A dissection of the government notification imposing KYC/AML/CFT obligations on crypto-businesses in India. Roughly 7% Indians own crypto-assets (aka Virtual Digital Assets). Yet, until recently, India did not have regulatory tools to identify crypto-owners or monitor their transactions. Earlier this month, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) changed this. It issued a notification which brought entities dealing in ‘Virtual Digital Assets’Read more
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Law, policy and other developments in 2022 relating to the Web3 sector in India. International International call for robust regulation and supervision of crypto assets: The Financial Stability Board (FSB) of which India is a member issued a statement amid the recent volatility in the crypto market, stressing the need for robust regulation and supervisionRead more
A post-mortem on the crypto-collapse being described as worse than Enron. If you doubted FTX some months back, many tweeps would accuse you of spreading FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt). After all, it was the third largest crypto exchange (by volume) and was valued north of $30 billion. Its founder, now infamous SBF, was then rescuing troubled crypto firms, drawing comparisons with the banking bigwig, JP Morgan. SBF was also among theRead more
A conversation between Akbar and Birbal about crypto-assets. And an explainer of why crypto-taxes are hassleocracy at its best. “Cryptos have no underlying assets, not even a tulip.” –Shaktikanta Das Ouch. That’s the RBI Governor, not mincing his words. Like everyone else, we’ve pored over the Budget announcements on crypto-assets. The euphoria in the crypto-verseRead more
This post covers four key policy and regulatory developments of 2022 concerning blockchain from the EU, USA, Singapore and Hong Kong. Europe & European Union (EU) Regulation (EU) 2022/858 – Distributed Ledger Technology Regulation (DLTR)[1] On May 30, 2022, The European Parliament passed the Regulation (EU) 2022/858 (“DLTR”) to establish and regulate a temporary pilotRead more
This article explains what are privacy coins, key regulatory concerns, and how these can be addressed. Blockchain is gaining popularity, but it has a privacy problem. Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, summarizes the concern: “As seductive as a blockchain’s other advantages are, neither companies nor individuals are particularly keen on publishing all of theirRead more
As we get more clarity with a definition of cryptocurrencies and digital assets, it might cause headaches to another burgeoning industry in India – online video games. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s announcement in the 2022 Union Budget of proposing a 30% tax on digital assets and cryptocurrencies has brought a flurry of reactions. Proponents ofRead more
In this blog post, we discuss the key changes from the Budget which impact the cryptocurrency sector. The Indian Finance Minister announced the annual financial statement (Budget) for the financial year 2022-23 on February 1. The Budget introduced some important developments for the cryptocurrency sector. The changes announced largely revolve around income tax on earningsRead more
Crypto’s high returns have given bragging rights to cryptocurrency service providers, who leverage this in their advertisements. These adverts grab a lot of eyeballs – including those of the regulators. We discuss various regulatory approaches to crypto adverts. We all have a friend who tells us that a 1₹ investment in Bitcoin in 2010 wouldRead more
As the year ends and the holiday cheer begins, we bring a round-up of the discussion this year around crypto regulation in India. Despite expectations, the government has not introduced any regulations on cryptocurrency in the winter session of Parliament. This has left the crypto industry in a state of flux, with the lack ofRead more