Naavi.org

P.S. This is in continuation of the previous article

The second e-mail threat received by Wipro has been reported with some more detail today in this article in Times of India. 

According to this report, the investigation has now been taken back by CID from the Bellandur Police. However unless this is pursued like a Terror threat in full invoking the assistance of NIA, it is unlikely that any quick progress can be made.

Law enforcement naturally have a nose for smelling intelligence but Companies are more prone to displaying an “All is Well” syndrome and try to downplay such risks under the false impression that they are protecting their reputation which would otherwise be lost.

In this case, the natural complacency of the corporate sector  seems to have rubbed off on the Police also and hence over the last one month, no progress seems to have been made in tracing the e-mail.

For those who think Naavi.org is being needlessly hyper about the incident, it is necessary to point out that “Risk Management” requires identification of risk and assigning the probability of its manifestation. As long as the risk is not brought down to zero, it is the duty of the Risk manager to flag the risk and seek action. In the subject incident I feel the risk goes beyond the corporate boundaries of WIPRO and hence we the citizens have the right and also the duty to seek proper corrective action by all those concerned.

If this delinquent employee as is being believed turns himself up to be recruited by a terror organization, his threat may be used as a potent weapon against people outside WIPRO. Hence the incident cannot be buried as a coprorate event on which only WIPRO is interested

In Cyber Crime investigation, one month is an unpardonable delay and parking of the investigation at the local police station which every one knows is ill equipped  to handle was as good as abandoning the investigation.

I hope atleast now the investigation is taken up with a new vigour to catch up with the loss of time that has occurred.

I would like to also make a comment here about companies thinking that if they give weight to such incidents, they would be harming the reputation of the company.

Actually, in my opinion, the reputation of the companies would be enhanced when they respond promptly to adverse situations.

As the proverb goes,

“ It is not the way you fall down that determines your character, but it is the way you get up after a fall“

When a company hides problems under the carpet fearing a reputation loss fall out  (in a case like this where no fault can be ascribed to the Company in the first place), it is only enhancing the risk of the incident escalating in future with a greater force.

I hope the wisemen investigating the incident would correct for the deliberate neglect over the last month and go hyper now.

Naavi

We had extensively discussed the e-mail threat received by Wipro some time back in which an e-mail had been received by Wipro threatening that if Rs 500 crores is not paid in Bitcoins, they would spread “Ricin” in Wipro premises through Drones or mix it with food in Wipro canteens. Ricin is a poison extract from Castor seeds and can cause death. Extracting Ricin from Castor sludge from a castor oil extraction plant is considered to be easy.

There were two ways of dealing with the threat. One was to consider this as a prank or an empty threat from a disgruntled employee and ignore. This was easy and instinctive. The second was to take it seriously and take steps as if the attack was imminent.

Naavi.org had indicated that there was a need to take the threat seriously and suggested a series of measures mostly to be taken by the Police to meet the contingency of the attack actually being played out.  This included registering the case as a “Terror Threat” and go about tracing the e-mail with international assistance.

However, Karnataka Police took things lightly and registered the case as an ordinary e-mail threat and transferred it to the local police station in Bellandur. The Cyber Crime division traced the e-mail to a Switzerland IP address and left it to the Bellandur police station to follow up with CBI and Interpol to try to find out the sender. It was clear that everybody assumed that we will not hear about it once again and the prank can be forgotten.

But unfortunately, it is now reported that the e-mail threat has returned to haunt WIPRO once again with a renewed threat. The sender is aware that the earlier e-mail was not traced and was bold enough to use the same e-mail address ramesh2@protonmail.com.

Now the problem is back on the desk of the Police. Will they continue to ignore the threat (As reported in this article in Indian Express) and expect the Bellandur Constable to trace the Switzerland IP address and crack the case? or Will they invite the Anti Terror department of the Police to come in and take up the investigation?.

WIPRO says that they have taken some safety measures. Hope they are safety measures to prevent any form of dispersion of RICIN on any of the premises of WIPRO. They appear to have reported the incident to CERT IN and consider it as a sufficient fulfillment of the data breach notification requirements. It is not known if CERT IN has made any investigations and tried to trace the e-mail which should have been sent from India through some Proxy servers.

At this time we cannot say anything other than regretting that neither the Police nor the Company appear to be keen on escalating the issue to a “High Level Threat” and wish that it would simply go away.

If by any remote probability the threat gets executed and we are caught unprepared, then it would be in the fitness of things that the persons responsible for the negligent handling of the incident may have to stand trial for gross negligence leading to loss of life.

Let’s pray that nothing of that sort happens…. because I am talking of my personal friends both in the Police and Wipro whom I include in not being serious enough in this incident.

Naavi

Recently, I had raised an objection about a comment posted by MCX of India limited on the Discussion forum of MyGov.in regarding Bitcoin regulation. The Government had asked for public opinion on the forum which was expected to be used by the Committee formed for the purpose to arrive at a decision.

Obviously there were different stake holders with different vested interests. Some wanted Bitcoins to be legalized and some did not. The undersigned was one who held that Bitcoins is detrimental to the interests of the country and needs to be banned.

(Details are available in a series of articles at present ending with this article on naavi.org: Fight Against Corruption now has a new Slogan: Say No to Bitcoins).

Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX) is a licensed Commodity Exchange that allows trading of derivatives related to different commodities including Gold and Silver as well as Foreign Exchange under the regulations formed by SEBI and RBI. It is like BSE and NSE and is a quasi regulator of commodity derivatives.

In the event Bitcoin or any other Crypto Currency is recognized by India as a commodity, it would be naturally a “Commodity or a Derivative” which would come under the trading list of MCX. Hence MCX is a direct stake holder of the Government decision to legalize Bitcoins or otherwise.

Just as RBI or SEBI itself was not expected to participate in the forum discussions and give its views since they were the decision makers themselves, MCX was also considered as part of the regulator and not part of the public.

However, some  executive who did not understand the nuances of propriety posted an opinion using the official logo of MCX stating that MCX recommends legalization of Bitcoins. This was posted on the forum a few hours before the end of May 31 when the collection of opinion was to end.

The undersigned raised an objection and called it as an attempt of an “Insider” in “Fixing” the decision of the committee and demanded action. Since MCX is a Board managed company and the opinion expressed was a policy decision, it should have been taken only under the directions of the Board. Also since MCX is a listed company itself, major Policy decisions that are considered “Price Sensitive” need to be notified to the BSE/NSE before being released to the public.

What MCX did was therefore a failure of Corporate Governance and fit for penal action from SEBI.

When the objection was raised by the undersigned, the Board naturally moved in and perhaps wanted to take its own corrective action. The first thought that came to their mind was “Removing the Comment” which was perhaps not authorized. Perhaps most managers would come to the same conclusion. They would have therefore contacted My Gov forum administrator and requested for removal of the content. MyGOv.in admin obliged by removing the content.

However this raises one issue of “Electronic Evidence” being tampered with. MyGov.in in this context is an “Intermediary” and when a notice of objectionable content is given to them by a suitable authority, under Section 79 of ITA 2000/8 they could remove the content. But this was a forum where the persons posting the comments were not authorized to remove the content once posted and hence it was expected that content once posted was an “Evidence” that could be acted upon by others who could view the content and be influenced by it.

According to Section 79 rules, it is necessary that content removed needs to be preserved for evidentiary purpose for atleast 90 days ass “Provisional Evidence” . If however he becomes aware that actually there is a dispute related to the content and it is “Actual Evidence” then he needs to preserve it for a reasonable longer time.

In the current incident, anticipating the removal of content, CEAC had already captured the evidence as it existed on May 31 2017 and also captured the forum content on June 1, 2017 showing clearly the absence of the original content or more appropriately, the “Tampered Page” .

Now the My Gov.in administrator can be accused of allowing of tampering of the electronic evidence when it was required to be maintained under law. (Section 65 of ITA 2000/8).

The correct procedure for removal of content was one of the following two methods.

1. A rejoinder could have been posted along with the original content indicating prominently that the content has been reportedly been posted without the authority of MCX (which is an offence under say Trade Mark Act, Impersonation under Section 66C/66D of ITA 2000/8 etc) and the management has disclaimed the opinion made there in and should be ignored. Then the viewers would see both the original content and the correction. (This method was suggested by Naavi way back in December 2000 in the context of dalistan.org website in our article How To control Rogue Sites)
2. The administrator of MyGov.in could have masked the earlier message with his note that the content has been masked because it had been reportedly been posted without authority of the organization in whose name it was posted.

If therefore BSE or NSE now wants to take action as mandated by the SEBI regulations on MCX for violating the listing guidelines, they will have to contend with a situation that the offending evidence is no longer available on the web and has been tampered with by none other than MyGov.in administrator. He can plead ignorance and escape criminal prosecution but the evidence is lost at his end.

However, CEAC is maintaining the evidence and has also posted it on www.naavi.org . The article posted in naavi.org itself can be used as an evidence with Section 65B certification of the naavi.org webpage.

This article is being published to explain the Compliance requirements under Section 65 of ITA 2000/8 by public discussion forum owners.

It also explains the context in which Section 65 B certificates can be of use in public interest litigations as well as specific litigation involving tamperable electronic documents. (Provided one is alert to capture the before and after instances of the electronic documents through a trusted third party like CEAC).

Other aspects of Section 65B certification on who has to give such certification and how are discussed elsewhere.

Naavi

Yesterday, we pointed out that MCX of India Limited which manages the Commodity exchange operations and is therefore a stake holder in Bitcoin being banned or legalized had placed a comment on the MyGov.in discussion board that Bitcoin was proposed to be legalized.

MCX is an insider to the stock market operations and is carrying the permissions from SEBI and RBI to carry on its activity and is considered as a quasi regulator for commodity transactions. It is also listed in BSE and NSE.

Being an insider, it was inappropriate for MCX to release its views on Bitcoin regulation to the public on the forum unlike other private companies and individuals. Also since MCX is a company, any policy decision of this nature should have carried the permission of the Board of Directors in the form of a resolution. Also being a listed company and probably the exchange which woould be entrusted with the management of Bitcoin exchanges in India if Bitcoin is legalized, the information put out on the public platform was an attempt to influence the policy of the Government which could affect its own business prospects. Hence it was a price sensitive information both for the price of MCX on BSE/NSE as well as price of Bitcoins in the unofficial exchanges.

We therefore were constrained to raise an objection and bring it to the notice of the Directors of MCX and also the committee on Bitcoin regulation besides other relevant persons.

Also the Stock exchange had not been informed earlier and hence it was a violation of the listing guidelines of SEBI.

We expected that if the posting was from a person in MCX not authorized by the Board of MCX, suitable corrective action including disciplinary proceedings would be initiated for this breach of a  Corporate Governance aspect.

We are happy to now report that some action seems to have been initiated by MCX as indicated by the removal of the comment from the discussion board as indicated by the following two screen shots captured by Cyber Evidence Archival Center yesterday and today.

As we can observe, the comment of MCX which was between the comments of Amit Kumar Maurya and Shashank Rao is no longer there.

We appreciate the action initiated by MCX and hope it would take further action as may be necessary including issuing a press release expressing regret. BSE/NSE also needs to clarify if it has taken any action in this regard. Further the Bitcoin regulation committee also may clarify and assure that they will not be influenced by the views of MCX and it will take an independent decision in this regard.

It would be a good corporate Governance aspect if the Directors of MCX confirm that they donot have stock of Bitcoins in their possession as of now and they have no conflicting interest in the decision of the committee.

Naavi

Copy of the PDF document removed is available here

Naavi.org has been maintaining that Bitcoins is a menace to the civilized society and India should ban it. We have given our logic through a series of articles in this site.

We have also made a note that many of the opinions expressed at My Gov.in discussion page are from persons who have no idea of what is Bitcoins and how it can damage the Indian economy but were expressing support on the site because they were plants from vested interests.

Today there was a huge surprise in store and it has to be brought to the notice of the public so that public can take their own view about the need for what kind of regulation is required to be considered by the Government of India on Bitcoins.

I would like to re-iterate that Bitcoin is  the “Currency of the Criminals” and under the current legislative scenario in India it cannot be regularized either as a currency nor as a Commodity fit to be traded in a legal exchange regulated by SEBI. Bitcoin recognition in any form or even continuing the current status of “Observation” will promote Black Money and Money Laundering and the act of supporting it is itself a betrayal of the country’s interests.

Not initiating action to stop the current use of Bitcoins as a perceived “Currency” and ignoring the fact that there are exchanges which are buying and selling Bitcoins in India against Cash is a dereliction of duty on the part of regulators and the situation has to be corrected before the matter becomes a scandal in the media and attracts rebuke from the honourable Supreme Court of India.

On perusing the comments posted on the MyGov site, it was found that a comment had been posted by Multi Commodities Exchange of India Limited operating under the regulations of SEBI.

The objects clause of the Memorandum of Association of MCX India Limited states as follows

“To establish, operate, regulate, maintain and manage facilities in Mumbai and elsewhere in India and abroad enabling the members of the Exchange, their authorized agents and constituents and other participants to transact, clear and settle trades done on the Exchange in different types of contracts in commodities and other instruments and derivatives thereof, in futures markets and to provide accessibility to the markets to various members of the Exchange and their authorized agents and constituents and other participants within and/ or outside India, and to provide, initiate, facilitate and undertake all support services relating thereto as per the Articles of Association, ByeLaws, Rules and Regulations of the Exchange.”

The exchange carries the permissions from RBI and SEBI making it part of the regulatory system at present and its expression of support for legalization of Bitcoins means that the Committee of the Finance Ministry has insider interests in legalizing Bitcoins.

From a prima facie indication the Committee and collection of opinion from the public etc could be a farce and part of a conspiracy in which a decision has already been take to legalize Bitcoin.

The copy of the PDF document enclosed in the opinion is not typed on the letter head of the exchange nor is signed.

It says as follows:

QUOTE:

Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd

Comments/Suggestions for the Existing Virtual Currencies Framework

We propose that Bitcoin be accepted as legal financial instrument in India and the regulations be governed under a separate ‘Virtual Currency Act’. The adoption of virtual currency should be encouraged in India since Blockchain technologies are now considered to be the future of electronic financial transactions. A very strong impetus to legalize virtual currency is its potential to drastically reduce corruption, shrink transaction costs and eliminate third party involvement.

To ensure consumer protection, companies who wish to deal with Bitcoin must be subjected to stringent regulation to ensure that the virtual currencies are not being used for criminal purposes. Currently in Japan, a company wishing to use Bitcoins is required to have at least $100,000 in reserve currency, report their activities to the government regularly and undergo routine audits by the National Tax Agency. Meanwhile in Philippines, Bitcoin is largely used for remittances and payments with transaction volumes reaching up to US$6 million per month for certain major players and therefore Bitcoin companies are treated as remittance companies. That means that all requirements for remittance companies such as registration, minimum capital, internal controls, regulatory reports, and compliance with know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) policies applies to Bitcoin startups in Philippines.

Although counterfeiting of Bitcoin is not supposedly possible, extra caution should be improvised and special cyber law be drafted under Ministry of Information and Technology to protect against security breaches on the Bitcoin network. The following are some notable breaches in the past:

1. In 2013, about 850,000 Bitcoin valued at over $400 million were stolen by hackers in a service attack against the most popular Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, following which they declared bankruptcy.

2. In April 3, 2013, Instawallet, a web-based wallet provider, was hacked, resulting in the theft of over 35,000 Bitcoins.

To promote orderly development of VCs we propose the following measures:

1. Allowing Bitcoin exchanges to operate in India. These companies perform KYC checks and can follow anti-money laundering provisions and suspicious transaction reporting.

2. Encourage Financial Institutions, government bodies and Tech companies to use blockchain technologies.

3. Allow e-commerce companies and to accept Bitcoin as a mode of payment
Finally institution(s) like the Indian Revenue Service , Ministry of Information and Technology and Reserve Bank of India should be allowed to should monitor/ regulate the VCs.

May 31, 2017

UNQUOTE:

The recommendation is clear and advocates that “Bitcoin be accepted as legal financial instrument in India” leaving no doubt to the intentions of making the instrument called Bitcoins be available for all those who want to park their wealth anonymously so that Black Money can proliferate and Criminals can continue to demand ransom in the form of Bitcoins.

At this point of time,I am not aware if this is an official communication from MCX or the logo of MCX has been used by some mole in the organziation.

This needs to be clarified by the organization and its Directors in particular.

The following are the directors of MCX:

I request these august members of the Board to

a) Confirm if they are aware of the official position that MCX has taken and published even before the Committee has met to consider the public opinion

b) Give a disclaimer that as of this date they have never held,  traded or benefitted from Bitcoin trading in the past

c) Confirm whether they individually endorse the opinion that Bitcoin should be legalized in India ignoring the fact that it is the preferred currency of Cyber Criminals and Cyber Financial Terrorists and could be the currency of the future for funding terrorist operations in India?

I request the Finance Minister Mr Arun Jaitely to order an enquiry on how the subordinate regulator working under RBI and SEBI has already taken a stand on legalization of Bitcoins and the entire exercise of collecting public opinion is therefore rendered as a farce.

I request the Prime Minister to take note that the attempt to legalize the Bitcoins is a betrayal of the Fight on Corruption and Black money initiated by him and there is a conspiracy that may be under hatching behind his back.

I will treat this as a public notice to all these directors and wish that they provide their views on this development immediately.

Probably Mr Subramanya Swamy and Arnab Goswami should follow up and ensure that if there is any conspiracy by MCX Exchange of India to influence the decision of the Committee, the illegality of it is brought out into the open.

I will also try to find out the e-mail contacts of these Directors and send them individual notices though it may not be strictly necessary.

P.S: If the posting of the opinion on the MyGov forum was not authorized by the Board, I expect the Board to initiate an enquiry and punish the person responsible. If an honest disclosure is made by these distinguished persons, I express my regrets that I had to bring this incident to the open.

Naavi

Fight against Corruption in India now has a new Slogan… Say NO to Bitcoins ..Every time… Even the first time.

Whatever we say for Bitcoins also applies to all private Crypto Currencies which are outside the purview of the currency regulators of the nation states such as RBI for India.

Why do we say that Bitcoin is connected with “Fight Against Corruption”?. 

Many people may think that “Anything Virtual is Good” and Bitcoin is a Virtual Currency and hence it should be good. They argue that Modi supports Digital India and hence he should support Bitcoins.

Some people think India needs to do what other countries do because we donot understand things as much as others and since countries like Japan have recognized Bitcoins, we need to follow. They forget that India under Modi is a “Global Leader” and not “A follower”.

Bitcoins is not like the Digital Wallets which we in India are familiar. We transfer money from our Bank account to a Mobile Wallet account such as PayTM or Phone Pay or Pay U or Ola Money and other wallets. Money remains in the wallet and can be used for spending on many websites, for phone recharge etc. If your vegetable vendor accepts PayTm, you can use the money in your PayTm wallet for buying vegetables on the street also. This is convenient and despite some Cyber Security risks, the system is well within the control of the RBI which knows how much money is flowing through the country in the form of “Currency”.

In the case of Bitcoins, they are generated by private persons. Generation of new Bitcoins is called “Mining”. It is created through a computer operation for which software can be downloaded freely. But at present, creation of Bitcoins has reached such levels of difficulty that no Individual can individually process the creation of Bitcoins. It is being created (or mined) by “Mining Pools” which is a congregation of computers like a “Botnet” all of which are trying to process a common problem and if they are successful, every new “Block” will create new Bitcoins roughly at the rate of 1 Bitcoin per minute across the globe. The difficulty level will keep on increasing and the reward will keep on coming down.

Most Bitcoins in visibility today are “Bought” in exchanges. Some sell the earlier bought Bitcoins through the same Exchanges. The trading is not regulated and anybody can start a website and become an exchange. The Exchanges operating in India are low level technology platforms which will simply try to identify a seller at a particular price and buyers who are willing to buy at a specific price and try to match the bids and offers. A few will offer a jobber’s spread undertaking to buy and sell simultaneously through a spread which can be around Rs 10000 to 12000 per Bitcoins.

When a new Bitcoin is created, the Bitcoins are given an identity in the form of a “Hash Value” and is credited to a “Bitcoin Wallet” of the person/pool to which it is created. The Bitcoin wallets are also in the form of a”Hash Value” and the central ledger of Bitcoins will not know who is the owner of the Bitcoin wallet. Hence the holding of Bitcoins becomes anonymous.

If the Bitcoin creator (we shall call him the Miner) has opened a Wallet account with a service provider, he would have shared an email address and his identity is linked to whether the E Mail service provider has conducted any KYC (Know Your Customer). Since no e-mail service provider does a KYC, any body can open an email account in any name and the service provider accepts it as declared. The anonymity therefore continues.

There are also Bitcoin wallet software which can be downloaded to a desktop (If required through the anonymous tor browsers) and Bitcoin wallets can be created from one’s own computer. In that case the anonymity is protected. People also create numerous bitcoin wallets and change it for every transactions like criminals changing their mobile SIMs often.

As a result of this process, Bitcoins largely remain anonymous when created and when tranferred from a wallet to wallet.

When a person trades Bitcoins on the Exchange, then he provides some of his identity particulars to the Exchange. Some of the Indian exchanges are collecting the PAN card numbers though they may not be independently verifying the same and calling it as “KYC”. If you are aware that there have been incidents of people picking up PAN cards of railway passengers from the reservation list and using it for buying and selling jewellery, then you know that merely collecting the PAN card or even Aadhar Card numbers without verification cannot be considered as valid KYC.

Anyway we can expect that some information about the identity of the buyers and sellers in an exchange can be obtained in exchange transactions.

However, when a person buys a bitcoin in the exchange, there is no way to verify if the Bitcoin was originally held by some body who had mined it or he himself had purchased it from another person.

In the case of a Currency note, the currency does shift from hand to hand and some times it goes through criminals and comes out into the hands of honest persons. This process is what we normally refer to as “Money Laundering”.

A Currency is an obligation of the Government that the holder can claim the value mentioned there in from the Government. There was a time when such value could be claimed in the form of Gold because the Government was supposed to have a backing for currency in the form of Gold. Gradually the backing reduced to a small percentage of the total currency issued  and today if all currency holders want the Government to convert their value to Gold it may not be possible. If there is a failure of a Government and people think that the country has no capacity to earn, the currency gets devalued by market forces in terms of its exchange value as compared to other foreign currencies. It happens to INR and also to USD or Euro. If the economy of a country is strong the value of the currency remains strong otherwise it becomes weak.

As against Currency there are some instruments which are called “Negotiable Instruments”. (NI) which is backed by a legislation in India called Negotiable Instruments Act (NIA). Currency is not a Negotiable Instrument as it is excluded from NI Act.

In the case of Bitcoins, we say that it is an “Electronic Document” and hence under Section 4 of ITA 2000, it is recognized as much as a paper document. There is an authentication of the Bitcoin by means of a digital signature of the foundation server but the digital certificate is not issued by any Indian licensed Certifying authority.

Hence Bitcoin is like an unauthenticated paper document which makes some statement that” the owner of x bitcoin wallet is the owner of this Bitcoin”. Some people want to ascribe value to this piece of document and others want to accept the value and hence in a limited sense it acquires an ability to be used as a “Currency”.

If for example, Sachin Tendulkar releases an autographed message and says that he will issue only 100 such autographed messages, there would be many who would be willing to buy such an autographed message and also trade it just like currency. Bitcoin is nothing different except the scale at which it is accepted is huge and threatens to destabilize the economy.

Now if we consider that Bitcoin is an “Electronic document with value”, then it can be considered as a “Property” and comes under the provisions of law applicable to transfer of property like an actionable claim or a contractual document.

It is a general principle of law that except Negotiable Instruments, all other properties when they are transferred from one person to another, the transfer is always subject to the defects of the title of the transferor. In other words if the transferor had a defective title the transferee will also get a defective title even though he is an honest person and has paid value to get the property transferred to his name. Hence any buyer of Bitcoin will get only a defective title to the Bitcoin he purchases if it has once gone through the hands of a criminal. Hence all holders of Bitcoins become part of a Money Laundering Chain unless we are sure that we are buying from a known miner or where the chain from the miner to the buyer is all clean.

Since Bitcoin does not have the Government backing any way, RBI thinks that this is not a currency and hence hesitates to step into regulation.

If Bitcoin is considered a commodity, its trading has to come under SEBI regulations. The problem has been that since Bitcoin does not fit the definition of any physical commodity because it is “Virtual”, nor can it be called a “Derivative” of a physical commodity, SEBI does not know whether it should step in and regulate or stay out.

Like the proverbial Hiranya Kashipu who sought a boon that he should not be killed either inside the house or outside, neither in the morning or evening, neither by a human or an animal, Bitcoin is escaping regulation from both RBI and SEBI.

We need to therefore find a Narasimha to take an avatar and kill this demon.

If we donot Kill Bitcoin, then this anonymous currency will be accepted for transactions in the physical world and people will stop using Rupee currency notes and use Bitcoins. RBI will have no count of the transactions and Income Tax will not be able to track the flow of money. As a result people who want to keep their wealth in the form of Black money will be able to convert their current holding of Black currency in the form of Indian currency notes or foreign currency in the form of undisclosed foreign bank accounts into Bitcoins.

Bitcoins will therefore be a boon for Black money holders. Even Havala operators would find it convenient to transfer money from one place to other since they can receive INR in India for transfer buy Bitcoins from the exchanges against cash, then transfer the Bitcoin to the designated foreign country. Transferors of money also can directly purchase Bitcoins and transfer it to the addressee as a Bitcoin and let the addressee convert it into cash.

It is stated that ICICI Bank is transferring money from Gulf to India by accepting Bitcoins in the Gulf. This is an unconfirmed information and I want the Chair person of ICICI Bank to deny if this is untrue.

If therefore, Government of India under some kind of trance legalizes Bitcoins then all the black money in India will get converted into Bitcoins.

In future all bribe receivers will demand that payment has to be made in the form of Bitcoins just like how the Ransomware’s like WannaCry is demanding payment of ransomware in Bitcoins.

I therefore consider that the demand for legalization of Bitcoins is lead by that section of society which wants to ensure that there should be an easy channel for trafficking in corrupt money.

The Committee of the Finance Department which is looking into Bitcoin regulation will therefore have to decide if their decision will be “Pro Corruption” or “Anti Corruption”.

I feel that there is no alternative for the committee but to ban Bitcoin and all private Crypto Currencies, whether or not they accept our other suggestion of introducing India’s own Government regulated Crypto currency.

So our slogan is “Say No to Bitcoins…Every time… even  the First time”…

This message is for all the members of the public an especially those who think it is a great investment opportunity and currency of the future etc.

I request readers to copy the following banner image and put it up on their own blogs and join the campaign….

Naavi