There is no proposal to recognise Bitcoin as a currency, the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in a response in the Parliament on November 29. The Finance Minister also said in the written response that the government does not collect data on Bitcoin transactions.

The reply from the government comes as it plans to introduce the Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2021 in the ongoing Winter Session of Parliament. The Bill seeks to ban all but a few private cryptocurrencies to promote underlying technologies while allowing an official digital currency by RBI.

Worth mentioning here is that Bitcoin is reportedly the first decentralised digital currency where peer-to-peer transactions take place without any intermediary. Introduced in 2008, by an unidentified group of programmers as a cryptocurrency and an electronic payment system, Bitcoin has gained massive popularity across the world with El Salvador becoming the first country in September this year to recognise the cryptocurrency as a legal tender.

In reply to another question, Sitharaman said, ministries and departments have spent Rs 2.29 lakh crore as capital expenditure during the April-September period of the current fiscal.

In another response to a question by Thirumaavalavan Thol, MoS Finance Pankaj Chaudhary, said, "Cryptocurrencies are unregulated in India".

Thol asked the Ministry if the government was aware of the cryptocurrencies that are traded in India and whether trading in cryptocurrency was legally permitted in India. He also asked whether the Centre had allowed cryptocurrency exchanges as a legally permitted entity in the country.

"Government has received a proposal from Reserve Bank of India in October 2021 for amendment to the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934 to enhance the scope of the definition of 'bank note' to include currency in digital form," MoS Chaudhary said in a response to another question by a member of parliament Adoor Prakash.

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