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India's Crypto Villain Now Advocates a Digital Rupee

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Former Finance Secretary of India, who headed the committee that proposed a draconian draft bill to ban cryptocurrencies last year, Mr. Subhash Chandra Garg is now advocating the next standard of currency as digital currency.

In a long blog post, where he talks about the history of money in India and the adoption of silver and gold coins since 1835 to the introduction of paper currency in 1861, to delinking of silver standard in 1893, to its complete abolition in 1947 with a total replacement by paper currency and tokenized metal coins.

Practicability and ease of transaction is always been at fore front of these changes. Recently the rise of digital payments in our country is changing the way money is being exchanged.

But taking a cue from the idea and technology of cryptocurrency, Garg proposes the next revolution in currency in the form of digital currency; and suggests the introduction of digital rupee.

Digital rupee is different than digital payments. Digital rupee will be dematerialised money just like we have demat shares as the digital form of paper shares. The Demat rupee will be full convertible to paper currency and vice versa. However he has not recommended to use blockchain technology for this as he thinks it's too expensive to maintain/use it.

Although he is clearly against private cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, he has realised that time has come for the next step in the evolution of currencies.

Will Digital Indian Rupee issued by its central bank be an answer to the new age cryptocurrencies?