back to article Indian PM calls on the world to save youth from Bitcoin

India's prime minister has called for international co-operation to regulate cryptocurrency. Speaking at The Sydney Dialogue, an online event hosted today by defence and strategic policy think tank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Modi lauded India's technology sector for helping to address the Y2K problem, creating …

  1. Andy 97

    I'm sure Mr Modi only has the welfare of young people on his mind.

    The other reason can't be anything to do with people 'stashing' undeclared wealth away. Unlike bank notes, you ban large denomination notes, expect people to dig all of the currency out of their floors or garden, head to the bank and change it into smaller bills; thereby allowing the internal tax people to discover who's hiding money.

    Oh no!

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-37933233

    https://money.cnn.com/2017/01/04/news/india/india-cash-crisis-rupee/index.html

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/10/rupee-note-cancellation-panic-in-india-banks-500-1000

    1. Raj

      Re: I'm sure Mr Modi only has the welfare of young people on his mind.

      A little late to the news aren't you ? Crypto - especially days since COP26 - is a waste of energy expressing itself as a speculative mania. Why not go back on google and search 'tulip mania' while you're dredging up history ?

      Four years on, this is the result of demonetization:

      https://sbi.co.in/documents/13958/10990811/281021-Ecowrap_20211029.pdf/b0625dda-46bf-1f1e-2998-3c58c94dd156?t=1635409920832

      - Share of informal economy shrunk to <20% from 52% in FY18, when demonetization happened.

      https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/upi-registers-record-4-21-bn-transactions-worth-rs-7-71-trn-in-october-121110100572_1.html

      - UPI, the Indian real time payments interface, records 4.2 billion transactions worth over $100 billion in October.

      Here's what The Register is completely blind to - in the past four years, the trailing 12 month total in UPI transactions was:

      Oct 2021: $852B

      Oct 2020: $397B

      Oct 2019: $218B

      Oct 2018: $56B

      Oct 2017: $5B

      https://twitter.com/surajbrf/status/1455295485518893058

      Around January, the trailing 12 month figure in RT payments will cross $1 trillion, on the back of a transaction volume of around 40 billion then.

      India is by a long distance the world's biggest RT payments market, with 35 billion transactions in the 12 months to Oct 21. Second place is China with ~20 billion.

      It's true, the total value is pretty small - 'just' $1 trillion from 40 billion transactions. Just ~$25 per transaction, because it's not just a few high value transactions. It's everyone and their dog using UPI .

      Visa and Mastercard have essentially been decimated - the local RuPay card has 650 million subscribers, about 10x the western ones. What's more, the entire infrastructure is in India, with Indian data localization law forbidding Indian transaction data from being hosted outside.

      Demonetization is simply a step that occured in lock step with UPI at literally the same time. QR codes are ubiquitous - even push cart sellers prefer it. Why ? Have you seen the state of small cash ? They're dirty, torn and hard to exchange with banks.

      With UPI, everything happens mobile to mobile. There are 1.3 billion mobile connections in India, approx 800 million unique users, out of a population of 930 million adults. Smartphones number approx 550 million now.

      But yeah tell us what you know about all this, because you're such a pro at digging up old news with no idea what's happening in the world today.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I'm sure Mr Modi only has the welfare of young people on his mind.

        Aside from bashing someone for noting the Orwellian implications of India's demonetization - and reinforcing his point - what are you telling us?

        That you're a pedantic asshole?

        1. Raj

          Re: I'm sure Mr Modi only has the welfare of young people on his mind.

          Ah yes, the personal attacks didn't take much for you did it ?

          Orwellian ? Formalizing and developing an economy is "Orwellian" ?

          The country today transacts 1/3rd of its GDP in real time transactions, and almost a quarter of the M1 money comes from it.

          Entire realms of corruption - political funding, under the table cash real estate deals, have all been decimated. The poor have a way around cash bribery.

          Oh and demonetization was 2 years before Modi was re-elected by the largest mandate in a generation.

          But yeah, call me names. Gives you a rise doesn't it ? I don't care what you think of me. You're not that important.

  2. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "Modi lauded India's technology sector for helping to address the Y2K problem"

    Y2K ? Really ? It seems a bit late to congratulate people for an issue that was solved 21 years ago.

    When I started reading that sentence I thought it would end in "helping to address the COVID confinement problem", but no, Y2K it was.

    Has India done nothing more important since then that would be a more relevant reference ?

    I'm baffled.

    1. Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge
      Pirate

      Re: "Modi lauded India's technology sector for helping to address the Y2K problem"

      Has India done nothing more important since then that would be a more relevant reference ?

      If the frequent unsolicited calls that I keep getting are anything to go by, they're working pretty relentlessly to identify computers that have been infected with malware, and providing services to help clear them up.

    2. gnasher729 Silver badge

      Re: "Modi lauded India's technology sector for helping to address the Y2K problem"

      Y2K problem is solved. I'll be retired in 2038. I really hope they get their act together and all APIs that are limited to the year 2038 get removed in 2030 or so. Probably enough to rename them with a "deprecated" prefix. Apple's NSDate / Date should be able to run forever (but with resolution going down to a microsecond in about 200 years). Curious if they tested this at all.

      Just tried: I can't set the date on my iPhone beyond 2038 in "Settings". Apple, I'm disappointed. Something like 2199 would have been much more acceptable.

      1. Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese Silver badge
        Unhappy

        Re: "Modi lauded India's technology sector for helping to address the Y2K problem"

        I can't set the date on my iPhone beyond 2038 in "Settings". Apple, I'm disappointed. Something like 2199 would have been much more acceptable.

        Unfortunately, the expected operational lifespan for an iPhone right now won't be much beyond 2023. Trying to set it to 2038 is wildly optimistic. Thinking it might ever accept 2199 is delusional.

        Such is the ephemeral nature of modern hi-tech consumables, tant pis.

    3. Raj

      Re: "Modi lauded India's technology sector for helping to address the Y2K problem"

      It's Simon. Guys got a long history with India here. You can say a lot of things out of context when you don't actually literally quote the person without embellishing what was said to suit yourself.

      The Y2K effort was the first major IT effort that drove the development of the Indian IT scene. Look, on here I know Brits love to uniformly dump on anything to do with Indian IT, but here's some history and data:

      https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/TX.VAL.SERV.CD.WT/rankings

      India finished its prior fiscal year with services exports of $240 billion. This was $14 billion back in 1999.

      That year, the head of NASSCOM, the legendary Dewang Mehta, said that one year India would make more in IT exports than Saudi Arabia makes from oil.

      That year was the prior fiscal - 2020-21.

      If you want to mangle an assertion of pride from the leader of the country towards an industry that's grown to those proportions from those humble beginnings, go right ahead. It speaks all about who you are, than anything to do with Indian IT.

  3. Winkypop Silver badge
    Pirate

    Phone scams are so yesterday

    Even the kids know it’s all about Crypto now!

  4. jason_derp

    Informed!

    Cryptocurrency is basically digital cocaune. You know, that drug that makes you see vivid scintillating colors and become deadly good at engineering problems. Can't let the youth get spoiled by that! I know what I'm talking about. Yep.

  5. Clausewitz 4.0
    Devil

    Crypto Regulation? Really?

    Anyone who wants regulation and taxation uses banks.

    Crypto cannot be regulated, only self-regulated.

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