India’s finance minister reconsiders a ban on cryptocurrencies | Hacker News Reader

India’s finance minister reconsiders a ban on cryptocurrencies

qz.com

13 pointsknown5 comments

Good for them for reconsidering. There could be some interesting micropayment applications specific to India that a (hopefully more efficient than Bitcoin) cryptocurrency could solve. For example, PayTM will let you do 5-10 rupee transactions. But it would be nice for micropayments to be outside of a private company who can collect data for their own purposes, and not require banks infrastructure to be supercharged to handle so many little transactions.

Another thing is legal paperwork - some places in India are digitally signing marriage and birth certificates and they can be E-verified via government site. Being able to use blockchain to facilitate that would allow different government orgs to more quickly validate papers. Maybe that’s more blockchain that currency but both of those things could have positive effects for society.

> PayTM will let you do 5-10 rupee transactions.

UPI already does that and NCPI is a consortium. You don't need any 3rd party to send Re.1 and can use the standard BHIM app for this.

This is about crypto currency and not blockchain. We haven't heard anything against blockchain from any govt (India or otherwise).

As far as cryptocurrency is concerned for micro transaction - Why?!

There was a recent discussion on how cryptocurrency is one of THE most wasteful (energy wise) form of financial transaction; with India's potentially billions (trillions?) of micro transaction the energy consumptions & carbon footprint would be unthinkable.

The community here has a heavy prejudice on a few subjects, cryptocurrencies are one of them. I wouldn't take a discussion here as something that should inform your opinion, more as an entertaining pastime.

I wonder what benefits this might bring to RBI/Finance ministry when they've a massively successful UPI under their control.

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