Reserve Bank of India Financial News

International Monetary Fund and the Financial Stability Board (FSB) with jointly preparing a technical paper on crypto assets. The paper could be used to formulate a coordinated and comprehensive policy to regulate crypto assets. The G20 will draw up a universally acceptable international framework to regulate crypto assets and said that only a central bank-backed monetary unit would qualify as a currency. «To complement the ongoing dialogue on the need for a policy framework, the Indian Presidency has proposed a joint technical paper by the IMF and the FSB, which would synthesise the macroeconomic and regulatory perspectives of crypto assets,» according to an official statement. The joint technical paper would be presented at the finance ministers and central bank governors meeting in October 2023, it said.

India has said it wants a collective global effort to deal with problems posed by cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, and the finance ministry said it had held a seminar for G20 member states to discuss how to come up with a common framework. Speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Bengaluru, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said it was «critical» to put in place a strong regulatory framework but added that the United States had not suggested any outright bans. «We haven't suggested outright banning of crypto activities, but it is critical to put in place a strong regulatory framework,» Yellen said. «We're working with other governments.»

India’s national payment network, called the unified payments interface (UPI), is expanding its services beyond Indian borders to Singapore. The cross-border connectivity between Singapore and India via their respective rapid payment systems, namely PayNow and the UPI. Shri Shaktikanta Das, governor of the Reserve Bank, and Mr Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, launched the facility through token transactions using the UPI-PayNow linkage.

5,000 merchants and 50,000 users are now participating in India’s CBDC pilot project, the RBI’s deputy governor has said, noting that the central bank intends to proceed with the project slowly to avoid unwanted fallouts.

The Indian government doesn’t want to rush its central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot despite joining the CBDC race just a few months ago.

One of India’s biggest retail chains, Reliance Retail, announced that they have started accepting the digital rupee at one of its store lines and plans to extend the rollout to all its businesses. 

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India's Minister of Information Technology, has said crypto would face no issue within the country if related laws are followed. 

India’s central bank governor has once again expressed skepticism toward cryptocurrencies, saying these assets are “nothing but gambling” and asking for a blanket ban.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will soon launch pilot tests for its upcoming digital rupee in a bid to increase awareness around its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said that the central bank will launch its digital currency as a pilot project this year. Addressing the India Ideas Summit, Sankar said that Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is the most efficient system for cross-border payments. Though, it reiterated that RBI aims to give viable alternatives and not going for a cashless society. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced the launch of CBDC during her union budget speech, which was tabled earlier this year. Pratik Gauri, Co-founder & CEO, 5ire said that as cautious as the government has been about both VAs and digital currency, it is a novel step to be taken by a central bank.

The Twitter exchange between WazirX co-founder Nischal Shetty and Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao over the ownership of the Indian crypto exchange grabbed a lot of headlines in the first week of August. 

Cryptos will have destabilise monetary and fiscal stability: Finance Minister

In its latest financial stability report published on Thursday, the Reserve Bank of India, or RBI, reiterated its skepticism of digital assets, writing: 

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) raised a concern over cryptocurrencies or virtual digital assets (VDAs), which might lead to the 'dollarization' of the economy, as feared by the central bank. The apex lender fears that crypto assets, issued by foreign players, could be against the country's sovereign interest. Officials said cryptos have the potential to become a medium of exchange and replace the rupee in all financial transactions.

Coinbase Global Inc. conference in Bengaluru, India, on April 7, he had little reason to anticipate the fallout that would shortly ensue. Chatterjee, the company’s chief product officer, told the assembled audience that crypto investors would now be able to use the country’s online retail payments system to transfer funds to its local exchange. Hours after Chatterjee’s announcement, the central bank-backed entity that runs the system — called United Payments Interface — said it was “not aware” of any crypto exchange using the network. Within three days of the event, Coinbase had halted rupee transfers to its trading app via UPI. The abrupt reversal left Coinbase customers without any way of funding their accounts with rupees, dealing a blow to its expansion plans in India. “We are committed to working with NPCI and other relevant authorities to ensure we are aligned with local expectations and industry norms,” a spokesperson for Coinbase said in a statement to Bloomberg on April 11, referring to the National Payments Corporation of India, which operates UPI.

The holistic and deliberative approach from the White House has cheered the market and industry players as the world's largest economy shrugged doubts of immediate regulatory crackdown on the new age asset class. Indian crypto players have welcomed the move from the West. They believe that a 'positive' approach from the global powers will aid the sector and support the global financial ecosystem.

digital-asset exchanges. Binance-owned WazirX, India’s largest crypto bourse, has seen daily sign-ups on its platform jump almost 30% since Feb. 1, when the government unveiled the levy on the transfer of digital assets in its annual budget, said co-founder Nischal Shetty. At rival CoinSwitch, the daily increase was 35%, according to founder Ashish Singhal. While it might seem counterintuitive that a steep tax would cause people to flock to digital tokens, the step was seen as legitimizing an industry that’s been in regulatory limbo amid fierce resistance from India’s central bank. Shetty said he expects some 100 million people in the country to start investing in crypto in the next two to three years.

Mumbai: Tough talk by senior Reserve Bank of India (RBI) officials on cryptocurrencies is making the Indian crypto community nervous. On Monday, RBI deputy governor T Rabi Sankar called for an outright ban on cryptocurrencies. Previously, RBI governor Shaktikanta Das had said in a monetary policy press conference that private cryptocurrencies were a threat to the macroeconomic and financial stability of the country, and investors should keep risks in mind as such assets have no underlying value whatsoever, «not even a tulip».

crypto assets or virtual digital currencies are a major threat to macroeconomic and financial stability of a country, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Shaktikanta Das said at press conference held on Thursday. I have said that investors are their own judge. But, it is my duty today to tell investors that while betting on cryptos, they should be mindful that they are investing at their own risk. “Cryptocurrencies have no underlying (value), not even a tulip,” Das said at the meeting.

digital currency is likely to debut by early 2023, which will mirror any of the currently available private company-operated electronic wallets, but with a change that it will be a sovereign-backed facility, a top government source said. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her budget speech last week talked about launching a central bank-backed 'digital rupee' soon. A top government source, who wished not to be identified said, the digital currency issued by the RBI would be numbered in units, just like every fiat currency has an unique number. «The units issued in digital rupee would be included in the currency in circulation. It would not be very different from fiat currency. It would be more like an electronic form of fiat currency, so in a sense it would be a government-mandated electronic wallet,» the source said.

Union Budget, the crypto community is buzzed with multiple questions. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman have stepped forward to clear the clouds of ambiguity. In line with this, in a recent interview to News18, Sitharaman said that the budget announcement on virtual assets was aimed to differentiate between private cryptos and digital currency.