SVET Reports
Does India Go All Out Crypto?
An obvious choice for the event of this week is Indian Supreme Court Wednesday's decision to knock down the RBI's (or 'Reserve Bank of India' - "India's central bank, which controls the issue and supply of the Indian rupee" (wiki)) ban on local banks' dealings with crypto-currencies firms. At least, that's how mass-media reported on this piece of news.
Extract (Writ Petition (Civil) №528 of 2018): "Reserve Bank of India … issued a 'Statement on Developmental and Regulatory' Policies on April 5, 2018, paragraph 13 of which directed the entities regulated by RBI (i) not to deal with or provide services to any individual or business entities dealing with or settling virtual currencies … Challenging the said Statement and Circular … the petitioners have come up with these writ petitions. The petitioner in the first writ petition is a specialized industry body known as 'Internet and Mobile Association of India' which represents the interests of online and digital services industry."
However, it's not the end of the story yet. As many crypto-outlets have already reported the RBI is already planning to appeal this ruling. Additionally, even if the ruling stands RBI has yet to follow up with repelling its previous policies, which might take time, a lot of it. Not to mention that decisions on such technical matters usually allow for various (sometimes opposing) legal interpretations. Specially, if the given verdict is 180 pages long :)
Extract: "… in the light of the above discussion, the
petitioners are entitled to succeed and the impugned Circular dated
06–04–2018 is liable to be set aside on the ground of proportionality.
Accordingly, the writ petitions are allowed and the Circular dated 06-
04–2018 is set aside."
As we can see it only states that RBI is "to set aside" a couple of its own 'circulars'. However, it doesn't prevent RBI to issue in the nearest future the new ones which might be even more fullish.
Source: https://www.livelaw.in/pdf_upload/pdf_upload-370875.pdf