they dont' starve, and that the government doesn't have to bloat their bureaucracies just in order to employ everyone

  • ... demonstrating your support for this legislation. By making donations to the re-election fund of each member of the Income Tax Department and Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs. Make them in Bitcoin.

  • Don't eat cows. They hate it when people eat cows! Mooo!!!

  • Shitting in the streets like animals is still perfectly acceptable. Imagine the smell of that place with their current heatwave!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Shitting in the streets like animals is still perfectly acceptable. Imagine the smell of that place with their current heatwave!

      Wouldn't it smell like San Fransisco?

  • Bitcoin itself is a long random number. In essence, having bitcoin is knowing such long random number that nobody else knows. Another feature is that it is easy to hide bitcoin, the same way as easy to hide random number. Unfortunately for India, banning bitcoin will unavoidably cause Streisand effect. People looking to preserve the wealth will see that BTC is available and not-illegal elswhere. Since India has reputation for bottomless corruption, BTC will become an instrument of choice. I think that BTC

  • Don't be smug, America.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • No price dip? Odd (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    You'd think an announcement like this would cause a devaluation in the bitcoin-- after all, if the law gets passed, that's a *big* chunk of the world economy that you can't use bitcoin with. (1.3 billion people). But no, it's just wiggling along as usual. No sell-off.

    The summary left out an interesting: After banning "cryptocurrencies", India wants to launch its own "digital currency" (the "digital rupee"). Doesn't that imply they are starting their *own* cryptocurrency? Is the purpose of the law simply

    • One hand does not know what the other is doing. An Indian Lawyer submitted a freedom of information request to The Reserve Bank of India about this crypto-ban legislation, and they said they didn't know anything about it.

      The Reserve Bank of India has denied any knowledge of a proposed ban on cryptocurrencies – despite reports that a number of governmental agencies have backed the draft legislation – according to a Right to Information request filed on 4 June.

      Varun Sethi, a lawyer specialising in blockchain, filed the inquiry into the RBI-s involvement with ‘Banning of Cryptocurrencies and Regulation of Official Digital Currencies Bill 2019’ draft.

      Bank officials said the RBI was not in communication with governmental agencies during the legislative process and had not received a copy of the bill. The bank forwarded several of Sethi’s questions to the Department for Economic Affairs as well as the Ministry of Finance – including, ‘What are -official digital currencies’ as per the RBI?’

      The bank has been involved in cryptocurrency legislation as recently as April when the organisation unveiled a regulatory sandbox that would allow blockchain products – excluding digital currencies – to be tested on a sample of consumers. It has not endorsed a full ban on cryptocurrencies in the past.

      link to article [newstodaynet.com]

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