The Indian government will be considering a bill which would create a digital rupee starting as early as next week, but may also ban certain cryptocurrencies in the country. According to a Nov. 23 publication, India's lower house of parliament, Lok Sabha, will consider The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill as one of 26 new bills when the government body convenes for its winter session on Nov. 29. The document states that lawmakers could vote on legislation that creates “a facilitative framework for creation of the official digital currency” issued by the country’s central bank, the Reserve …

According to a report from CNBC TV18 India, the nation's government plans to reclassify cryptocurrency exchanges as e-commerce platforms, which will reduce the Goods and Services Taxes (GST) users must pay per transaction, or per trade, to 1%. Currently, the Indian Government levies an 18% GST on transactions conducted on registered cryptocurrency exchanges, which is passed to users as trading fees. The process is similar to the tax protocol of stock brokerages in the country. However, depending on the legal domicile of the exchange, the new GST proposal could actually result in more tax liabilities for certain users. Back in …

Paytm, India's leading digital payments company, has said Thursday that it would consider Bitcoin services if the country's regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies was more definite. Speaking to Haslinda Amin and Rishaad Salamat during an interview on Bloomberg TV, Paytm's Chief Financial Officer Madhur Deora stated that the rules surrounding Bitcoin (BTC) remain in a “grey area” in India. “Bitcoin is still in a regulatory grey area if not a regulatory ban in India. [...] At the moment Paytm does not do Bitcoin. If it was ever to become fully legal in the country then clearly there could be offerings we …

Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, is working to improve its customer support while expanding in India by acquiring a new startup. Coinbase officially announced Tuesday the acquisition of Agara, an artificial intelligence-enabled support platform with operations in India and the United States. The acquisition aims to expand and automate Coinbase’s customer service capabilities by providing new machine learning and natural language processing tools to Coinbase’s engineering team. The deal also reconfirms the company’s strategy to expand its tech hub in India. The acquisition of Agara will cost Coinbase between $40 million and $50 million, technology-focused publication …

The Indian government may be looking into establishing a legal framework for crypto as early as February based on digital currencies as an "asset." According to an Oct. 26 report from Indian news outlet Business Today, officials with the country's Finance Ministry said the potential legal framework would treat cryptocurrencies closer to commodities than currencies. If this legislation comes to fruition, it would represent a different approach than an outright ban on digital assets in the country which some Indian lawmakers have reportedly been considering. The officials added any potential law on cryptocurrencies in the country would likely come around …

Mohan Bhagwat, the head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS — a right-wing Hindu nationalist society — has urged India’s government to pursue crypto regulations “in the larger interest of society.” According to Asian News International, the RSS chief made these remarks during his speech marking the celebration of the Hindu festive Dussehra. Despite numerous reports of looming crypto bans, the narrative from government sources has been that stakeholders prefer to create a framework for regulating the market. A coalition of pro-crypto entities was even able to secure a Supreme Court ruling that overturned a previous ban imposed by …

Indian short-video sharing platform Chingari is preparing to launch its own blockchain network and social token. Chingari has completed a $19-million funding round to launch its mainnet and conduct a token sale for its Solana-based GARI token in November, the firm announced on Friday. Chingari co-founder and CEO Sumit Ghosh said that the token sale is scheduled for Nov. 2, while the mainnet launch and application integration are expected to have gone live by the end of that month. Co-led by major blockchain investors such as Republic Crypto and Mike Novogratz’s investment firm, Galaxy Digital, the new raise included over …

Major Indian cryptocurrency exchange CoinSwitch Kuber is joining the unicorn club, having raised $260 million in a Series C funding round. According to an official announcement on Wednesday, the new funding has propelled CoinSwitch Kuber to the “very top” of Indian unicorns, as the firm became “India’s most valued crypto company” at $1.91 billion. The funding round was led by Coinbase’s venture capital arm Coinbase Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. Previous investors such as Sequoia, Paradigm, Ribbit and Tiger Global have also participated in the round. Using the new funds, CoinSwitch Kuber plans to onboard 50 million Indians on the platform …

Emerging markets across Central and Southern Asia have registered a dramatic uptick in cryptocurrency transactions, highlighting a diverse range of motivations among locals for gaining exposure to digital assets such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). New research from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis finds that crypto transactions surged 706% in Central and Southern Asia and Oceania — a broad region that includes countries such as India, Pakistan and Vietnam — between July 2020 and June 2021. In dollar terms, the value of the transactions amounted to $572.5 billion, or 14% of the global transaction value. Institutional and large payments accounted …

In an online interview with Times of India, Jamie Dimon, CEO of investment banking behemoth JPMorgan Chase, slandered Bitcoin’s popular appeal, despite stating that the leading digital asset could increase 10x in a matter of five years. A historically staunch critic of Bitcoin (BTC), Dimon called it a fraud back in 2017 and cited the reported capability for criminals to evade capture from authorities by operating their financial transactions in BTC rather than U.S. dollars. When Times of India asked the CEO whether Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency assets should be banned or regulated, Dimon responded: “I don’t really care about …

India’s state-owned telecom Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has registered 7,477 businesses on its blockchain-based communication platform after authorities imposed new regulations to protect consumers from spam and fraud. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) established messaging regulations that require scrubbing consumer communication messages to ensure that the receiver of the message has opted in for such interactions. The drive is supported by BSNL DLT, a content verification platform built on ledger-based blockchain protocols. As the SMS regulation is applicable for all industry verticals, the list of 7,477 registrations includes banks, educational institutions and private businesses. TRAI had reportedly …

The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) has become a member of the Hedera Hashgraph council for decentralized governance. IITM is one of the top institutes for technical education in India, which falls under the direct jurisdiction of India’s Ministry of Education. As a member of the Hedera Governing Council, IITM has become one of the 39 global organizations that run initial network nodes for governing the Hedera public ledger built on distributed ledger technology (DLT). In addition to advancing DLTs capabilities in education and research, IITM plans to test use cases around public blockchains for payments via Hedera Consensus …