A Bengaluru police on Tuesday, sized an India’s first Bitcoin ATM kiosk, a few weeks after it was et up by the Unocoin Technologies, a crypto-exchange platform in India.
According to the Times of India reports, the police has arrested Harish BV, a co-founder and Chief Technology officer of Unicoin Technologies, from Rajajinagar while he was attending the crypto ATM which was installed in a shopping mall.
As per the reports, “The Central Crime Branch has seized a teller machine, two laptops, a mobile phone, three credit cards, five debit cards, a passport, five seals of Union company including cryptocurrency device and Rs 1.8 lakh. Harish was produced before the I ACMM court from where he was sent for seven days police custody.”
In a news reported by Bangalore Mirror on Wednesday, Alok Kumar a commissioner from the Bangalore city police said “Unocoin did not have a license from the RBI, the Securities and Exchange Board of India “or any other agency” allowing it to carry out bitcoin transactions.”
“They were running it without obtaining any trade license from the BBMP [Bangalore government],” he added.
However, Unicorn’s co-founder and CEO Sathvik Viswanath, denied this accusation by saying:
“His company business model is perfectly legal for Indians to buy, own or sell bitcoins, We got a lot of bad press after the finance minister announced a ban on cryptocurrency in Feb 2018.”
“The minister statement was clear: Cryptocurrency is not a legal tender in India, but he did not say it is an “illegal tender” too, there is a huge difference between both of these,” he added.