In an interview with Forkast.News, Navin Gupta (Managing director of South Asia and EMEA, Ripple) and Sagar Sarbhai (Head of government & regulatory affairs for the Asia Pacific, Ripple) pointed out that the lack of crypto regulation in India is stifling major investments in the industry.
Supreme Court of India has recently lifted the banking ban on cryptocurrencies in March which was imposed by RBI. Amid of this good news of crypto traders and startups, there is still a draft bill named “Banning of Cryptocurrency & Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2019” pending to be proposed in Parliament. This has created regulatory uncertainty about the future of cryptocurrency in India. Ripple also recently released a document proposing a framework to regulate cryptocurrencies in India.
India is under-living its potential, [by] not enabling these new technologies to come in to solve decades-old problems. Within the regulatory framework itself, if there could be innovation that could be available to India and we are not providing them the tools, or the policymakers are not providing them the tools, then in some way, we are crippling innovation. We need to give clear signals to foreign investors. So if there are investors who are coming into India expecting that there is no law against trading cryptocurrencies or digital assets, then we owe it to these investors to give them a clear guideline of whether you can do this or not. It’s very important for India to come out of this fog and essentially say, “Hey, you know what? This is a lead regulator. This is how the consultation process would work, and this is when and how we are going to make a decision.
Navin Gupta- Managing director of South Asia and EMEA, Ripple
Instead of saying ‘blockchain good, crypto bad,’ [regulators should] look at this picture more holistically and understand the positive use cases of digital assets and cryptocurrencies. Regulators should use that to encourage more financial inclusion and lower barriers to commerce, push more digital payments, which has been a consistent theme in India, in Prime Minister Modi’s regime.
Sagar Sarbhai- Head of government & regulatory affairs for Asia Pacific, Ripple
Also Read: Tim Draper Interested To Invest In Indian Crypto Startups
Apart from all these uncertainties, there where many investments made in India crypto startup and exchanges like WazirX, CoinDCX, Delta Exchange and more. Till now CoinDCX has successfully raised over $6M (approx 45 Crores) from Bitmex operator HDR Group, Polychain Capital, Bain Capital Ventures and other venture capitalists. Recently the world’s leading crypto exchange Binance acquired Indian change WazirX. Later Binance & WazirX announced a $50M fund (Rs.370 Crore) named “Blockchain For India” to invest in the Indian crypto ecosystem.
