Apex court pushes for regulation of Cryptocurrency

Understanding the call for making the virtual currency more accountable to the exchequer Supreme Court has sought the response of the Centre on a petition seeking regulation of the flow of Bitcoin.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra issued a notice to the ministries of Finance, Law and Justice, Information Technology, market regulator SEBI and the RBI.

To frame a mechanism to regulate the flow of Bitcoin advocate Dwaipayan Bhowmick has filed a plea seeking setting up of a panel.

The digital currency, Bitcoin allows people to buy goods and services and exchange money without involving banks, credit card issuers or other third parties.

Inevitably distressing the market value of other commodities the money used to buy Bitcoin from foreign locations is untraceable and may be directly from cryptocurrency accounts without any accountability.

The Chinese government has banned the issuance of new digital coins for fundraising, also known as initial coin offerings, and the Russian courts pronouncing the transfer of cryptocurrency into Roubles as illegal further highlights the importance of issue whether in India Bitcoin be allowed or not?

Understanding the transactions vulnerable to cyber-attacks, currently, the Reserve Bank of India regards cryptocurrencies as a violation of the country’s existing foreign exchange norms.

Excerpts from the plea read:

The plea understanding the urgency of the issue seeks to regulate the flow of Bitcoin to direct the Respondents.

Ensuring the same to be made accountable to exchequer; the committee constitutes for framing of appropriate mechanism to regulate the flow of the crypto money.

Bitcoin, the new currency was created in 2009 by an unknown person using the alias Satoshi Nakamoto. Transactions are made with no middlemen or banks. With zero transaction fees and ensuring anonymity, more merchants are beginning to accept them.

The acquiring of bitcoins is hassle-free as several marketplaces called “bitcoin exchanges” allow people to buy or sell it using different currencies. Mt. Gox is the largest bitcoin exchange.

The research conducted by Cambridge University in 2017 revealed that there are 2.9 to 5.8 million unique users using a cryptocurrency wallet, most of them using bitcoin. Currently, 1 Bitcoin equals 486664.22 Indian Rupee.