Despite the Supreme Court Judgment in March quashing the RBI restrictions on banks to serve Crypto firms, some banks have refused to provide services to exchanges and traders.
Harish BV, co-founder on one of India’s oldest cryptocurrency exchange Unocoin, filed an RTI request with the Reserve Bank of India asking if RBI prohibits banks from dealing with businesses and individuals who trade/offer cryptocurrencies.
RBI replied, “As on date (May 22, 2020), no such prohibition exists.
RBI has earlier refused to answer the questions in a similar RTI request by coincrunch.
Here’s the full copy of the response from RBI to the RTI filed by Harish.
Banks still unwilling to support Crypto Exchanges despite SC Judgment
After the landmark judgment of March 04, by the Supreme Court of India quashing RBI’s “Banking Ban” aka circular RBI/2017-18/154 DBR.No.BP.BC.104 /08.13.102/2017-18, the expectation was the banks will welcome people with open doors. However, that has not been the case.
Several Crypto traders and exchanges have independently informed Coin Crunch about how certain banks are simply not entertaining their requests to open the bank accounts. The reason: RBI has not sent them a revised circular.
Whether this RTI response forces a change in the bank’s stance or not, we cannot say as of right now. However, this is a step in the right direction.
Crypto Kanoon tweeted the copy of the RTI earlier which has garnered over 250 likes and over 100 retweets with several replies.
An RTI was filed by @bvharish Co-founder of Unocoin.
— Crypto Kanoon (@cryptokanoon) May 24, 2020
Question: Does RBI prohibited any banks from providing the bank accounts to crypto exchanges or crypto traders ?
Answer from RBI: As on date no such prohibition exist.
Great, now you can show this RTI to your bank. ?? pic.twitter.com/n5iqGCSQtd
Do you think the RTI response will change anything? Let us know in the comments below!
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