Laxmicoin, digital currency named after the Indian goddess of wealth, is being delayed by its creators until the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) gives its official clearance to do so.
If you’ve been reading Cointelegraph long enough then you know the India’s officials’ attitude towards Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general. To put it shortly – negative as hell, going as far as raiding crypto-oriented companies stationed in India to find the guilty and punish the found. This witch-hunt in the last week before the last New Year’s Eve has discouraged many crypto-enthusiasts from the Bitcoin community of India.
And not just them. One of the Laxmicoin’s problems is that due to the raids two month back, the investors that were ready to pour $2 million into the project are not eager to do so anymore. Names of these venture capitalists are left undisclosed but it became known from one of the crypto’s founders that former are stationed in US, though not without their hands in Indian market.
The co-founders of the yet to be crypto from India, Raj Dangi and Mitts Daki, stated that until RBI decides in their favor, the works on the digital coin are halted. Even though the financial support by the investors lacks only signature on a contract, there some technical details that are curiously left out.
For example, the initial decision was to mine half of all the Laxmicoin before it was launched into the masses. Out of these 20% would be left with the developers and 30% would be given away to people who “work hard and government pays them minimum wages.” While I do see reason in that, it is still unclear, how exactly would the “charitable” Laxmicoin be distributed. Let’s not forget about the other 20%, there were no info on how exactly would these be used. Surely, it would likely be impossible for India’s crypto-community to mine everything for themselves due to problems with electricity as well as with bandwidth. The necessity of mining rigs or at least powerful GPU is also a limiting factor.
However, mist surrounding the details of the first batch of Laxmicoin is not the only thing that concerns the cryptocommunity. Much more negative mark got the fact that the coin is closed code, which does not allow the IT crowd to make improvements or understand how it ticks. Some, like the Delhi bitcoin meetup organizer, Sylvester Liang go as far as to say that Laxmicoin would not be accepted into the ecosystem of cryptocurrency due it being both closed and in a way centralized. Latter being the absolute opposite of what cryptocurrencies stand for.
Nevertheless, it doesn’t matter much how the community would accept the unborn Coin. The RBI has not given any response yet and it there are no hints of doing it any soon. As an active member of Indian bitcoin community, Maninder Gulati puts it: “You cannot go to a government and say, ‘here’s my digital currency; please accept it’. That cannot happen.”