Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s finance minister, at an event in Bengaluru on Saturday. Image: NSitharamanOffice/Twitter
India is not against blockchain technology, but currencies have to be monitored by either the government or the central bank, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday.
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Fast facts
- “[Blockchain] gives us so many options. It can be used in so many different ways. So we are not against the technology,” Sitharaman said at an event in Bengaluru.
- “But on currency, we think [it] has to be driven by either the government or the central bank. Otherwise, it can be like those that have collapsed, causing huge spillover effects all over the world, like FTX,” she said.
- The Reserve Bank of India, the nation’s central bank, has launched pilot trials for retail and wholesale central bank digital currencies. According to Sitharaman, the digital rupee intends to improve cross-border and bulk payments to minimize losses on arbitrage.
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