On Monday, May 23, Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das reiterated India’s unfavourable stance on cryptocurrencies. The governor of the Reserve Bank of India stated that the central bank has long warned about cryptocurrencies, which have now crashed.
People would have raised questions after the bitcoin market meltdown, according to Shaktikanta Das, if the RBI had regulated digital assets by now.
In an exclusive interview with CNBC TV18, Das said the following:
“We’ve been warning people about crypto, and now look at what’s happened to the market. People would have asked what happened to the regulations if we had been regulating them already. This is anything that has no intrinsic value. There are significant concerns about how to govern it. Our opinion remains unchanged: it will jeopardise India’s monetary, financial, and macroeconomic stability.”
Shaktiknta Das also believes that the Centre appears to share the central bank’s view on cryptocurrencies, which is that they have no fundamental value. The RBI has long maintained that cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value, with the governor comparing them to “not even a tulip.”
The worldwide cryptocurrency market has recently experienced a significant fall, with Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, trading at $27,000 earlier this month. This was a more than 50% drop from the previous high of $69,000. Since then, with no trades above $30,000 in the last few days.
Crypto exchanges are not subject to any shadowbans enforced by the RBI. When Bitcoin was first gaining traction in India, the Reserve Bank of India sought to outlaw cryptocurrencies. The RBI’s ban on cryptocurrencies was overturned by a Supreme Court judgement in 2018, and it has maintained a strict stance on digital assets since then. It has often raised concerns about the impact of cryptocurrencies on India’s macroeconomics.
