BITCOIN History

On the 18th of August 2008, the domain name bitcoin.org was registered. Later that year, on 31 October, a link to a paper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto titled Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System was posted to a cryptography mailing list. This paper detailed methods of using a peer to peer network to generate what was described as "a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust". On 3 January 2009, the bitcoin network came into existence with Satoshi Nakamoto mining the genesis block of bitcoin (block number 0), which had a reward of 50 bitcoins

Cryptocurrency emerged in India for the first time around 2009 in the form of Bitcoin. It was in the year 2010 that the first commercial transaction occurred followed by the first Cryptocurrency exchange in the year 2013. It has made everyone's eyes turn in India over the past few years.

2016-2018: Demonetisation and RBI’s Banking Ban on Crypto

The increases in preference for digital payments brought about by the demonetisation experiment also gave an unintended boost to crypto investments, driving tech-savvy customers to the virtual asset. The Indian banks continued to allow transactions on cryptocurrency exchanges pushing the RBI to release another circular in 2017 conveying its apprehensions with virtual coins. Finally, a warning clarifying that virtual currencies are not a legal tender was issued by the RBI and the finance ministry by the end of 2017.

In March 2018, a draft scheme for banning virtual currencies was submitted by the Central Board of Digital Tax (CBDT) to the finance ministry and just about a month later the RBI came out with a circular restraining banks, NBFCs and payment system providers from dealing with virtual currencies and providing services to virtual currency exchanges. This dealt a heavy blow to crypto exchanges and trading volumes fell by 99%.