Hasta La Gadget!

Bitcoin traders are having a roller coaster ride everywhere, and India is no exception. After initial momentum that saw several Bitcoin exchanges emerge in India, the Reserve Bank of India issued a warning that sent many traders into a tizzy last year.

Now, Raghuram Rajan, the RBI’s new governor, has reiterated the central bank’s concerns about the credibility of Bitcoin. Addressing a technology conference in Mumbai earlier today, Rajan said there are ambiguities about who controls the value of Bitcoin.

“As a currency, I do worry a little bit when the underlying (value) fluctuates tremendously. One of the values of a currency is stability and the extent (to which) a currency is target of speculation as opposed to primarily a means of exchange,” he said, addressing a conference organized by technology industry body Nasscom.

I do think we have to understand the role of virtual currencies and how they will interact with the paper currency that you have…There are questions that need to be asked, one of them being, who will maintain value? Can we have confidence in unseen, unknown centres who maintain the value of the currency, or an algorithm that will maintain the value of the currency – we need more credibility there

But Bitcoin traders in India are not giving up yet. Last month, Highkart became the first (and the only) e-commerce site in India to start accepting payment in Bitcoin. Its co-founder Amit Kumar told me that one of the challenges facing growth of Bitcoin in India is that many early adopters are still hoarding the currency and not trading them. Highkart sold a pair of shoes from Provogue in exchange for Bitcoin as its first transaction. It has currently 150 products, and the startup does not charge anything extra for shipping the products.

“There’s nothing illegal in accepting Bitcoin — the RBI will take more time to come up with clarity,” Kumar added. Highkart and other Bitcoin traders in India say they are following all banking regulations prescribed by the RBI, leaving no room for any illegal activities.

Benson Samuel, a Bitcoin developer and consultant, said nothing much has changed for Bitcoin in India since the last time RBI issued the warning. Last month, an Indian lawyer even sent a legal notice to RBI asking for clarity on Bitcoin trading in India. 

A major concern for policymakers and regulators about Bitcoin is that it could be used for money laundering and other illegal activities. The Bitcoin traders, however, say that such concerns apply to any currency.

For its part, the RBI is not ruling out a future for Bitcoin in India yet.

“I don’t want to say that there is no future for these virtual currencies. I think it’s a process of evolution, but for now all we’ve done is express the kinds of concerns we have about it, without determining in any which way what we intend to do,” Rajan said earlier today.

Even as countries such as India and Russia think of Bitcoin as “potentially suspicious”, the virtual currency is mainstream now. Bitcoin was named the best Technology Achievement of 2013 at the Crunchies yesterday.

Mumbai’s housing market is a series of extremes: There are hundreds of skyscrapers being built, yet more than 60 percent of its citizens live in slums. Single families occupy immense towers, but the average living space is less than 14 square feet per person. Alicja Dobrucka, a Polish artist, set out document the city’s changing landscape last year.

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Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has been releasing a variety of documents that shows how the NSA is not only spying on US citizens, but apparently on its allies and foreign countries as well. We guess the idea of the US spying on other countries isn’t as ludicrous as it sounds, but having it actually confirmed in black and white is pretty damning. To that extent it seems that Snowden’s documents have cost US-based companies a fair amount of job opportunities in overseas markets, such as India, for example. According to reports, the Commission Election of India has announced that they will not be using Google as a partner to help create a voter registration tool that will provide Indian citizens with voting information.

According to the official statement, the Commission has chosen not to go with Google after “due consideration”, but inside sources have revealed to Reuters that one of the main reasons the Commission turned down Google’s services was amidst the spying and surveillance allegations that have strained the relationship between the US and India, along with the recent incident regarding an Indian diplomat which we guess did not help the entire situation. Google has released a statement saying, “It is unfortunate that our discussion with the Election Commission of India to change the way users access their electoral information, that is publicly available, through an online voter look up tool, were not fruitful.”

Like we said Google is not the first US company to have their business affected by the Snowden reports, as companies such as Cisco have been similarly affected as well, giving foreign companies the opportunity to offer their services as NSA-free alternatives.

Commission Election Of India Rejects Google’s Services Amidst Spying Concerns original content from Ubergizmo.

We usually associate Target more with bargain pricing than technology leadership, but the big-box retailer is about to defy those expectations with plans for a startup incubator in Bangalore, India. When it launches in January, the Target Accelerator Program will finance young tech firms specializing in content aggregation, data, mobile and search. Only one or two companies will make the cut each year, but Target hopes that their projects will improve our shopping experience. TAP is also a clever way to compete against digital-savvy retailers like Walmart, which already has an Indian footprint — Target may spot clever ideas (and buyout candidates) before they reach competitors.

Filed under: Misc, Internet

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Source: TechCrunch

According to Edward Snowden’s cache of documents, the NSA has been delving deeper into India’s servers than many could have imagined. The Hindu is reporting that, in addition to the usual PRISM snooping, the agency also vacuumed up data on the country’s nuclear, political and space programs. The newspaper says it has a document, entitled “A Week in the Life of PRISM reporting,” which allegedly shows that discussions between high-ranking politicians, nuclear and space scientists were being monitored in “real-time.” The revelation comes a few months after Kapil Sibal, India’s IT chief, denied that any such surveillance was being undertaken. Who knows? Maybe he was spending so much time on his other projects that he missed the clues. For its part, the US has insisted that its hands are clean in India. Back in June, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the US doesn’t look at individual conversations but instead “randomly surveys” data in order to discover communications that are “linked to terrorists.”

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Via: The Register

Source: The Hindu