Cryptocurrency Judgment of Supreme Court : A Deep Dive

Epsiode Duration:
75 minutes.

Episode Background:

On March 4, 2020, a 3-judge Apex Court Bench headed by Justice R.F. Nariman in a landmark verdict, said, “It is ironical that virtual currencies which took avatar (according to its creator Satoshi) to kill the demon of a central authority (such as RBI), seek from the very same central authority, access to banking services so that the purpose of the avatar is accomplished…the very creation of digital currency/ Bitcoin was to liberate the monetary system from being a slave to the central authority and from being operated in a manner prejudicial to private interests.”, thereby lifting the curbs imposed by RBI on virtual currency trading in India, including cryptocurrency. While the Court backed the RBI on majority counts, the ban was quashed on one single ground i.e. of ‘proportionality’.

In an endeavour to decode the SC verdict and its impact on virtual currencies, Taxsutra in conjunction with Sr. Adv. N. Venkataraman brings to you a special episode which will address a plethora of issues associated with Cryptocurrencies and the SC verdict. 

What will the episode cover?

This episode covers a wide array of topics as enunciated below:

• What are Virtual Currencies and how do they function? 
• Are the powers of RBI wide enough to cover within its ambit the regulation of Virtual Currencies?
• The potential held by the virtual currency market to grow as a parallel economy
• RBI has chosen to address this concern by instructing the entities regulated by it. While this is legally permissible, in the absence of a legislation addressing virtual currencies, are there any other methods available to the RBI? 
• While winning on eleven grounds, the case slipped from the hands of the RBI on proportionality. How can this be overcome if the same method is indeed adopted to address the rapid growth of Virtual Currencies?