Andreas Antonopoulos has gotten the opportunity from India’s central bank to create an identity-based digital currency but labels it as incredibly dangerous. Details have come to light that there is a fresh crackdown of their cash.

Yesterday, ToshiTime covered the story that the reserve bank of India (RBI) joined the increasing list of banks who likes the idea of a central bank digital currency. The article covers that it is extremely expensive to print money and it gets more expensive every year.

However, India is at the forefront regarding cryptocurrencies and have a “capital” for Blockchains in India, the state Telangana. The state is also the home of the International Blockchain Congress of 2018. Telangana as a Blockchain district will be responsible for establishing excellence in the field of blockchain, become an incubator for progress and process development which will help the growing number of Indian startups linked to blockchain.

Recent news tells us that Andreas Antonopoulos is not happy with the idea of India having its own centralized digital currency because of the county’s history. In the comment on Twitter, the well-known educator said that their history of limiting cash availability and forcing through surveillance measures via its Aadhaar system would lead to “death” of democracy.

“This is incredibly dangerous: Centralized digital cash, backed by centralized identity, in a country that has demonstrated dangerous authoritarianism when it comes to currency. $1.3bn people under totalitarian financial control = democracy die”. – Antonopoulus.

Aadhaar is a biometric identity framework developed to track Indians’ status through a 12-digit number for each citizen. It is the world’s largest biometric ID system, with 1.22 billion participants.

India’s central bank is researching how to introduce a rupee-backed central bank digital currency (CBDC) into its monetary policy in a bid to reduce its hefty annual bill for making physical cash. The news was revealed in the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) annual report, published Wednesday, which indicated a unit has already been formed within the organization to study the “desirability and feasibility to introduce a central bank digital currency.”

The talks of digital currency are due to the rise of costs circulating our Fiat currencies and a recent report from Economic Times stated that the cost for printing the fiat alone, during 2018, totaled nearly $90 million.

“The idea of a central bank issued digital currency is very promising though issues around digital counterfeiting will need to be addressed,” said Mahesh Makhija, Partner Advisory, Financial Services, EY India.

Digital currency backed by an asset such as gold or fiat is known as a stable coin which means that the price is not as volatile as the case with Ethereum and Bitcoin. Teather and TrueUSD are two popular stable coins that are pegged to the US dollar. Governments are looking to create their own and Venezuela recently created their own, Petro, said to be backed by the country’s oil and mineral reserves. Discussions are in play that is saying that Petro is not as good as the government proposes.

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