FM Nirmala Sitharaman for regulating crypto at global level

Washington: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday made a strong case for regulating crypto currencies at global level to mitigate the risk of money laundering and terror funding.

Participating at a high-level panel discussion organised by the IMF, the Finance Minister said as long as the non-governmental activity of the crypto assets was through un-hosted wallets, the regulation was going to be very difficult. However, she said, cross border payments between countries will become very effective through Central Bank-driven digital currencies.

"The risk which worries me more on the non-governmental domain is essentially you're looking at un-hosted wallets across the borders, across the globe…

So, regulation cannot be done by a single country within its terrain through some effective method and for doing it across the borders, technology doesn't have a solution which will be acceptable to various sovereigns at the same time applicable within each of the territory," she said.