India could lose billions in revenue from banning crypto

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If India doesn’t adopt a sensible approach to regulating digital currencies soon, it might lose out on billions in potential economic earning. That’s the opinion of Sidharth Sogani, CEO of research firm Crebaco Global Inc, who recently told AMCrypto that India is following a futile path.

In total, he estimated India could lose out on $12.9 billion worth of the crypto market share due to its insistence on banning digital currency activities.

That number was broken down from $4.9 billion in losses from crypto white papers and associated business plans, $2.1 billion in salaries for expert blockchain coders, $1.27 billion for associated content creators, and finally $4.5 billion for other roles that support the space, including lawyers, event managers and laborers. It’s basically turning its back on an entire industry, and the roles that would come from it.

He added that he doesn’t expect this status quo can last, as he doesn’t see how a total ban can be enforced:

They will have to regulate it, because if they don’t, it will raise a question as how they will implement a ban on a population of 130 Crore people […] They dont seem to have the mechanics of doing that, given India is country of 1.3 billion people.

It’s not that hard after all to keep businesses out of the country, and India’s insistence that digital currencies would remain banned has scared off the likes of Libra, who wants to be compliant, but individual Indians won’t have a very hard time getting their hands on individual currencies.

Really though, Sogani might be underestimating things. While roughly $13 billion in industry seems like a fair guess at how much local business crypto could create for India, as the world economy evolves to work on a Bitcoin SV (BSV) blockchain, India could stand to lose hundreds of billions if it stubbornly insists on staying out of the new economy.

BSV of course welcomes sensible regulation from countries of the world, and that includes India; however, if India insists on keeping its businesses away from the potential of the BSV blockchain, not only will they miss out on the potential opportunities that come with it from new technological possibilities from massive blockchain scaling, but they’ll suffer from the continued costs of running inefficient systems. The potential value they are missing out on is incalculable.