India Still Debates Crypto Regulation – Finance Secretary

 

Crypto regulation in India is still an ongoing debate, the country’s Finance Secretary T. V. Somanathan stressed, noting that, for now, cryptoassets are not illegal and are treated as gambling. 

“The government’s approach is to consult widely and also to look at what’s happening internationally,” he told Bloomberg TV, adding that while cryptossets are still “in a grey area,” it’s not illegal to trade it. 

According to him, cryptoassets are now put in a taxation framework that treats them “the same way we treat winnings from horse races, or from bets and other speculative transactions.”

As reported, yesterday, the country’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed to tax gains from crypto transfers at a 30% rate, and declared the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital rupee, is to be rolled out by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the country’s central bank, in the years 2022 to 2023.

Meanwhile, the Indian parliament is yet to vote on the proposed Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency bill. The draft legislation was originally scheduled to be finalized during the legislature’s winter session which began on November 29, and ended on December 22.
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