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The Indian government is said to be levying a complete ban on cryptocurrencies.

BloombergQuint reported the news on Thursday, citing an unnamed “senior Finance Ministry official.” The ban won’t be imposed overnight, according to the official, who said the government would give a three-to-six month transition period for existing investors to liquidate their investments.

Since India’s central bank doesn’t back cryptocurrencies, the government will ban their usage in all forms through a law that will be introduced in Parliament, said the official. The ban would also restrict crypto trading via foreign exchanges, per the report.

India’s crypto law will be modeled on China’s crypto regime, which has effectively banned crypto trading, according to the official. China, however, has only banned fiat-to-crypto trading since 2017. Crypto-to-crypto trading is still allowed in the country.

India’s proposed “The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021” is listed for introduction in the ongoing Budget session of Parliament, which concludes on April 8, with a recess between February 15 and March 8.

The bill seeks to prohibit all “private cryptocurrencies” in India. The definition of private cryptocurrencies is not known yet. Still, India’s finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman earlier this week suggested that private cryptocurrencies include all digital currencies apart from those issued by a central bank.

According to the official quoted above, the proposed bill “will be soon sent to the Union Cabinet for approval.”

Earlier this week, India’s junior finance minister Anurag Thakur also said that the bill “is being finalized and would be sent to the cabinet soon.”

As The Block has reported previously, the legislative process is lengthy in India. Once a bill is moved for consultation in the cabinet, it goes through various ministries for feedback. Once this process concludes, the bill then moves to Parliament. The Parliament has its own approval processes, including getting nods from the Lok Sabha (House of the People) and the Rajya Sabha (Council of States). Once the bill passes the Parliament, it then goes to the president of India for a final signature.

However, if the cabinet wants a specific bill to get passed, it can go for the ordinance route. Ordinances enable the Indian government to take immediate legislative action. Last week, there were reports that the government is likely to pass a cryptocurrency bill via ordinance.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey says he and well-known rapper Jay-Z are giving 500 bitcoin to set a new endowment.

Dorsey wrote in a Tweet on Friday that the new endowment, called ₿trust, is set to fund bitcoin development with an initial focus on teams in Africa and India. The 500 BTC is worth over $23.5 million at bitcoin’s current prices.

“It’ll be set up as a blind irrevocable trust, taking zero direction from us. We need 3 board members to start,” Dorsey said while adding a board member application form.

Dorsey is a known long-time supporter for bitcoin with “#bitcoin” as his Twitter profile. The new fund comes days after reports that Dorsey made a $1 million donation to U.S.-based crypto policy think tank Coin Center.

Square Inc, which is also co-founded and chaired by Dorsey, purchased around 4,709 bitcoin in last October with an aggregated cost of $50 million. 

The firm also has an ongoing Square Crypto Grant program to fund development of bitcoin-related technology and design.

Over the past year, more than 10 companies, including crypto exchanges, tech startups and nonprofit organizations, launched similar programs. 

The Block reported at the time that these programs supported more than 25 developers and projects with an estimated $3.46 million. 

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The Ontario Securities Commission has approved a bitcoin exchange-traded fund, according to public records published Thursday.

A final decision document, dated February 11, was issued Thursday afternoon, per records from SEDAR, for the Purpose Bitcoin ETF, which is managed by Purpose Investments Inc.

As the document notes:

“The prospectus has been filed under Multilateral Instrument 11-102 Passport System in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut. A receipt for the prospectus is deemed to be issued by the regulator in each of those jurisdictions, if the conditions of the Instrument have been satisfied.”

According to the long-form prospectus, the Purpose Bitcoin ETF is an alternative mutual fund that “invests in and holds substantially all of its assets in long-term holdings of the digital currency bitcoin.” Cidel Trust Company, a subsidiary of Cidel Bank Canada, is designated as the fund’s custodian. Gemini, the crypto company founded by investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, is serving as the fund’s sub-custodian. Ernst & Young is the fund’s auditor, per a letter uploaded to SEDAR.

Per the documents, the ETF is conditionally approved to trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). The prospectus states:

“Subject to satisfying the TSX’s original listing requirements in respect of the Fund on or before February 11, 2022, the ETF Units of the Fund will be listed on the TSX and offered on a continuous basis, and an investor will be able to buy or sell such ETF Units on the TSX through registered brokers and dealers in the Province or Territory where the investor resides. Investors will incur customary brokerage commissions in buying or selling the ETF Units. The TSX ticker symbol for the ETF units, CAD ETF Non-Currency Hedged Units and USD ETF Non-Currency Hedged Units is BTCC, BTCC.B and BTCC.U, respectively.”

When listed, the ETF will trade alongside products such as The Bitcoin Fund, a closed-end fund that first listed last April. The fund is managed by Canadian asset manager 3iQ.

As might be expected, the positive news for the Purpose Bitcoin ETF was celebrated by crypto advocates as a possible step forward for such products to go live in the United States, where federal securities regulators have long denied their approval.

Still, SEC commissioner Hester Peirce has spoken approvingly of a U.S.-based bitcoin ETF and has filed dissents to rejections during her time in office. Peirce told CoinDesk earlier Wednesday that the U.S. market is ready for exchange-traded products tied to bitcoin.

Documents uploaded to SEDAR indicate that the prospectuses for other proposed bitcoin ETFs may be moving toward approval as well. Preliminary decision documents have been published for prospectuses submitted by Evolve Funds Group Inc., Horizons ETFs Management (Canada) Inc, Arxnovum Investments Inc. and Accelerate Financial Technologies Inc.

The Purpose Bitcoin ETF’s long-form prospectus can be found below:

Get File by MichaelPatrickMcSweeney on Scribd

Hat tip Magdalena Gronowska/@Crypto_Mags

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said Thursday that he sees PayPal playing a significant role in the utility of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

On the company’s investor day call, Schulman said PayPal is gearing up to be “the digital wallet for global CBDCs.”

PayPal’s newly unveiled product roadmap for crypto includes becoming a CBDC platform. Schulman said he sees PayPal’s digital wallets becoming the way in which central banks distribute tokens to consumers. 

“PayPal is a perfect complement to central banks and government to distribute those CBDC in a modern way so that more people can access the digital economy, and we think that is a focus area of this new business unit we have put together.”

Still, some central banks are a long way off from issuing a CBDC. The European Central Bank head Christine Lagarde has said a digital euro could take years to accomplish, and the Federal Reserve is still in the research phase of a possible digital dollar. In the meantime, Schulman said PayPal is looking to add utility to existing assets.

PayPal unveiled its product roadmap earlier this month in its Q4 2020 earnings call. During that call, Schulman called the current financial system “antiquated,” which lead PayPal to build out a new unit focused on blockchain and the digital economy. Schulman reiterated those sentiments on today’s investor call.

“As we move to a modern tech — it could be distributed ledger technology, it could be other tech — we will see a shift in how digital forms of value will be moved around the world,” he said.

And PayPal is planning to take a closer look at those other digital forms of value. Schulman’s comments hinted at wider aspirations than just CBDC distribution. “Step 1” on the product roadmap is enabling crypto as a funding instrument on PayPal, but Schulman also indicated that PayPal is looking into digitizing other assets through the use of smart contracts and tokenization. 

“If you think of some of the utility in blockchain…you talk about digitizing assets…that can be broken down in smaller parts. That’s clearly stuff we are looking at and have on our roadmap,” he said.

 Part of creating utility in the present is thinking about the long term and what a new financial system might look like, according to Schulman.

“This is a once in a multi-decade opportunity…where the fundamental rails are redesigned and we have an opportunity to reshape that,” said Schulman.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yang announced that he intends to make the city a “hub for BTC and other cryptocurrencies” if elected. 

Yang made the comment in a tweet posted Thursday evening. He did not elaborate on which measures he plans to take.

As mayor of NYC – the world’s financial capital – I would invest in making the city a hub for BTC and other cryptocurrencies.

— Andrew Yang🧢🗽🇺🇸 (@AndrewYang) February 11, 2021

New York has long had heightened regulations in place that have kept some firms from operating within its borders. This includes the New York State Department of Financial Service’s BitLicense framework. 

Yang previously ran for president before dropping out of the Democratic primary in February of 2020. Yang has long been a supporter of crypto, and owns bitcoin himself. His presidential platform included a plan to regulate digital assets at the national level during his presidential campaign. He also advocated for blockchain voting. Yang was the only candidate to put forward a crypto-specific policy during his campaign.

Yang is currently leading the polls for the Democratic primary of the Mayoral race.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.