Indian Central Bank governor says Bitcoin is gambling

Shaktikanta Das slammed Cryptocurrencies & called digital assets more likely to gambling and also said RBI will not allow gambling in the country.

India is a technology-adaptive country, which also approved legal authority for the Country’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), to use blockchain technology in the financial system. To this date, RBI is testing the National Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), or say Digital Rupee, which fully operates on centralised blockchain technology. 

On 13 Jan 2023, Speaking at the session during the Business Today Banking and Economy Summit, RBI governor Shaktikanta Das said that the RBI agency is fully clear with this Crypto sector & wants to ban it. 

“RBI’s position on crypto is very clear – it should be banned,” the RBI governor said.

The RBI governor said that people treat Crypto assets as financial assets but in his personal opinion Crypto trading is similar to gambling because Crypto assets are backed by nothing.

Governor said:

“Some people call cryptocurrency an asset, some call it a financial product, but every asset or financial product needs to have an underlying value. But cryptocurrency does not have any underlying value.”

Besides these negative statements over the nature of cryptocurrencies, the RBI governor supported blockchain technology & said that Blockchain technology has huge potential & can be used in multiple types of applications in financial innovations. 

India & Crypto tax 

In early 2022, the Indian finance ministry imposed a new tax system on Crypto investors. Under the new tax policy, all Indian Crypto investors are required to pay a 30% tax on profit made with each crypto transaction. In this situation, no one crypto trader can offset his 30% tax with the help of reporting trade loss that he made in other crypto assets. 

Many Crypto proponents in the country opposed this high tax system but still, Indian government agencies never responded on this matter. 

Also in the present time, Indian Crypto companies are operating their business under a fully unregulated region but still, Indian tax agencies are making a better amount of tax revenue from these companies.

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