Central Bank Of India Demands The Suspension Of Withdrawals From Unocoin

Unocoin, a popular Indian exchange has suspended fiat deposits and withdrawals, even before the government could take any regulatory move and potential clarification on the issue of cryptocurrency. The exchange noted that “Cryptoasset(coin) deposits and withdrawals are ON @ Unocoin & Unodax; Using INR Balance Buy and Sell of BTC/ETH is ON @ Unocoin; Crypto-rupee and crypto-crypto pair trading are ON @ Unodax.”

This spring, traditional banks in India were placed under strict orders from the RBI, the Reserve Bank of India, stopping them from dealing in cryptocurrencies altogether.

There was a petition filed by exchanges against such a policy from the RBI, which eventually made its way to the Supreme Court of India. The court upheld, a few days ago, the central’s bank decision. This move suggests that the final ruling on this issue is imminent, probably this fall.

Exchanges such as Unocoin have tried to find workarounds to avoid drawing further ire from officials. One step to it is crypto trades for crypto. It appears that peer-to-peer arrangements will only see benefit from the crackdown.

17 crypto-only trading pairs were recently revealed by the company’s Unodax. Bases made from bitcoin core (BTC), ethereum and XRP were included. BTC is matched, for example, with BCH/BTC, ETH/BTC, LTC/BTC, XRP/BTC, BTG/BTC, GNT/BTC, CVC/BTC, ZRX/BTC, and OMG/BTC.

As recently reported, “an unnamed senior official from the Ministry of Finance” insisted regulatory language had already been drafted and “consultation is on with all the stakeholders…before coming up with the final paper. We expect it to be ready by September. ‘The ministry has constituted an interdisciplinary committee under the chairmanship of Special Secretary (Economic Affairs) to examine the regulatory framework regarding virtual currency,’ [a regional publication] detailed. ‘SEBI and RBI have expressed some reservations regarding clauses in the initial draft.’”