Congress party leader and former I&B Minister in the previous Manmohan-Singh led UPA government, Manish Tewari, has asked investors to wait for a legal framework before jumping in to trade in crypto.
“To the investors, I would say wait for a legal architecture. Don’t indulge in speculative trading, okay? Because God forbid, if there’s a crash in the crypto asset prices, a lot of people will feel the pain and there’ll be blood all around. So my advice to people and investors is that they should circumspect and be cautious,” Tewari said.
The Congress MP from Anandpur Sahib had attended a two-day meeting organised by the Blockchain and Crypto Assets Council (BACC) in Bangalore as a member of the Standing Committee on Finance.
He further said that the Reserve Bank has taken a very conservative position on crypto.
“They feel that it would be counterproductive to their ability to manage the economy,” he said, adding that, therefore, the government should now come out with more clarity and a clear policy on crypto.
“Eventually, there is no clarity within the government with regard to how they are going to position, legitimise, and regulate cryptocurrency and crypto assets. Now, the government on the floor of the house has said that taxing crypto does not mean that we’ve legalised it,” he said.
On the question of brain drain from India in the crypto industry, he said that as a first step the government should decide if they are willing to allow unregulated exchanges to hold the field.
“Well, the fact is that these exchanges are unregulated. The crypto guy is trying to sort of market it as Internet 3.0, a democratisation of the Net. And they say that Blockchain will only ultimately work if there is going to be a certain value to the entire Blockchain management, which they think comes out of cryptocurrency. But other people, like iSpirit and many other people who work in the field of public policy, have a completely different take on it,” he said.
“The aspect of taxation, whether it is 1 per cent TDS, which these people want, should be brought down to 0.1 per cent or the 30 per cent tax on digital assets, those are subsequent issues,” he added
