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Bitcoin

India To Propose Prohibiting All Private Cryptocurrencies (bloomberg.com) 58

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
India is preparing a bill to regulate cryptocurrencies, which will be presented to parliament in the session starting Nov. 29. From a report: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government proposes to help the central bank create an official digital currency, according to a description of the bill, posted on parliament's website Tuesday. "The bill also seeks to prohibit all private cryptocurrencies in India, however, it allows for certain exceptions to promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its uses," the text reads.
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India To Propose Prohibiting All Private Cryptocurrencies More

India To Propose Prohibiting All Private Cryptocurrencies

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  • Governments hate when they can't control something, so they will make laws to shut them down. Don't want people to be able to grow and use pot, so it's outlawed, can't do this or that, because if the government can't control it, they don't want anyone to do it. There are a LOT of fly by night crypto currencies, but the fact that crypto is NOT based in one country where it can be controlled, these governments whine about it and want it to be outlawed or made to be something they can regulate.

    • Re:The powers that be are afraid of losing control (Score:5, Insightful)

      by asdflkjhg ( 7600606 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @01:31PM (#62013771)
      Governments regulate a lot of things to our mutual benefit as well, though, eh? For example, they regulate "killin people". You can't just go and kill people. The Government controls precisely when and how killin people gets done. Probably, when done right, this is for the best. Has it occurred to you that maybe "printin money" is something that isn't good for random shmos to be able to do? Money is pretty useful, and the Government has regulated printin money for millenia. I'm sure you can find good reasons for this if you were to look beyond your confirmation bias.

      • So you're saying crypto is money now? Everyone here claims its the same as tulips.

        • So you're saying crypto is money now? Everyone here claims its the same as tulips.

          Money is the same as tulips, except you can pay taxes in it and it has explicit backing from the government. If tulips were regulated in the same way (including making it illegal to farm your own tulips) they would work reasonably as a kind of money. Of course, there are a bunch of problems with tulips that make them impractical. They aren't very easy to handle; e.g. you lose your password ^W^W^W^W^W they rot if you let them get wet. They use too much energy^W space. They also make it impossible to hav

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by njvack ( 646524 )

          I mean... tulips, money, crypto, stocks, they all have some similarities. They're things that people agree have value. You can trade them to other people.

          There's really no reason you couldn't use tulips — literal tulips — as a currency today, and exchange them for other currencies. There's an entire industry (probably more than one) based on exchanging tulip bulbs for other things. It's tulip farming. The main reason we don't do this in practice today is that tulips are a shitty store of value,

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by nyet ( 19118 )

            > high transaction fees

            You know there are currencies other than ETH, right?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        Has it occurred to you that maybe "printin money" is something that isn't good for random shmos to be able to do?

        And yet it's something that we (the USA) have left in private hands [wikipedia.org]. Never mind the Federal Reserve, which is just a sock puppet for its member banks. We have done rather well by leaving the creation of money in the hands of schmos. As long as they are the privileged schmos. Countries like India attempt to exert [wikipedia.org] greater control of its currency and banking system. Much to the detriment of its poorer and often unbanked population. But again, the privileged schmos made out pretty well.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by PPH ( 736903 )

            the government can and does regulate the creation of money

            It varies by country. In the USA, we really don't have a government run central bank. The Fed reports to Congress, but mainly blows smoke up their asses and does as it pleases (remember Alan Greenspan's [wikipedia.org] FedSpeak [wikipedia.org]?) The Federal Reserve Board of Governors answer to their member banks. Who are members by choice. So if the government tried to push them around, they could quit the Fed, become State chartered banks and do as they please anyway. The government knows this and as a result doesn't push them around.

      • > The Government controls precisely when and how killin people gets done. ... Has it occurred to you that maybe "printin money" is something that isn't good for random shmos to be able to do?

        Has it occurred to you that most of the killin Government does is paid for with printed money? Same with environmental destruction. They could afford to do much, much less with sound money.

        > Money is pretty useful, and the Government has regulated printin money for millenia.

        Nonsense. The current fiat standard da

      • > Government has regulated printing money for millennia.

        That gives the false impression that ONLY government's created money.

        1. Companies used to do pay in company scrip [wikipedia.org] before it became illegal in 1938.
        2. It is not illegal for Citizens to create their own private currency [wikipedia.org] such as the famous Liberty Dollar [wikipedia.org]. (It is interesting to note that the charges were based on that "the Liberty silver coins too closely resembled official coinage.")

      • When I worked for indian a IT group, they wanted to use bitcoin, probably because this way they didnâ€(TM)t have to pay taxes. Bitcoin money is probably used in indian black markets.

    • The "Government" are elected representatives of "The People" who seem to want healthcare and education and a safe civil society.

      But if they can't collect taxes who is going to pay? What will happen to that society without infrastructure, without safety and without an educated and healthy public?

      They will have plenty of pot that you seem to love, gambling, prostitution and crime and spiral down to a basic primal society run by gangs and the elite inheritors.

      "I love the uneducated" They are so easy to m

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by JBMcB ( 73720 )

        >But if they can't collect taxes who is going to pay? What will happen to that society without infrastructure, without safety and without an educated and healthy public?

        You mean that society wants stuff for free? It's simple, if society chooses to not pay taxes, they don't get health care, nor any of that other stuff they want. It's simple arithmetic.

        • It's simple arithmetic.

          This is a common misconception. There is no two column accounting at the federal level in the USA.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by PPH ( 736903 )

          It's simple arithmetic.

          And its called "buy now, pay later" [slashdot.org]. Which is designed to draw in suckers with the promise of 'Oooo! Shiny!"

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by zoobab ( 201383 )

          "But if they can't collect taxes who is going to pay?"

          You can still pay taxes, just the government has no way to check how much you earn.

          I don't like this banking system where it is 1984.

    • Re:The powers that be are afraid of losing control (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Dorianny ( 1847922 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2021 @01:43PM (#62013805) Journal
      Governments regulate risk in the financial markets. This is why they do seemingly weird things like "cool off the economy," increasing interest rates to slow down economic growth in order to slow down inflation and bubble growth. Crypto's growth, especially among small-cap investors who can least afford losses, is fast becoming too big to ignore and a downturn can create risks to the wider financial markets.

    • Counterpoint: cryptocurrencies are wildcat banks and should be regulated as such.

    • Last time I checked, the governments do a great deal of infrastructure building so you can get from point A to point B, they also fund a great deal of research so you can enjoy things like the computer or phone you viewing slashdot with. Governments need taxes to do stuff like this. For those that hate government I would hope they stop using the roads\airports or any other service that the government provides.

      And yes, governments also control money which is necessary for a functioning society so people can'

      • And yes, governments also control money which is necessary for a functioning society so people can't sidestep taxes or fund things like criminal organizations.

        Reread your sentence and let the rest of us know when you discover the "are you fucking kidding me?" point in it.

        • I can tell you go online to make friends.

          • I can tell you go online to make friends.

            My point is... Those things happen with CASH. Your argument is flawed. And if you're so sensitive that statement "offended" you, then you're gonna have a rough road ahead...

            • Who says I got offended? Were you trying to offend me? And no, you can value cash with physical goods, companies or just about anything, crypto you can but most of the time you have to relate it with cash in some way. Goods are assigned a dollar amount and that value does not change drastically over time because it is regulated. Crypto has no regulation, it's value is solely determined by the price it is now and how many people have bought into it and no one can measure that. In a year the value of most cr

              • The only issue I had with your statement was that crypto somehow facilitates tax dodging or the funding of criminal organisations. Cash does the exact same thing.. I didn't give two shucks about the rest of the crypto debate, nor did I address it.

                The statement that crypto funds criminals is bullshit. It might make it a tad bit easier for some things, but they can, and for at least a hundred years have, dealt in exclusively cash if need be.

                Cash is king.

                Just in case this disclaimer is needed: I don'

    • In this case. They're a very good reasons to have a regulated economy and the very nature of cryptocurrency makes it difficult to properly regulate. As for what those reasons are try to think of what can happen with an unregulated security that has absolutely no actual value backing it but is somehow being valued at hundreds of billions of dollars. It wouldn't take much to start selling other securities on the backs of those essentially worthless securities and create a complex chain that eventually gets va

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nyet ( 19118 )

        > uses a ton of electricity

        You know there are currencies other than bitcoin, right?

    • Since when has that ever not been the case?

  • crypto is bad for the environmental / crime. Leading to GPUs supply issues.

    Also the bad for the power grid just wait for the day that an hospital get's an rolling blackout while an bit coin farm keeps going as they can pay for the power even at the cost of public safety

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nyet ( 19118 )

      > crypto is bad for the environmental[sic]

      You know there are currencies other than bitcoin, right?

    • Have you ever sat down and calculated the environmental impact of actual banks? They have physical buildings, computers, lights, employees that drive cars to work, not to count all the cash registers and credit card terminals at literally every business...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Not just GPUs. CPUs too: https://www.techradar.com/news... [techradar.com]

  • The Indian government: "We hate the Chinese government but that certainly doesn't stop us from using their policies to control our own people. Also, did you know we are the world's largest democracy?". I feel very glad I don't live in that ultra-nationalist shithole anymore.

  • Regarding cryptocurrencies, there are two types of people.

    The first type of people understands that cryptocurrencies...
    - Are highly volatile and have huge fees, so they are not effective as currencies [apenwarr.ca].
    -Can be easily manipulated by certain actors (e.g. Elon tweets [twitter.com]).
    -Generate a huge waste of resources, consuming more energy than many countries in the world [digiconomist.net].
    -Thus, generate an insane amount of CO2 [fortune.com], neglecting huge efforts to migrate to green energies and save the planet.
    -Are 6 orders of magnitude [statista.com] less efficient

    • -Thus, generate an insane amount of CO2 [fortune.com], neglecting huge efforts to migrate to green energies and save the planet.

      Your other points are fine, but I have an issue with this one. That is not a "feature" of crypto-currencies. They don't care where the electricity comes from. Nuclear, solar, wind, hydro.. All would work just fine for bitcoin, et al. Crypto-currencies DO NOT generate CO2.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Currently a sizable proportion of the power grid is based upon CO2 emitting fuels, and the obsessive massive increases in energy usage cryptocurrencies are causing are reducing our ability to get off CO2 producing energy sources. So yes, it's a feature.

          Nope. Governments delaying Nuke Plants is reducing our inability to get off CO2 energy sources. Wind, solar, hydro.. All are wonderful but unreliable. We have to have stable power.

    • You forgot the third type: the miners who sell most of their coins to fund their mining

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nyet ( 19118 )

      You know there are currencies other than bitcoin and ETH right?

  • What do they mean by private? For example:

    Is Bitcoin a private cryptocurrency?

    Or just coins with ledgers that are not public - some corporate/internal cryptocurrencies that don't have a public blockchain, Or is this about coins with a private or central governance?, some Ethereum tokens, coins whose technology is defined by 1 entity, Or perhaps they mean Cryptocurrency with a "Privacy" feature such as Monero and similar where although it is a Public transaction ledger - the knowledge of which wal

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nyet ( 19118 )

      They're total idiots.

      "Private" chains are those that are permissioned, which isn't at all what India seeks to ban.

      Morons.

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