Dubai’s solidifying its spot as the top crypto hub in Asia while India’s central bank is trying to wall off banks from digital assets entirely. That’s the big takeaway from this week’s Asia Express roundup.
India’s RBI told lawmakers it wants banks insulated from crypto and private stablecoins. Their argument? Applying regular financial regulations to crypto could make it look safer than it is — a fake sense of security for users. They do want to keep the door open for regulated tokenization of government securities and bonds though.
This isn’t new. The RBI tried the same playbook back in 2018 when it cut crypto exchanges off from banking. The Supreme Court overturned that in 2020, saying the central bank hadn’t shown it was actually harmed. Now they’re trying again through Parliament.
Meanwhile, Russia’s gearing up for its digital ruble launch on September 1. Central bank governor Elvira Nabiullina says “everyone is ready.” The EU already hit the CBDC with preemptive sanctions back in April over Russia’s Ukraine war.
Japan’s SBI Crypto is shutting down its Bitcoin mining pool after five years. It’s the 12th largest pool globally with about 2.24% of network hashrate. Operations end July 31. No reason given.
And OFAC just sanctioned 134 crypto wallet addresses tied to ISIS-K, with Tether freezing 131 of them. The group had been soliciting crypto through donation campaigns on messaging platforms and websites.
