On today's RBI circular:

Some governments have taken a stance which has been protectionist. This is a usual stance some governments take when they are not clear on the possible manifestations of a new technology. Ola, Uber have been banned multiple times across countries. At the end of the day Ola/ Uber have weaved it beautifully in the lifeblood of how the city moves.

RBI here wants stop others and at the same time explore blockchain tech themselves. RBI in the same circular has mentioned they are exploring creating their own currency.

'12. Central Bank Digital Currency

Rapid changes in the landscape of the payments industry along with factors such as emergence of private digital tokens and the rising costs of managing fiat paper/metallic money have led central banks around the world to explore the option of introducing fiat digital currencies. While many central banks are still engaged in the debate, an inter-departmental group has been constituted by the Reserve Bank to study and provide guidance on the desirability and feasibility to introduce a central bank digital currency. The Report will be submitted by end-June 2018.'



This is clearly stifling innovation around blockchain. If a government does not facilitate adoption of new technology the country stands to left behind. It's not that a Google or an Apple gets created by a govt. It's when entrepreneurs are provided the best possible launchpad when this happens. If as a govt you do not provide that - that's when people like Sundar Pichai or Satya Nadella have to leave the country and they become creators for some other countries. There are hundreds of thousands of such people who could have contributed phenomenally to the country but could not.

Government's job should be able to facilitate the next wave of tech and encourage innovation. There are tens of thousands of youth that have gotten jobs or employment with blockchain and relating companies. This is massive for a government which has not been able to improve the employment rate. This story happened with the internet. Should not happen again with blockchain. As users who love blockchain tech and have invested thousands of hours into this let's ensure we communicate or stance unequivocally to govt on this.



Such irrational reactions can cause the following issues:

- Cash trading of virtual currencies. This is something that can't be stopped. Just to prove this let's look at this graph. This is going to promote irregular trades via cash and trades via cash increased by 80 times over a period of 12 months.

- It would lead to hard earned money of millions of Indians getting affected as they would get affected due to the knee jerk reaction in which prices got impacted.

- Crypto exchanges and blockchain companies have profitable business models and can give a massive share of revenue to the government who is welcoming. Not only that crypto exchanges and traders are extremely compliant with stringent KYC norms and have already complied mentioning all their trade details.

- Crypto and blockchain as a concept can't be stopped. You can just decide whether you want to participate with full throttle or get left behind. The current stance from government shows they would want to remain left behind after missing the internet revolution first, AI revolution next and now blockchain revolution.

Sign this petition and make a change. Share this as widely as you can.

From the digital asset exchanges of India.

The exchanges in India are very forthcoming wrt regulations and would love to comply with any sort of compliance measures that can open access of blockchain to 1.3 billion Indians in a clean transparent manner. We would love to facilitate dialogue with RBI, SEBI and Govt of India around this matter. Most exchanges follow stringent KYC norms.