South Korea Proposes To Lift ICO Ban As India's Central Bank Upholds It's Banking Ban

Today, as South Korea's national assembly proposed to lift the ban on ICOs. They are officially going to allow domestic ICOs from taking place in Korea. Due to the earlier restrictions many South Korean companies have been moving to foreign markets such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Estonia.

Source
Naver and Kakao Corp, the parent companies of popular chat apps Line and Kakaotalk, recently set up subsidiaries abroad with the possibility of launching ICOs. One of the country’s largest crypto exchanges, Bithumb, has also partnered with a Singaporean company to launch its own cryptocurrency. -Bitcoin News

So in all likelihood South Korean government might make it legal to have an ICO running out of Korea. This is great news for the market in general. South Korean startups also stand to benefit from this change in rule.

According to Business Korea:

The National Assembly has officially made a proposal to allow domestic initial coin offerings (ICOs). As the administration is sitting on its hands after imposing a total ban on ICOs in September last year, the National Assembly has come forward with an official recommendation.

Even as these developments take place in Korea, I cannot help but look at how our government in India is responding to this situation. Our Supreme Court has set the next date of hearing on the 20th of July which is about 2 weeks after RBI's banking ban goes into effect on the 5th of July.

Democracy is a strange situation where we get to elect the leaders we wish but they rarely deliver on the things we really need! It's better than a dictatorship however, where simply cannot fight back the system at all.

However, I don't blame the government entirely for these issues. In recent times there have been many scams related to bitcoin investing in India as well as cases of extortion.

But the approach to the cryptocurrency scenario by banning access to banking services to exchanges is a wrong move. In my opinion it will do more harm than good as people will stick to black money (unaccounted cash) and p2p channels to move their funds in and out of the market.

RBI's Response to Supreme Court published by Crypto Kanoon-a group of individuals fighting the RBI on this matter.

RBI has stated in its reply filed in SC that some #crypto transactions can look the same as the transfer of value through 'Payment System' (PayPal etc.).However, it's not a 'Payment System' as defined in Sec. 2(1)(i) of PSS Act as it is peer-peer and involves no service provider.

Crypto Kanoon makes a fair point in their tweet:

Legally speaking, if 'Frequent Flyer points' can be used as a medium of exchange for buying an air ticket despite lacking characteristics of money, currency or coin under law. Why not Crypto?

These are somethings for Supreme Court to consider when they consider all the factors of the case. Hopefully, the prices in the market will quickly stabilize after the ban. Trading volumes are very bad these days compared to how they were a few months ago.

I've seen 24 hour trading volumes as low as 2.5BTC on some big exchanges recently. Leave it to the government to kill innovation and stifle growth of a new sector that could potentially revive the IT sector in India.

Do you think the Supreme Court will ultimately rule in favour of cryptocurrencies? Do you think GST will be applicable?

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