I have been in a dilemma For months about whether I should invest in cryptocurrency or not. I am sure so many young stars like me faced the same question at least once after the recent crypto news started pouring in on new channels, social media, newspapers, and almost everywhere. Being an Indian the question that haunts crypto enthusiasts is the future of crypto in India.
I am Anwesha, a crypto enthusiast who will try to understand and answer this question as per my understanding.
The best thing about cryptocurrency is that it uses a decentralized system which means nobody owns the currency, and nobody controls it. Nobody is capable of snatching away the assets that you have created in the form of crypto. At best, keeping the recent scenario of crypto India in mind, the government may not allow anyone to trade in crypto in India in various circumstances.
However, finance minister Nirmala Sitaraman’s announcement in Union Budget 2022-2023 about the government’s decision of posing 30% taxation on the profit earned by crypto assets gave a light of hope to many. Crypto investors and companies breathed a sigh of relief that crypto is one step nearer to being legalized in India. Because the matter of taxation only comes in the scenario while there is a legalization process going on.
Many progressive countries like the USA, the European Union, Australia have legalized and recognized cryptocurrencies as crypto assets. Now in this scenario, India is more likely to go with the progressive countries and not with regressive countries.
This is the opinion of Nischal Shetty, founder of WazirX, India’s largest crypto exchange. He also highlighted India’s nature of recent growth.
For the last two decades, India has seen an exponential growth in IT and services. Crypto is just an extension of the same technology. Cryptocurrency, if legalized in India, is capable of cross-border transactions hassle-free and will ensure liquidity for companies.
The regulation follows the inventions. India as a nation is struggling to understand blockchain technology entirely. Clarification is yet to come, after which the regulation will follow, says Nischal Shetty. Regulatory authority tries to safeguard anything that has already been established in a country which is not the case with crypto yet. However, crypto as technology is gradually making its market and we may hope to see regulations around cryptocurrency very soon.
It takes time to adapt to new technology. The same was the case with the internet. The more people started to understand the internet, the stronger the technology became and the regulation related to the internet came much later after people started using it.
It gets very difficult for cutting-edge technology like blockchain to gather enough data around crypto to support its feasibility. But we can hope a massive awareness may happen within 5 years about the crypto industry. Jargons such as cryptocurrency, crypto security, crypto asset, and crypto utility will be as normal as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, FDs, etc.