- The
RBI has been amongst the most vocal opposition for cryptocurrencies in India. - The new department is being formed to oversee new challenges coming from the
fintech ecosystem, includingcrypto . - India will reportedly make two CBDCs, one each for wholesale and retail.
The report also said that the bank is working on two kinds of CBDCs — wholesale and retail — and that the new department will be tasked with overseeing their development. The department will be overseen by Ajay Kumar Choudhary, who is currently the chief general manager of the RBI.
To be sure, the department is meant to oversee “new age challenges” arising from fintech applications, and crypto is only a part of its brief, which means that while the department will oversee cryptocurrencies and their challenges, it may not necessarily be first on its agenda.
The RBI, and particularly its governor
While an exact estimate of the total number of crypto traders and users in India isn’t readily available, the country’s largest crypto exchanges have claimed to have millions of users.
Nischal Shetty, the founder of WazirX, which is said to be the country’s largest crypto exchange by trading volumes, has claimed that the country had a total of 20 million crypto users in the fourth quarter of CY2021.
India has also been formulating a law to regulate cryptocurrencies for the better part of a year now. The bill in question first appeared on the agenda for the budget session of the Parliament in January 2021, but wasn’t tabled during the ensuing session. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and other ministers have also dropped hints of what the bill may contain, and it also appeared on the agenda for the recently concluded Winter Session of the Parliament.
The RBI’s move may come as good news for the industry, which has been asking for crypto regulations for quite a while now.
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