A draft of India’s national strategy on blockchain and distributed ledger technology suggests for the country’s own central bank digital currency (CBDC) and a national blockchain.
On Dec. 30 a draft document was published by The National Institute for Smart Governance (NISG), a non-profit public body incorporated by the government of India on the country’s national blockchain strategy.
NISG proposes for a Central Bank Digital Rupee (CBDR), a digital currency issued on a national permissioned blockchain. NISG “strongly recommended” that the CBDR be issued by India’s government and the country’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India.
The document reads:
“As an alternative to Public Blockchains that operate with native cryptocurrency, like Ethereum, it is strongly recommended that Government of India along with RBI come out with a Central Bank Digital INR (CBDR) administered over a Public Permissioned Blockchain that processes transactions through a Turing Complete Virtual Machine allowing decentralized applications to run on its platform.”
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The NISG also outlined the existing legal challenges for the industry in India associated with a lack of regulatory clarity. As such, the body urged Indian authorities to develop and promote regulatory clarity in the industry by publishing official statements instead of making public statements:
“Public statements, whether through the press or formal speeches, are helpful but are not official statements of application by the agency. If an agency intends to enforce its laws in new and innovative ways, it must first notify industry stakeholders of its intent to do so and the way in which existing law applies.”
Additionally, the company recommended adopting a “light touch regulatory approach” at the initial stages of the blockchain industry’s development in India. NISG states that the existing regulation in India is “too restrictive” and does not take into account the potential of emerging technologies.
Source: Cointelegraph.com