[UPDATED] Pre-Proposal: Dash India - Promoting Dash for Crypto-Remittances.

Hi Ananth

There is no blanket ban on cryptocurrency in India so far; Some of the notifications have been misinterpreted by the media.

The RBI notification has advised banks to unwind their relationships with crypto-exchanges over the next months. However this has been challenged by them in Courts and they continue to be in operation, we will keep updating with more info as we find out.

There are other options too for converting Dash into Fiat, more specifically peer to peer exchanges. We would be highlighting these in our guides.

Regards,
Supreet.
 
Dear Supreet,

I am not entirely sure if that applies only to crypto-exchanges. The RBI notification (pasted below) clearly bans any regulated entities from dealing in Virtual Currencies. This will mean not just the exchanges but also anyone who uses a personal bank account. Also, the sections under which they have exercised their powers cannot be challenged in a court of law. If it does extend to physical fiat is debatable.

Do keep us posted on any progress!

Ananth

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RBI/2017-18/154
DBR.No.BP.BC.104 /08.13.102/2017-18

April 6, 2018

All Commercial and Co-operative Banks /Payments Banks/Small Finance Banks /
NBFCs / Payment System Providers

Madam / Dear Sir,

Prohibition on dealing in Virtual Currencies (VCs)

Reserve Bank has repeatedly through its public notices on December 24, 2013, February 01, 2017 and December 05, 2017, cautioned users, holders and traders of virtual currencies, including Bitcoins, regarding various risks associated in dealing with such virtual currencies.

2. In view of the associated risks, it has been decided that, with immediate effect, entities regulated by the Reserve Bank shall not deal in VCs or provide services for facilitating any person or entity in dealing with or settling VCs. Such services include maintaining accounts, registering, trading, settling, clearing, giving loans against virtual tokens, accepting them as collateral, opening accounts of exchanges dealing with them and transfer / receipt of money in accounts relating to purchase/ sale of VCs.

3. Regulated entities which already provide such services shall exit the relationship within three months from the date of this circular.

4. These instructions are issued in exercise of powers conferred by section 35A read with section 36(1)(a) of Banking Regulation Act, 1949, section 35A read with section 36(1)(a) and section 56 of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, section 45JA and 45L of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934 and Section 10(2) read with Section 18 of Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007.

Yours faithfully,

(Saurav Sinha)
Chief General Manager-In-Charge
 
Some amazing facts on Remittances (see https://exchangerateiq.com/blog/remittance-101/) –

  • According to a report by OECD approximately 3% (230 million) of world’s population resides outside their home country.
  • In 2015, these 230 million migrants have sent $500 billion in form of remittance to developing countries which is approximately 3 times more than the total global foreign aid which is $135 million.
  • 10 % of world’s population is directly affected by this money.
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Money transfer

Impact of Remittance on economy

Remittance is the second largest source of foreign capital for developing countries and is considered as a hidden force which drives their economy. In 2015, India received the highest remittance that is $72 billion as reported by world bank, followed by China at $64 billion.
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Remittance top companies

The Cost factor

For all of its advantages, Remittance is something of a double-edged sword.

The global average cost for sending money is around 8% and it goes as high as 12% for remittance receiving countries like Africa. The Fee structure for Money Transfer Services seems to be like it is designed to milk the poor. These services charge a flat fee for a broad range of amount to be transferred.
 
Indias demonetization is a massive man (government) -made-disaster
Picures and videos from money-hell:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016...dias-demonetization-massive-man-made-disaster

900 million UNBANKED in just one country. According to the Indian Ministry of Finance of the roughly 1.3 billion people in India, just 30% have access to banks, .India's economy is based 90% on cash (rhymes with Dash). Companies can not pay wages. People spend days in front of ATMs and desperately trying to exchange "new" money for "old". Often in vain, because the supply does not work or the machines are not yet converted. While the Indian government likes to describe the currency conversion as a "surgical procedure " it looks more like a "carpet bombardment" with great collateral.
see
https://blog.vaultoro.com/2016/11/19/900-millionen-menschen-ohne-zugang-zu-banken-in-nur-einem-land/
 
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Hi Supreet, greetings from Caracas and from Dash Youth Venezuela team.

Where can I read your proposal updates? I couldn't find any post on the Approved Proposals thread.

Hope you are doing great. Best regards.
 
@solarguy

Experts say petitioners will likely attempt to use the response to show how the RBI’s decision did not rely on credible or neutral evidence of harm. This may affect the constitutionality of the RBI’s guidance. https://economictimes.indiatimes.co...ban-cryptocurrencies/articleshow/64567826.cms

There is movement on the regulatory front in India and the executive is more in favor of bringing Virtual Currencies under the ambit of GST rather than outlawing it.
India accounts for about 10% of the global trading volume currently, which will may go up, if there is less ambiguity.
 
I love those videos, congratulations! In the first one I dont know how important is to mention the privatesend feature, it is too important for people in India? In Venzuela for example what we want to speed and low fees (as more important features). The one I like the most is the 2nd one, with the explanation of the market at the beginning.

Good job!
 
@AlejandroE Thank you so much for viewing our work ! We really appreciate it.

PrivateSend holds great importance for India as the people here like to be very discreet about their financial affairs. Indians are wary of declaring personal assets and suspicious of things that may go public. Traditionally, Indians prefered to keep their cash & gold at home rather than even trust a bank with it. With changing times ofcourse, things are evolving & Dash offers an excellent solution that prioritises their privacy so we chose to promote it.
 
PRE PROPOSAL - DASH INDIA - PROMOTING DASH USE FOR CRYPTO REMITTANCES TO INDIA,

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PROJECT SUMMARY

India is the world’s largest Remittance Market and amongst the fastest growing major economies in the world (+7.4%). Every year, Indians send nearly $65 Billion back home and pay $5 Billion in Remittance Fees alone to services like Western Union and Banks.

By Utilizing Dash to send Remittances to India, users can not only save significantly on fees but also send money quickly. However, many users, especially in India shy away from using Crypto due to lack of awareness and low trust in Crypto.

To increase awareness and develop confidence, the Dash India team has developed Remitdash.Com, a one stop platform with educational content around remittances and a full fledged guide. We have developed two animation-style videos in Hindi and English to educate users about Dash In India. Our work has also been noticed by Dash Force News Recently.

This project also furthers our mission of building a Dash empowered India Community. We propose to take our work further and conduct a remittances workshop, develop more educational content in regional languages and drive public awareness for Dash in India through a mix of online and offline methods.

We hope to receive your support to increase the reach of Dash in India and build a large community of Dash users for Remittances.


PROJECT AIMS

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PROGRESS SO FAR

Our work thus far has centred around creating educational content for new users, creating high quality video and animation and Researching the Indian Remittances market.

Here is a brief synopsis of our work:

  1. Research : Our team has researched the Indian Market and compiled an exhaustive research report on the Indian Remittance Market and its various segments. The report takes a closer look at the different segments of the Indian Markets and lays out an action plan for the Dash Community to target the Freelancing Industry. The research report can be accessed HERE

  2. Explainer Videos: We created two explainer videos about Dash in two different languages that explain remittances to new users. The videos explains the remittance process to new users and walks them step by step.


  3. Media + Social Outreach: We were recently covered by Dash Force News and have given interviews to two important crypto magazines. The Dash Force News article can be viewed here :
    https://www.dashforcenews.com/dash-india-strives-to-improve-remittances/

    Dash India’s Twitter handle can be seen at:https://twitter.com/DashIndia

  4. Remitdash Platform : To promote the use of Remittances in India, we created the Remitdash.Com to collate all information on one platform for users. We intend to build this platform in more languages to cater to every large segment of the Indian Population

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  5. Step by Step Remittance Guide: We created a full Remittance Guide to explain how remittances work to new users. This enables users to understand the entire process and proactively address doubts users might have. This guide can be accessed on REMITDASH.COM.

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THE MARKET

India is the world’s largest Remittance market. With a 25 Million strong expatriate population, Indians send back $2800 every year on average.

According to a World Bank study, the median cost of transferring money has remained nearly constant at 7.2% making money transfer a 5B/yr market in Fees Alone for transfer companies like MoneyGram and Western Union and Banks (via Wire Transfer).

With an additional tax of 12.36% on remittance charges, making traditional remittances even more expensive to process. This makes the overall cost of sending money significantly higher than World Bank’s Sustainable development goal of 3%.

CRYPTO REMITTANCES TO INDIA : THE OPPORTUNITY FOR DASH

With a population similar to the entire continent of Africa and rapid penetration of internet through low fee 4G Data plans, India is on the cusp of a mobile-first internet revolution. While money-transfer technology has remained stagnant, the growth of blockchain currencies has created an exciting alternate path for money transfer, leap-frogging existing channels.

A small set of early adopters have taken to Crypto, mainly Bitcoin, to remit money. While Bitcoin has a clear headstart in terms of awareness and adoption in India, Dash is far better suited to facilitate Remittances than Bitcoin. Dash is instant, private and costs a negligible amount of money to send. By building trust in users, Dash can capture a piece of this large and lucrative market and gain strong adoption in the process.

BUDGET BREAKDOWN :

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ABOUT US :

Supreet Raju is an Education Design consultant, working at the intersection of Consumer Internet marketing and Learning Design. She holds a Bachelors of Design degree from the prestigious NIFT, New Delhi and a Gold Medalist from the 2010 batch, an honour accorded to the top student across 8 Centres of Excellence nationally.

She specializes in marketing through developing Educational programs for technology and helping new users understand things better through compact online learning.

Please click here to view my Linkedin profile.

FAQs :

Q1. Is it possible to buy and sell Dash in India?

A1. Yes, Dash can directly be traded for fiat on local exchanges and trading desks like WazirX and Buyucoin. It can also be easily converted to Bitcoin/Ether and sold on exchanges like Remitano, Localbitcoins.com and Localethereum.com.

Q2 What is the current legal status of crypto-currency in India?

A2. Crypto-currency remains the subject of active debate in public, regulatory and legal discourse. A petition is currently pending before the Supreme Court of India challenging the RBI advisory to banking institutions mandating roll-back of support to exchanges. The RBI has also apppointed a high level committee to understand crypto currency and develop a draft policy to regulate it. As such, crypto adoption has progressed unabated at the grassroot level and India accounts for 10% of the total crypto trade.
 

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Again Supreme Court postpones the hearing for cryptocurrency banking ban to 25th September 2018 after a series of adjournments since 11th September 2018.

A recent update from RBI : https://coinpedia.org/news/rbi-asks-supreme-court-of-india-crypto-decisions/

What is the opinion on RBI Ban?


Supreet Raju said:
Hi Ananth

There is no blanket ban on cryptocurrency in India so far; Some of the notifications have been misinterpreted by the media.

The RBI notification has advised banks to unwind their relationships with crypto-exchanges over the next months. However this has been challenged by them in Courts and they continue to be in operation, we will keep updating with more info as we find out.

There are other options too for converting Dash into Fiat, more specifically peer to peer exchanges. We would be highlighting these in our guides.

Regards,
Supreet.
Click to expand...
 
*** UPDATE : 26 OCT: NEW RESEARCH REPORT + SURVEY RESULTS RELEASE ***

Over the last month, Dash India has been working on revamping our research report. We are pleased to release it to the network today. This report contains material and analysis on the Indian Remittances Space and also includes a targeted survey, which we have compiled from filtered respondents over the last month.

While the report pertains to India, we believe it contains information relevant on Remittances to many other geographies.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS DASH INDIA REPORT ON CRYPTO-REMITTANCES
 
After the RBI guidelines, most of you were in dilemma about the future of crypto trading in India. Many exchanges evolved, introduced new ways to buy/sell. P2P is one of such method where you can buy and sell cryptocurrencies easily in India.
 
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