With the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) new ruling coming to force yesterday, India have featured in numerous news headlines and will no doubt continue to do so through the week. As a recap, yesterday the RBI’s new rulings came to power which essentially mean cryptocurrency trading across exchanges, with FIAT currency will no longer be allowed. Moreover, institutional customers of the RBI that are found to be dealing with cryptocurrency will have their accounts with the bank, closed.

Whilst we don’t agree with the RBI decision (the majority of the crypto-sphere don’t of course) when you see headlines like this one, you have to sympathise with them a bit. Government level corruption involving cryptocurrencies in India seems rife, perhaps this is one factor that has inspired the RBI’s move?

According to reports out today, The Indian National Congress (INC) (the biggest political party in India) is accusing the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) of using Bitcoin in a money laundering scam. According to Coindesk, Shaktisinh Gohil of INC has told the Hindustan Times:

"Leadership was involved in converting black money through the bitcoin scam. We demand an impartial Supreme Court-monitored judicial investigation in this maze of 'Mega Bitcoin Scam' so that the truth comes out."

See more for yourself,

here

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This scam is expected to be worth somewhere in between $727 Million and $12.79 Billion.

As it stands, we don’t have any substantial evidence from either party and therefore this could simply just be a smear campaign from INC, against BJP. It would make sense, with cryptocurrencies top of the headlines in the country, a smear campaign of this nature would be very serious.

We do however have to consider how serious this is, if this is a smear campaign (which is unlikely) then INC are putting their necks well and truly on the line. The take home message from this is that this is only going to damage an already damaged reputation for Bitcoin in India. It is annoying that we have to keep battling with these sorts of stories that are only damaging the reputation of the industry worldwide.

For now, we will monitor this story and see what comes of it. If these allegations are true, the BJP are in big trouble. If not, INC will have a lot to answer for.