The Supreme Court today refused to stay RBI’s circular that virtually banned banks and other regulated entities from providing services to any individual or business dealing in digital currencies.
The Reserve bank of India on April 5 announced the decision during the first Bi-monthly monetary policy of 2018-19. Along with the ring fencing, the central bank also announced an inter disciplinary committee setup to provide guidance on introducing a “Central bank digital currency”.
The announcement stated,
Rapid changes in the landscape of the payments industry along with factors such as emergence of private digital tokens and the rising costs of managing fiat paper/metallic money have led central banks around the world to explore the option of introducing fiat digital currencies. While many central banks are still engaged in the debate, an inter-departmental group has been constituted by the Reserve Bank to study and provide guidance on the desirability and feasibility to introduce a central bank digital currency. The Report will be submitted by end-June 2018.
Today, on July 3, 2018, the said deadline has passed and we haven’t heard anything about this particular report.
Earlier in June 12, a lawyer and crypto enthusiast Varun Sethi shared an RTI response from RBI about cryptocurrency and blockchain. Within that RTI, the bank responded “no” to the question of whether RBI has setup any committee for research in Blockchain or Cryptocurrency.
Last month the Dept. of Economic Affairs secretary Mr. Subhash Garg told in an interview that the committee setup by the government under him is “almost” ready with the draft and should be able to “wind up” everything by July 15, 2018.
If the Government of India and Reserve Bank of India is keen on introducing a govt backed fiat digital currency, we could hear about the same in the report submitted by the Garg Committee.
Will India Launch a Central Bank Digital Currency?
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