Indian Govt Informed Parliament of Upcoming Cryptocurrency Bill. (Corollary: It's Not Taking Ordinance Route)

Four days back, CNBC came with this "news" of Indian Government's likelihood to pass the new cryptocurrency bill via Ordinance route. Today, this news turns out to be false.

Today, in the Q&A session in the Upper House of the Indian Parliament, Minister of State for Finance, Anurag Singh Thakur told that Government is bringing up a bill soon.

Check the following official video of Rajya Sabha from time 17:10 to 20:00 for details:

In reply to a question where it was asked why Government has not come up with a review petition in the Supreme Court case, where RBI was defeated for restricting banking access to cryptocurrency related businesses; the Minister replied, "Now the Government has prepared the bill and it will be coming to the Parliament soon and we can have a detailed discussion on that".

This clearly implies that Government is not taking the Ordinance route and the said bill will be tabled up in the Parliament for discussion.

Interestingly, the Minister was responding to a question asking steps they are taking to curb the use of cryptocurrencies in the country. Minister said that currently no regulating bodies like RBI, SEBI etc. has any legal framework to directly regulate cryptocurrencies as they are neither currencies, nor asset, nor securities nor commodities issued by identifiable user. So the existing laws are inadequate to deal with the subject (of cryptocurrencies).

The point to note is that Minister didn't use the words like "curb" or "ban" but they are addressing the inadequacies in the legal framework to directly "regulate" cryptocurrencies.

It's not blanket ban but some stringent regulatory framework.
Do you infer the same?

• What was your takeaway from today's reference of Bill by State Minister of Finance in the Parliament?