Update: Bitcoin is not banned, Finance Minister says, “They want to discourage people”. Read about it

In the Budget 2018-19 speech, Finance Minister Mr. Arun Jaitley maintained the government’s stance by calling Cryptocurrency as unrecognised and that the government will take measures to stop the use of such currencies for illegal activities.

“The Government does not consider Cryptocurrencies as legal tender or coin and will take all measures to eliminate the use of these crypto assets in financing illegitimate activities or as part of the payment system”

While saying this, he also mentioned that the government will be taking the distributed ledger system – Blockchain into consideration for further developments in Digital India.

Alright, now let’s get to the panic dwellers:

When you read tweet like these, it is going to scare the shit outta you.

“Crypto currency is illegal. Will eliminate it.” @arunjaitley

Bad news for bitcoin investors…!#Budget2018

— Manak Gupta (@manakgupta) February 1, 2018

FM: Government deems cryptocurrency as illegal currency, will take measures to wind it down #BudgET2018 @EconomicTimes @ETtech

— Supraja Srinivasan (@SuprajaET) February 1, 2018

Blow to bitcoin. @arunjaitley says that #NarendraModi government will not recognise crypto currency #UnionBudget2018 @NewIndianXpress

— Edex (@Xpress_edex) February 1, 2018

Do not pay heed to these tweets, these are news agencies trying to wrongly quote the Finance Minister.

#Fact 1: Government will eliminate Cryptocurrency – to curb illicit activities. It doesn’t mean they will stop cryptocurrencies from trading. If you are trading bitcoin/crypto on exchanges and paying your taxes, you are not doing anything illicit.

#Fact 2: Government does not recognise Crypto as legal tender. Which means you cannot make or accept payments for goods and services in Bitcoins or any cryptocurrency. So you are still free to buy and sell cryptocurrency on exchanges.

#Fact 3: Government did not say there will be a ban on cryptocurrency. Indian government can however ban ICOs in India. We have to wait and watch.

Here’s the video from the speech, please make your own assumptions: