India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi participated in
discussions on crypto assets at the G20 leaders’ summit in Osaka, Japan.
At the conclusion of the summit, the leaders of the G20 countries
jointly declared their commitment to applying the crypto standards set
by the Financial Action Task Force. India’s new finance minister,
Nirmala Sitharaman, also joined other G20 finance ministers to declare
the same commitment.
Modi Participated in Crypto Discussions at G20 Summit
India’s sherpa to the G20, Suresh Prabhu, detailed this week various
discussions Modi participated in at the two-day G20 leaders’ summit
which took place on June 28 and 29 in Osaka, Japan. India will be the
host country for the G20 summit in 2022.
“As you know India was looking forward to G20 for many perspectives,”
Prabhu began. “Prime Minister Narendra Modi who led India’s delegation
raised many issues of global concern as well as highlighted the role of
India’s new innovation into making change in a manner that benefits
all.”
On the subject of crypto assets, Prabhu confirmed that they were
discussed at the summit in his statement regarding global finance. “In
economy, finance will be an important issue. Therefore issues related to
global finance … whether it is related to technological innovation
which can deliver benefits in financial markets or whether it is related
to the commitment in applying recently amended FATF [Financial Action
Task Force] standards for virtual assets, all these issues were also
discussed,” he said.
G20 Leaders and Finance Ministers Separately Committed to FATF Standards
At the conclusion of the summit, the leaders of the G20 nations,
including India, jointly issued a declaration which includes statements
on crypto assets. “We reaffirm our commitment
to applying the recently amended FATF standards to virtual assets and
related providers for anti-money laundering and countering the financing
of terrorism,” they declared.
The FATF is an intergovernmental organization responsible for
developing global policies in areas such as combating money laundering.
It currently comprises 37 member jurisdictions, including India, and 2 regional organizations.
President Vladimir Putin (left), Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
(center), and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G20 leaders’ summit in
Japan.
Ahead of the leaders’ summit, the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors met
in the Japanese city of Fukuoka on June 8 and 9 where crypto-related
topics were discussed, including FATF’s guidance on crypto assets. At
the end of the event, they declared their commitment to applying the FATF standards to crypto assets.
India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Finance Secretary
Subhash Chandra Garg attended the meeting. Garg, who is also India’s
Secretary of Economic Affairs, heads an interministerial committee
tasked with drafting a crypto regulatory framework for India. He said
last month that the report containing the recommended framework was ready to be submitted to the finance minister for approval.
Moreover, India’s Department of Revenue had been working with
the FATF on the global standards for crypto assets, the country’s
finance ministry revealed in its March report of all key activities in
2018. The FATF issued its new guidance
for the risk-based approach for virtual assets and virtual asset
service providers (VASPs) on June 21, a week before the G20 leaders’
summit commenced.
Varun Sethi, founder of Blockchain Lawyer, told news.Bitcoin.com
that, since India is a member of the FATF, “ideally, it may derive the
proposed provisions from the recommendations of FATF. Hence FATF is a
relevant organization for India to develop legal literature for crypto
guidelines.”
Impact on Indian Crypto Industry
Nischal Shetty, CEO of local crypto exchange Wazirx, explained to
news.Bitcoin.com the possible impact of applying the FATF standards on
the Indian crypto industry, stating:
Implementing the FATF standards would mean that crypto
gets a legal status in India. The biggest advantage is to the end
customers as the crypto industry can once again offer banking services
to the fiat on ramps.
Currently, there is a banking ban
in India on crypto service providers including exchanges. The country’s
central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), issued a circular in
April last year prohibiting regulated entities from dealing in
cryptocurrencies or providing “services for facilitating any person or
entity in dealing with or settling” in cryptocurrencies. The ban went
into effect in July last year. A number of writ petitions have been filed with the supreme court to lift the ban, but the court repeatedly postponed hearing the case. The next hearing is scheduled for July 23.
Since the ban took effect, at least four crypto exchanges have shut
down due to the banking restriction. Zebpay, formerly one of the
country’s largest crypto exchanges, closed down all of its local
exchange operations in September last year. Coindelta announced its
shutdown in March and Coinome in May. Koinex followed suit last week, blaming the banking ban and the government’s delay in introducing crypto regulation.
Sumit Gupta, CEO of local exchange Coindcx, emphasized to
news.Bitcoin.com that “The FAFT recommendations are not binding on
members,” noting that it will be up to each member country “to determine
whether to enact the recommendations through legislation or
regulation.” However, he asserted:
For India, it looks to be a no brainer and will look for
definite implementation as its stance for cryptocurrency has been
negative as it believes cryptos to be a big hideout for black money and
money laundering.
How Indian Exchanges Could Apply FATF Standards
A number of industry participants have raised concerns
regarding the technical challenges of complying with FATF’s
requirements. Blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis summarized that the
FATF guidelines “require VASPs not only to verify their customers’
identities, but also to identify the recipients of their customers’
transfers, and transfer that information. This would be applicable to
all transactions above a 1,000 USD/EUR threshold.”
Gupta highlighted some issues regarding the implementation of the
FATF standards such as “How will one identify whether a counterparty is
an individual or service provider” and “How to identify a person with
two identities at two different service providers e.g. most Chinese have
separate English names.” He remarked:
There will be a need for new infrastructure for sending
customer information among service providers … So many service providers
already have clients with no KYC implementations. Collecting
information from them will be time-consuming and a lengthy exercise.
Former FATF President Roger Wilkins AO commented, “What we are
hearing from industry is that the new rules may have the opposite effect
to which they were intended, effectively forcing crypto transactions
off the controlled platforms.” He delivered a keynote speech at the V20 summit,
a conference where policymakers and representatives of a number of
crypto companies convened to discuss how VASPs could follow the FATF
guidelines.
At the end of the two-day V20 summit, several crypto associations signed
a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to establish an association to
“assist in establishing a means to engage with government agencies and
the FATF to ensure our best interests are understood and valued at an
international level,” the V20 announced.
Shetty continued to explain to news.Bitcoin.com that applying FATF’s
recommendations “is definitely not straightforward but it’s a good step
in the right direction for countries worried about money laundering.” He
noted that “to be able to implement them, countries will need to
cooperate with each other so that crypto industries in every country can
work together to implement this,” elaborating:
The FATF standards cannot be adopted in silos in each
country as there are recommendations that require the collaboration of
exchanges and crypto wallets across countries.
“You cannot expect an exchange in one country to adopt FATF standards
while exchanges in other countries don’t, that just won’t work,” he
reiterated. While noting that his exchange “already performs stringent
KYC,” Shetty admitted, “We’ll definitely have to put in more resources
in becoming compliant.” He believes that doing so will “also ensure
optimum safety for our users as well as peace of mind against money
laundering for our country.”
Gupta pointed out that, if the FATF standards are implemented, “the
exchanges will start implementing KYC guidelines thus making it
difficult to deal in cryptos with privacy and anonymity.” He added that
“They will also stop providing products and coins that support anonymous
transactions. For a lot of exchanges, this would be compromising on the
notion of decentralization.”
Potential Benefits to India
India has been plagued with rumors of a draft bill to ban cryptocurrencies over the past few months. Bloombegquint reported
that a bill entitled “Banning of Cryptocurrency and Regulation of
Official Digital Currency Bill 2019” proposes a 10-year jail term for a
number of crypto-related activities.
Tanvi Ratna, a policy analyst and EY Blockchain Lead who has worked
with the Indian government on several projects, shared some thoughts
with news.Bitcoin.com. “I doubt that India would face any problems
complying with FATF standards,” she began. “By all indications, all
crypto transactions are going to be shut down. The only transactions
likely to continue would be with a sovereign digital currency, which
should be fairly easy to do AML/KYC in.”
Ratna continued: “There is nothing really to gain or lose for India
by complying with the standards, perhaps only a degree of cohesion with
other central banks. Nobody yet has cracked a way to do complete KYC/AML
of transactions, so with a sovereign coin, India might even be the
first. The obstacles for other countries and the larger cryptocurrency
space will remain, India is not going to provide any solutions to that.”
The Indian government has not made any announcement regarding crypto
regulation so reports of the aforementioned bill remain just rumors. A
number of Right to Information (RTI) requests have been filed regarding this bill, one of which reveals that the central bank had no knowledge of this bill and did not propose a ban on crypto assets.
Shetty believes that implementing the FATF standards will “wipe out
all the uncertainty and fear that the crypto community in India
undergoes every few weeks when there’s a new rumor of a crypto ban,”
asserting:
India should definitely follow what the majority of the
G20 nations decide. FATF standards are built to bring in complete
transparency to crypto transactions. This is way better than a ban where
the country will never have any visibility into crypto transactions.
“If India adopts these rules rather than banning cryptocurrency, the
industry would be free of malicious characters and will allow innovation
and progression,” Gupta opined. The alternative “will also prevent
people from using cryptocurrencies for their positive characteristics
rather than as hideout for tax evasions,” he described.
In Prabhu’s statement to the press after the G20 leaders’ summit, he
claimed that Modi “believes in changing the world for [the] better
through a process wherein technology, traditional knowledge, good
governance and making sure that everything is integrated into a unified
policy.”
Prabhu also said that India and Japan will “discuss many more things
in continuation.” Japan has been at the forefront of crypto regulation,
having legalized cryptocurrencies as a means of payment back in April
2017 and already approved 19 crypto exchanges to operate in the country.
In addition, over 140 more companies have expressed interest in
registering crypto exchanges in Japan, the country’s top financial
regulator previously told news.Bitcoin.com.
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