bitcoin: RBI Guv maintains anti-cryptocurrency stance

Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India maintained its hard-line stance on not allowing privately owned cryptocurrencies in India, but said that it would ‘seriously’ consider developing a sovereign digital currency when the time is ‘appropriate’.

Killing the aspirations of several private companies experimenting with digital currencies such as Facebook and JP Morgan Chase, and other blockchain enabled cryptocurrencies vying for Indian markets, RBI governor Shaktikanta Das added that currency issuance is a sovereign mandate which will not be handed over to a private company.

“With regard to digital currency there are two aspects…RBI is very clearly against any private digital currency just as world over with central banks and governments,” Das said, on Thursday. “Currency issuance is a sovereign function. A private currency cannot override sovereign mandate…there are huge challenges around money laundering.”

Das admitted, however, that the RBI has held several internal…