Cryptos to be legit in 2024? Destination seems too far while the caravan moves on

livemint.com:

2023 was perhaps a good year for crypto prices as they recouped the previous year’s losses considerably with bitcoin spiking by 165 percent. When it comes to a set of regulations, digital currencies still fall short of explicit legitimacy, albeit they are not illegal either. However, when the government introduced a detailed tax regime for virtual digital currencies (VDAs) in 2022 including 1 percent TDS on crypto transactions, some saw it as an implicit approval.

The trading volumes in crypto exchanges of India witnessed a massive decline in the aftermath, and in some cases up to 90 percent. “The VDA tax structure had an unintended consequence of driving the majority of the trade outside India, thereby defeating the very purpose of which the tax was introduced," says Venkatesh R, Senior Vice-President and Public Policy Head, CoinSwitch. In order to circumvent what was seen as a draconian provision, some Indian crypto exchanges moved their business offshore.

And more recently, Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) has issued show cause notices to nine offshore cryptocurrency operators including Binance for not complying with the Indian laws. Aside from issuing the show cause notices, the FIU has also written to the ministry of electronics and information technology to block the URLs of these nine entities since they have been operating illegally. With regards to crypto assets, a few regulatory milestones were achieved this year.