Cryptocurrency won’t be a legal tender by any means, Finance Secretary TV Somanathan told CNBC-TV18 on Thursday and added that it’s absolutely off the cards.
His comment comes days after the development that the Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021 would be taken up for consideration and passing in the winter session of Parliament.
Somanathan is of the view said that people are reading too much in the brief for listing the crypto bill in Parliament.
The drafting of the crypto bill is going on right now, he said.
The 2021 cryptocurrency bill has a key difference from the earlier cryptocurrency draft bill introduced in 2019. It omits the words “banning of” in the title. Despite the name change, the main purpose of the bill still seems to be to prohibit the use of cryptocurrencies in the country.
According to the Lok Sabha website, the bill will be introduced “to prohibit all private cryptocurrencies in India, however, it allows for certain exceptions to promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its uses”.
“If things have value only because they because they will be pricier down the line, that’s a bubble,” Rajan told CNBC-TV18, adding “…a lot of cryptos have value only because there is a greater fool out there willing to buy.”
(Edited by : Kanishka Sarkar)
First Published: IST
