Infosys co-founder says Lawmakers should treat crypto like gold or real estate

The co-founder and chair of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani has urged regulators to embrace digital assets and get a handle on accommodating the technology.

Infosys co-founder says Lawmakers should treat crypto like gold or real estate

While speaking to the Financial Times, Nilekani warned that prohibitive regulations could result in significant missed opportunities for India, asserting that a more permissive approach would let the country tap into the $1.7 trillion digital asset market and allow crypto guys to put their wealth into India’s economy.

Nilekani, however, is not being bullish on the crypto market for India, stating that cryptocurrencies are too volatile and energy-intensive to use as a means of payment. Instead, the tech mogul advised allowing Indian’s to access crypto assets for speculation and as a store of value, He said:

“Just like you have some of your assets in gold or real estate, you can have some of your assets in crypto. I think there’s a role for crypto as a stored value but certainly not in a transactional sense.”

He believes the Reserve Bank of India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) system offers superior infrastructure for real-time payments than cryptocurrencies.

Nandan Nilekani has long worked alongside Indian authorities to help formulate policies on digital technologies, including the Aadhaar biometric identity program launched in 2009. In December 2016, he joined a committee to investigate how people in India could use digital payments to a greater extent, and in 2019, he chaired a central bank committee on digital payments.

India central bank, The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had banned all banks from allowing customers to trade in crypto assets in 2018, however, this was overturned by the Supreme Court in February 2020 leading to renewed hopes.