Finance secretary TV Somanathan on Monday made it clear that there need not be any apprehension about the use of the blockchain technology in sectors like agriculture, which have nothing to do with cryptocurrencies or any other virtual digital asset. He sought to allay concerns of market participants that policy-makers might ban blockchain itself, given the uncertainties around whether to prohibit private cryptocurrencies or not.
“The government has nothing against the blockchain technology. RBI digital currency itself will be based on a version of blockchain technology,” Somanathan said at a post-Budget meeting with industry executives in Mumbai, chaired by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman. Even the state-run Coffee Board has launched a blockchain system for identifying specific varieties of coffee from specific fields so that they fetch higher prices due to information on the availability of its origin, the finance secretary stressed.