The Banning of Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2019, on its way to the Indian Parliament for debate and possible legislation, seeks to impose a stunning 10-year imprisonment as penalty for any person or business found buying, selling, holding, or mining crypto-currency in India. It has wording to tell wilful mining apart from "crypto-jacking" (malware that mines crypto on a computer or portable computing device without its user's knowledge). Violations of this Act will also be treated as "cognizable" and "non-bailable," meaning that the accused cannot seek bail, anticipatory or in custody, while their case is being taken up by India's criminal-justice system.

A Cognizable Offense under Indian law, is comparable to a Felony under U.S. law, and some of the most heinous crimes, such as homicide and rape, are classified as these. The Indian Government has reportedly taken this step to clamp down on rampant tax-evasion, "hawala" money transfers (illegal money transfers disconnected from the banking system), and financing of terrorism, drug-trade, and social unrest by foreign NGOs and eco-terrorists. The Bill is expected to have smooth sailing through Parliament as the incumbent political administration enjoys a simple majority in the Lok Sabha (essentially House of Commons); and has a good sway over the Rajya Sabha (Council of States, but essentially House of Lords).

Microsoft's Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Julie Brill in a blog post this Monday shared her - and Microsoft's - thoughts on regulation and its relationship to the tech sector. Julie Brill commented on the GDPR implementation originating in Europe, and how that could and should serve as a de facto standard of regulation that forces companies to steer away from the self-accountability on which they have remained for so long - and on which, paraphrasing Apple's own Tim Cook, "There are now too many examples where the no rails have resulted in great damage to society."

Microsoft feels that if left to self-regulation, companies won't do as mucha s they could in the pursuit of privacy and their consumers' rights as they would with a strong enforcement regime being planned and implemented at the governmental level. Of course, I think most of us agree with this at a fundamental level. However, there should also exist some defensive measures around the design and implementation of such governmental measures, such as, for one, no interference from corporations in the regulatory process. These should only serve as consultants, to prevent any ideas of bending the regulations in their behalf, and a pervasive strategy that accounts for both small businesses and huge corporation should also be key. We should remember that while the likes of Microsoft Apple, for example, should have relative ease in updating their practices and implementing regulation-required systems, other, smaller players could either live or die in their capability to quickly adapt to the new requirements. Snuffing out competition to the big companies by enforcing heavy penalties might not be the best road. What do you think? More regulation or self-regulation?

Remember the revived pressure on cryptocurrencies on account of news that South Korea might halt trading in their territory? Well, the country's finance minister, Kim Dong-yeon, who previously said that shutting down exchanges was "a live option but government ministries need to very seriously review it," came on the record this Wednesday to, let's say, set the record straight, clarifying that "There is no intention to ban or suppress cryptocurrency (market)." The minister, then, added that the government's immediate task is to "regulate exchanges". Those two statements certainly leave a lot of space in-between, since the shutting down of some exchanges while some others are left operating would not, in fact, result in an outright ban. Let's call it pruning, shall we?

The intention, it seems, is to be able to cut out the unregulated parts of the market, that take the form of unregulated exchanges, where the country's customs earlier announced it had uncovered illegal cryptocurrency foreign exchange trading worth nearly $600 million. This, it seems, is the real target for South Korea's newfound steam.