Crypto News | Despite risks vs Great Potential

 Cryptocurrency continues to remain a great favourite of law-breakers, such as those who send ransomware into our computers and demand payments to let go of our valuable data. Greg Ip writes in The Wall Street Journal that illicit entities did an estimated $4.9 billion in business, while legitimate merchants did only $2.8 billion worth in cryptocurrencies. Ransomware payments alone amounted to $348 million in 2020, a four-time jump from the previous year.

Earlier this year, China banned bitcoin, the most popular digital currency, and soon after introduced its own digital currency.

The fears about bitcoin were made clear when a few months ago, Colonial Pipeline, which runs the main fuel supply line on the Eastern Seaboard or the entire coast from Maine to Florida in the United States, agreed to pay hackers $4.4 million dollars as agreed in bitcoin.

Despite all these negatives, The Wall Street Journal estimates that the total market capitalisation of all cryptocurrencies is estimated to be $2 trillion. The undisputed bright spot is that the underlying technology that enables cryptocurrencies, i.e. the blockchain technology could be used to replace the current global payment systems, which are slow, expensive and tightly controlled. Cryptocurrencies threaten to create a decentralised market space, that is more efficient, more egalitarian, and thereby disrupt the insular structures that control banking systems, globally and nationally. At its core, cryptocurrencies threaten to reimagine the nation state as the arbiter of local and international currencies and payment systems. They take us back to a time when gold, spices, and other goods — privately tradable commodities — were used to for trade and services.

Meanwhile, in India, we are behind China in terms of trying to crack down on cryptocurrencies. On April 5, 2018, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) by regulation essentially prohibited the provision of banking services to any entity dealing or using virtual currencies. Private entities challenged this regulation in the Supreme Court. In 2021, the Court in Internet and Mobile Association v Reserve Bank of India found that while the RBI had the power to regulate virtual currencies, the prohibition imposed by it was disproportionate and unconstitutional. The Court held that in the absence of any legislative prohibition, the business of dealing in virtual currencies constituted a protected right of occupation under Article 19 (1) (g) of the Constitution.

All eyes from crypto investors will be alert because the regulation in some countries can drive down the prices, but this risk will consider less than 40% by personal analyze.

Reference: The Indian Express