Digital

Like rare postage stamps, their value is pegged to their countertrade value at a point in time. They never challenge the supremacy of a fiat currency, because without the latter, these cryptos would lose not only their tradable value but also their very reason for existence. Indeed, cryptocurrencies, more than promoting the aim of seamless payments, only aid and abet the aims of a central bank like the US Federal Reserve, guaranteeing the supremacy of the dollar through a new avatar. In any case, central bank digital currencies (CBDC) are more than enough to ensure the cheaper, faster and safer transmission of digital money. 

But more worrying than the lack of understanding is the scant regard, conspicuous by its absence, paid to the challenges of oversight and monitoring. Das, cognisant of the threat to capital controls and to the overall stability of the financial system — in which banks and non-banking financial companies (NBFCs), even if they are not fully disintermediated, may end up carrying most of the financial risk without sufficient safeguards and adequate returns — has been unequivocally opposed to any form of compromise. In a country where it has been impossible to impose an anti-money laundering apparatus, or infrastructure to safeguard both institutions and citizens against fraud, is it so very difficult to imagine a future in which cryptocurrency exchanges are used by more than common or garden criminals, and less than upright public figures, to game the system and evade government restrictions? The truth is that cryptocurrencies are almost impossible to regulate.