09/27/2017 / By Ethan Huff
Recognizing the limitations that are inherent to Bitcoin’s transaction power, speed, and upgradability, the Far East nation of India appears to be on the verge of launching a brand new digital cryptocurrency as part of its ongoing “war on cash.” New reports indicate that the Indian government is already working on and preparing to launch a Bitcoin-like payment option that would be run by the country’s central bank and function as a cashless means of trade for the Indian people.
Set to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which is similar to the Federal Reserve Bank in the United States, the new cryptocoin known as “Lakshmi” would become the world’s first state-run form of digital money. Its name derives from the Hindu goddess of wealth, fortune, and prosperity, which is apparently the means by which the Indian government plans to convince its more than 1.3 billion people to accept it as a replacement for real cash.
A committee of government officials reportedly worked with a panel to discuss how Lakshmi could be launched on a wide scale, operating on a blockchain that’s much more powerful than the one used for Bitcoin. As our own Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, has repeatedly warned, Bitcoin isn’t the fastest cryptocurrency platform out there and, in its current iteration, is incapable of being processed at a speed great enough to accommodate millions or even billions of people trying to use it at the same time.
The technology used for Lakshmi would presumably function at a much faster rate to accommodate more transactions, thus eliminating the fears of RBI’s Executive Director Sudarshan Sen who expressed discomfort with Bitcoin at the recent India Fintech Day conference. It was during this conference that Sen hinted about the possibility of a government launch of a Bitcoin-like cryptocurrency of its own.
“Right now, we have a group of people who are looking at fiat cryptocurrencies. Something that is an alternative to the Indian rupee, so to speak. We are looking at that closely,” Sen is quoted as saying, echoing what Chinese officials have similarly expressed with regards to the soaring popularity of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
One of the main reasons why Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies represent such a threat to government central banks is that they can’t be controlled in the same way that fiat currencies like Federal Reserve Notes are. There’s no central issuing authority and no opportunity to endlessly print more when it’s time for a bailout or some other type of manipulation.
Cryptocurrencies were intended to be a decentralized alternative to fiat money that’s backed by nothing, in other words. And yet, Bitcoin is technically backed by nothing as well – though it is cashless, which means different versions of it could potentially become the foundation for the very cashless society that the globalists have always dreamed about implementing.
China, which many see as progressively edging out the U.S. in terms of world dominance, is taking much the same approach as India. The communist country recently banned exchange-based trading of Bitcoin, though Bitcoin is still legal there. Some suspect that China will soon attempt to regulate and issue its own bank-mandated cryptocurrency just as India appears poised to do, thus making Bitcoin even more obsolete.
“[T]he question on everyone mind is will this global crackdown against bitcoin and its peers boost their already near-record high popularity and price, or will it force holders to flee, wary of getting burned further by a wave of governments who have turned increasingly hostile to the ad-hoc cryptocurrencies which are not controlled by the central banks themselves, something Eric Peters hinted at earlier today,” asks Zero Hedge.
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Tagged Under: bitcoin, blockchain, central banks, China, cryptocurrency, India