India Lifts Ban on Cryptocurrency Trading

India's Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned central bank's two-year-old ban on cryptocurrency trading in the country in what many said was a "historic" verdict. From a report: The Reserve Bank of India had imposed a ban on cryptocurrency trading in April 2018 that barred banks and other financial institutions from facilitating "any service in relation to virtual currencies." At the time, RBI said the move was necessary to curb "ring-fencing" of the country's financial system. It had also argued that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies cannot be treated as currencies as they are not made of metal or exist in physical form, nor were they stamped by the government. The 2018 notice from the central bank sent a panic to several local startups and companies offering services to trade in cryptocurrency. Nearly all of them have since closed shop.

Core issue

[aeropage]

It's all about who is allowed to manufacture money, and who is not.

Not that we weren't warned about this for a couple thousand years, but that battle will soon entail denying the people the ability to buy or sell -at all-.

Re:

[smoot123]

It's all about who is allowed to manufacture money, and who is not.

I agree. The Powers That Be are quite concerned they'll lose the ability to create money and control the money supply. To be fair, they think they need to be able to do this to smooth out the business cycle, and they may be right. OTOH, it's a handy to be able to print all the money you want to pay for things you can't ordinarily afford.

I love the criteria the Indian government used: metal or in physical form. What proportion of the money supply is tied to anything physical these days? Shoot, the other day

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[ElectronicSpider]

I love the criteria the Indian government used: metal or in physical form. What proportion of the money supply is tied to anything physical these days

Nonexistant, as you're going to get a "totally organic revolution" if you even consider the possibility to tie your currency to anything other than the Dollar.

Re:

[transporter_ii]

You know, for once I kind fall on the side that it isn't money that is being created. It acts more like a commodity than a currency. I'm not saying it is worthless, I'm saying it isn't very useful as a currency. It does seem to work well as a commodity, though.

If it was a currency, I could pay my bills with it. Nothing about it is very much like money.

Very real digital scarcity matters: Bitcoin

[slashways]

Only the fundamentals matter:
*Bitcoin is the only scarce digital asset
*Bitcoin will be scarcer than Gold (stock-to-flow ratio)
*Bitcoin is here forever

Re:

[ElectronicSpider]

*Bitcoin is here forever

I raise you one solar flare.

Re:

[btcwarrior]

You can't kill a system with more than 50000 spares. Bitcoin will take over Gold.

Re:

[ElectronicSpider]

There is only one planet, one slap from the sun and kiss goodbye to anything that depends on electricity.

Re:

[btcwarrior]

Powering 50W is not a big deal with today technology. In the worst-case scenario, you will live without air conditioning for some time.

Re:

[ElectronicSpider]

Do you really think that if a flare hits us, the effects are going to be confined to the grid? Bruh, buy a brain.

Re:

[DontBeAMoran]

I raise you one asteroid extinction level event.

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[ElectronicSpider]

That works too, but there's one downside, I can't laugh at the idiots who lost all their electronic tulips.

Re:

[DontBeAMoran]

Sure, some coins such as Dogecoin have no maximum supply. But saying "Bitcoin is the only scarce digital asset" is far from the truth.

Litecoin, for example, also has a supply limit just like Bitcoin. Litecoin has four times the supply of Bitcoin. Since Bitcoins supply is capped at 21 million, this means that Litecoin has a supply limit of 84 million coins.

Re:

[DrXym]

Bitcoin isn't the only "digital asset"; it's hard to understand how you can compare the scarcity of a physical thing with a digital thing; and bitcoin will exist so long as there are idiots to "invest" in it but will never serve any other purpose.

Re:

[DrXym]

Ah yes woe is me with my fiat currency which is accepted everywhere and doesn't go up and down like a yoyo as waves of idiots either buy into or panic sell out of bitcoin. It's funny how your "hard money" is predominantly never used as money except for laundering purposes. It's funny how you even compare it to gold which is a tangible thing that has value and purpose outside of its worth.

Well that's great news...

[DrXym]

... for Indian scammers. Up until now they've had to subsist on gift cards from Best Buy and Apple. Now they can scam people with crypto currency and go head to head with all the scammers operating out of Eastern Europe and Ukraine.