Bitcoin gains popularity in India
While the government of India resolves issues of Bitcoin regulation and legalization, more shops in India accept cryptocurrency, and Bollywood celebrities endorse the idea of Bitcoin use, according to the report by Bitcoinist.com.
Bitcoin is not prohibited in India, although it still isn’t officially regulated by the legislation and Bitcoin operations take place in the ‘grey zone’. Currently, the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of ITI, NITI Aayog and Reserve bank are tasked to examine the framework of digital currencies for the purpose of regulating and legalizing its use within a 6-month period.
Today, as reported by Chris Burniske, the Bitcoin trade analyst, India is the fourth highest Bitcoin trading market, having over 1 million users accounting for 16,764.76 Bitcoins trades.
Indian Bitcoin holders started to take active part in the cryptocurrency legalization and regulation discussion, leaving 4000 comments on the forum designed to assess public opinion.
The legalization of Bitcoin in India will make it easier for the government to control the financial, insurance and legal risks with the aim to prevent Bitcoin-related money laundering and terrorist financing, while also allaying the public’s fears on its reliability and security.
Despite the uncertainty in legal field, many online portals in India provide their users an opportunity to pay with cryptocurrencies for various purchases – ranging from holiday gifts to training courses. Furthermore, two major stock exchanges – Unocoin and Zebpay - provide users with the option to use the digital currency as a method of payment for miscellaneous bills.
Bitcoin gained the endorsement of Bollywood celebrities as well, who use this topic with their own promotion in mind. Recently Shah Rukh Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui were acting as the brand ambassadors of Webwork Trade Links, an organization under close scrutiny of India’s Central Bureau of Investigation. The company was suspected in running a Bitcoin-based Ponzi scheme and deception of investors for over $772 million.
India’s cinema stars were also advertising on Twitter the most recent book of self-proclaimed Bitcoin guru Amit Bhardwaj, the founder of GBMiners, AmazeMiners, CoinBank and former and former co-founder of HighKart.com. The book called Cryptocurrency For Beginners was promoted by such celebrities as Shilpa Shetty, R. Madhavan, Prachi Desai, Bipasha Basu, Vir Das, Neha Dhupia and Nargis Fakhri. It should be noted here that the movie stars were not stopped by the fact that in the past Bhardwaj was accused of cryptocurrency fraud and Ponzi scheme creation.