New Delhi: The government is considering appointing the effects and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to oversee cryptocurrency, according to people with knowledge of this issue, when authorities see them as financial assets.
Government Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who plans to introduce legislation in the ongoing parliamentary session, may provide Crypto deadline holders to declare their assets and meet new rules, said people, asking not to be identified as a personal discussion.
The bill is likely to use the term ‘cryptoasset’ than ‘cryptocurrency,’ and will not refer to the central bank’s plan to create its own digital currency, one of the people said.
Every offender can be fined as much as Rs 2 Crore ($ 2.7 million) or imprisoned for 1.5 years, according to the proposal, said those people.
The government can also consider prescribing the minimum threshold to invest in Crypto assets to protect small investors, Bloomberg News has reported earlier.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Finance cannot be contacted immediately for comments.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said last week the government had reworked the previous bill – which had proposed prohibiting all personal cryptocurrency – into a factor in new developments.
There is no proposal to recognize Bitcoin as a currency in this country, he added.
The Crypto market in India has grown 641% from 2021, according to the October report from Chainalysis, a crypto analysis company.
The government now considers tax increases from the digital currency, and there are calls to impose more stringent rules for transactions in virtual coins because business nature is not regulated.
Earlier this month, PM Modi held a review of a review of the digital currency and discussed that the non-regulated crypto market could not be permitted to be a way for money laundering and terror financing.