India’s Finance Minister: The World Should Take ‘Collective Action’ Approach To Regulations

Nirmala Sitharaman, the finance minister of India, hopes that finance ministers and central bank governors can agree on digital currency regulations at the G20 meeting in Bengaluru later this month.

In a recent television interview, the Finance Minister of India, Nirmala Sitharaman, suggested that regulation “cannot be done” by a single nation and needs an international effort.

Speaking to Rahul Joshi on CNBC-TV18 in India on 3rd February, Sitharaman noted that while the central bank is the “authority for issuing cryptocurrency,” the rest of the virtual currencies created outside are “using very useful financial technologies.”

Sitharaman mentioned that India is looking at a “global” standard operating procedure to be “agreed upon” for regulating virtual currencies, ahead of hosting the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting in Bengaluru later this month.

She suggested that for digital currency regulations to be effective it requires global consensus. She noted,

“Regulation cannot be done by any one country singularly, it has to be a collective action because technology doesn’t group any borders.”

Argentina and Brazil are having their own discussions about creating a common virtual asset together in an effort to decrease dependency on the U.S. dollar.

In the meantime, Huang Yiping, a former member of the Monetary Policy Committee at the People’s Bank of China, is of the opinion that the Chinese government should rethink its ban on digital asset trading, suggesting it may not be sustainable in the long run.