Govt to state stance on crypto after consultations: FM Nirmala Sitharaman

moneycontrol.com:

The government will state its position on cryptocurrencies after completing the ongoing consultation process, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said.

"The consultations are on, you are welcome to participate in it. After the consultation process gets duly completed, the ministry would sit and probably mull over it, which is required because we need the executive to be sure that they are not crossing any legal requirements. After which we will come out saying what’s our position on it," Sitharaman said.

The minister was responding to a question by Ashish Singhal, founder and chief executive of crypto trading platform CoinSwitch, at the India Global Forum in Bengaluru on March 8.

"I know you have sort of led me to say are we regulating it or are we banning it. I am not getting into it now. But after the consultation, yes, we will be talking about it. And I am glad you welcome the taxation," Sitharaman further told Singhal, eliciting laughter from the audience.

The budget for FY23 proposed a 30 percent tax on profit made from the sale of all crypto assets, with a 1 percent tax deducted at source on all such transactions. This led to speculation that the government had effectively legalised them, which would have contradicted the Reserve Bank of India's stance that cryptocurrencies would never be legal tender.

Since then, Sitharaman has clarified that while placing a tax on cryptocurrencies was a "sovereign right", they had not been legalised.