On Wednesday, a three-judge judiciary bench ruled in favor of lawsuits by crypto exchanges and startups who objected to the April 2018 Reserve Bank of India decision barring domestic financial firms from offering banking services for crypto exchanges.
The intervention of the central bank at the time compelled the country’s crypto exchanges to either cease, move to other jurisdictions or transfer their business strategy to crypto-to-crypto and off-the-counter transactions.
Although crypto exchanges filed appeals to the Supreme Court shortly after following the decision of the central bank in 2018, a fair decision was not attained until Wednesday, after several phases of trials. Several exchanges had been forced to shut down while the lawsuit was pending as trade collapsed. RBI said the shift was appropriate at the time to counter the “ring-fencing” of the monetary system in the country. It had also claimed that it was not acceptable to treat Bitcoin as well as other cryptocurrencies as currencies because they’re not made of metal or exist in physical form, and neither were they endorsed by the government. The central bank’s 2018 statement sent hysteria to several regional startups and companies that offer cryptocurrency trading services. Almost all of them had to shut down business since. Crypto-currency firms in India have been drastically hit since the RBI order and most crypto exchanges namely Zebpay, once India’s top, have migrated out of the country. At its highest, crypto exchanges in India were gaining up to 300,000 potential customers a month between November-December 2017.
This, however, was challenged in court immediately.
The bench, headed by Justice Rohinton F Nariman, in today’s verdict, overruled the memorandum of the central bank on the grounds of dis-proportionality. A team of defendants along with the Internet trading council and India’s Mobile Association had opposed the memorandum of the central bank, arguing in particular that India should look at many other countries that not only encourage cryptocurrency trading but have advanced to launch their own virtual currencies.
Today, in India will be considered a historical day for Crypto. Innovations can be placed in line and the whole nation can now take part in the Blockchain movement.
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