Pankaj Chaudhary, Minister of State for Finance has informed Rajya Sabha that currently there are no plans to introduce cryptocurrency by the government. At present, cryptocurrency is unregulated in the country.
Further he added, “RBI does not issue a cryptocurrency. Traditional paper currency is a legal tender and is issued by RBI in terms of provisions of RBI Act, 1994. A digital version of traditional paper currency is called Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).”
He also said the Reserve Bank of India is taking an effort towards a phase-wise implementation strategy for introducing CBDC and observing use cases that could be implemented with little or zero disruption. CBDC will provide various significant benefits such as less dependency on cash, higher seigniorage due to lower transactions costs, and more.
