Mumbai: Reserve Bank governor Shaktikanta Das on Friday reiterated his call for an outright ban on cryptocurrencies, saying these are “nothing but gambling” and their perceived “value is nothing but make-believe.”
To further its opposition to such currencies and also to take a lead over other central banks, the RBI recently launched its own digital currency (central bank digital currency), in the form of e–rupee on a pilot mode, first for the wholesale in late last October and a month later for retail customers.
Speaking at a Business Today event this evening here, Das reiterated the need for an outright ban on cryptos saying though those supporting it call it an asset or a financial product, there is no underlying value in it not even a tulip (alluding to the Dutch tulip mania blow-up in the early part of the past century).
“Every asset, every financial product has to have some underlying (value) but in the case of crypto there is no underlying… not even a tulip…and the increase in the market price of cryptos, is based on make-believe. So anything without any underlying, whose value is dependent entirely on make-believe, is nothing but 100 per cent speculation or to put it very bluntly, it is gambling,” the governor said.
