During the India Today conference, Indian finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman discusses on crypto regulations, Budget 2025, focusing on making the tax system simpler and slowly eliminating the old tax regime. She also talks about concerns regarding economic slowdown, crypto regulations, and state development. She highlights fiscal discipline, capital spending, and initiatives to draw in foreign investment.
When asked about crypto regulation in India, this is what Nirmala Sitharaman said on crypto regulations.
🚨BIG BREAKING
— Ajay Kashyap (@EverythingAjay) February 4, 2025
🇮🇳Indian FM Nirmala Sitharaman on Crypto Regulations :
"We are not against Distributed Ledger Technology/Blockchain. We just want to know where the transactions are going.That's why we have introduced TDS on crypto transactions"
"We are not 🇺🇸USA but 🇮🇳India" pic.twitter.com/x83LiS7EuE
Anchor: Ma’am, I want to understand your current thinking on crypto assets. In the past, you took a certain position, and as a result, 97% of the trading in crypto assets done by Indians has now moved offshore. Industry estimates suggest that there’s a loss to the government exchequer of at least 6,000 CR rupees, and a lot of the Web 3 entrepreneurs have moved to places like Dubai, UAE, where crypto regulations are more favorable now. This comes at a time when American president Donald Trump is openly embracing crypto assets. He’s got his own coins. He’s openly embracing crypto assets. Is that leading to some rethinking within government? Did you go too far in trying to quash crypto trading? It’s moved out, so Indians are still trading, but the volume of trading has shifted internationally. Are you, as a result of what’s happening in the United States and elsewhere, at some level rethinking the position that you’ve taken on how the government looks at crypto assets?
Nirmala Sitharaman: only because we were from the beginning saying that we are not against the distributed lure technology but we still want to know where the transactions are happening we brought in the TDS TCS on it and then soon we followed it up during India’s presidency of the G 20 that there should be a global understanding on how to regulate or how to tackle the issues of trading or cryptocurrencies we took it to the G20 in fact had a wide ranging consultation IMF everybody gave their per paper and some kind of a progress has happened under the Brazilian presidency as well so from our side we have never discouraged the technology which runs this but yet we were also wanting to make sure that we are aware of where this money is coming where this money is getting traded and who are behind some of these not all but some of these transactions and that is why we had to put in a TCS on it
Anchor: You didn’t answer my question. Are you at any level reviewing your thinking on how to regulate crypto assets because of Donald Trump being so favorable towards them? It’s like a very different approach between DC and Delhi.
Nirmala Sitharaman: That’s right, we are India. I’ll think about India.
