Business English

“REGULATING BITCOIN AND CRYPTO IS MUCH EASIER THAN CASH & GOLD SAID ADV.P.M.MISHRA FROM FINLAW ASSOCIATES”

Sumit Ghosh

Bengaluru, Karnataka [India]: Cryptocurrency has become a global phenomenon in recent years, although much is still to be learned about this evolving technology. Many concerns and worries are swirling around the technology and its capacity to disrupt traditional financial systems.

We often get asked about cryptocurrencies and whether they represent a potential replacement for gold, as well as what role, if any, bitcoin should play in a portfolio & How easy it is to regulate Bitcoin, Crypto compare to Gold & Cash Transaction.

Smuggled gold accounts for over a third of the demand in India, the world’s second-largest gold importing nation after China. This potentially causes a revenue loss of $1.3 billion to the central government as per a news report published in Deccan Chronicle on 12th June 2018. Official imports are down by almost 50 percent, while smuggled gold volumes are on the rise that to in 2018, think about 2021. To avoid some of the taxes, there is more under-the-counter buying. Now imagine after so many precautions by the government, still gold smuggling is blossoming in our country.

In India, money laundering is popularly known as Hawala transactions. It gained popularity during the early 1990s when many of the politicians were caught in its net. Hawala is an alternative or parallel remittance system. “Hawala” is an Arabic word meaning the transfer of money or information between two persons using a third person. The system dates to the Arabic traders as a means of avoiding robbery. It predates western banking by several centuries. The Hawala Mechanism facilitated the conversion of money from black into white. Black money refers to funds earned, on which income and other taxes have not been paid. Black money is earned through illegally traded goods or services. Amount of Money Laundering is beyond imagination.

The whole world & Indian Government spend so much to regulate these transactions, I think nobody has forgotten the Note ban recently in India.

As per Adv. P.M Mishra Bitcoin & Other CryptoCurrency is absolutely easy to regulate compare to Gold & Cash. As he said,  On the one hand, cryptocurrency is entirely anonymous. On the other, it is completely transparent and trackable.

It is anonymous in the sense that you can hold a crypto address without revealing anything about your identity in that address. One person could hold multiple addresses, and in theory, there would be nothing to link those addresses together or to indicate that the person owned them.

Sending and receiving virtual currency is like writing under a pseudonym. If an author’s pseudonym is ever linked to their identity, everything they ever wrote under that pseudonym will be linked to them. Criminal activity can be headed off at the pass with tools that match customer data with bitcoin transaction histories. This can make it easy to identify high-risk customers, remain AML compliant, and avoid the taint associated with crypto money laundering.

To Protect Ordinary Citizen from Crypto fraud & to stop Money laundering activity Crypto, India should quickly take the following steps –

  • Allow Only One Bank to deal with CryptoCurrency.
  • Appoint a young & innovative cyber team to track all wallet addresses are in operation by using Indian IP, trace them up to the location.
  • Allow few ISP to allow crypto exchange IP so that it will be easy to track.
  • Charge extra tax for Crypto Custody Service.
  • Involve Crypto Insurance Company.
  • Limit Crypto Holding depends on the ITR of the person or Company.
  • Limit Crypto Transaction Overseas, along with strict Vigilance.
  • Issue License Individual trader, who would like to trade.
  • Issue License to Exchanges.

Adv P.M.Mishra said, I am very positive about the current Government Crypto Regulatory Approach & I would like to see that India should win Crypto Currency Race as Crypto is nothing but Digital Gold.