What do you expect from the government Cryptocurrency Bill?

Here are some of the key expectations from the Cryptocurrency Bill.

· The Crypto bill will be among the 26 bills for debate this winter session. The message is that India needs to adopt a more rational approach keeping in mind the emerging realities. Banning cryptocurrencies is not the answer, the focus should be regulation.

· Cryptos are big at over $2 trillion market cap. Among the big crypto names, Bitcoin has a market cap of $1.1 trillion followed by Ethereum at $500 billion. The other major cryptos like Binance, Tether and Dogecoin, if added up the total is well above $2 trillion

· Cryptos came about after the global financial crisis as currencies became debased. Cryptos are valuable only because they are scarce and difficult to mine. This is in contrast to other fiat currencies like Dollar, Rupee, Pound, which can be printed at will.

· Instead of banning cryptos, India must look to organized regulation. Platforms must be recognized with members being registered and customers going through KYC to keep a tab on the colour of money.

· The bill should also look at in detail into the possibility of using blockchain as an underlying technology for indelible record keeping. Many of the large operations the world are already moving to blockchain, the underlying technology of cryptos.

· Finally, the RBI digital currency is likely to be less of a cryptocurrency and more of a digital alternative to rupee. To that extent, it would be more akin to a digital wallet. Central banks cannot print money for ever. Cryptos have emerged from that weakness in fiat currencies. That should be the basis of cryptocurrency regulation.