The journey of cryptocurrency in India has been quite bumpy. Reserve Bank of India denied to legalize it and barred the banks from trading in crypto-currencies last April. The government had given a green flag to use of blockchain but had completely derailed Crypto-currencies from Indian economy. After the long legal battle for the survival of crypto-trade in India, the companies are again hopeful. The long wait for regulations for Indian crypto-currency ecosystem might soon be over when the government introduces it by end of 2018.

How will India regulate crypto trade and blockchain?

The finance ministry of India had set up a panel in December 2017 to suggest regulations on cryptocurrencies. Earlier the panel lead by Subhash Chandra Garg had marked July 2018 as the deadline for suggesting regulations on cryptocurrencies but now the deadline has been shifted to December 2018.

What did the officials say?

Mr. Garg had told ET Now earlier that, “We are fairly close to developing a kind of template which we think might be in the best interest of our country. We have prepared a draft which we intend to discuss with the committee members in the first week of July.” The reason for the delay is that the panel hasn’t been able to evaluate a way to treat blockchain and cryptocurrencies as different. One of the officials stated in an interview with Quartz India, “Blockchain is an interesting thing. We definitely want to milk it effectively for financial transactions. So all officials are really trying hard to understand how to separately use blockchain, without cryptocurrency and understanding new software takes time.” The official also said, “There are lots of issues that need understanding and lots of studying needs to be done.”

Government eyes on cryptocurrency

The Indian government has kept a close eye on cryptocurrencies since April 2017. Many of the representatives of Indian crypto market have met the government to voice their views and make officials understand cryptos in a better manner. But the gloom over cryptocurrencies has yet not been cleared and its future seems bleak in India.

Main issue faced by the panel

Now the players of cryptocurrencies in our country are waiting for regulations on cryptocurrencies to determine further course of action. Meanwhile, the main issue that the financial ministry panel is facing is to discover a way to find if regulations can be drawn up to push the use of blockchain independently without an involvement of cryptocurrencies. If the financial application of blockchain is devoured then blockchain becomes an immutable digitalized and decentralized public ledger which can be used for maintaining records accessible to everyone but owned by none.