By Team Giottus
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The Indian crypto community was hoping for some sort of TDS/taxation relief in the Union Budget 2023-24. However, India has maintained its hardline stance with no modifications from the restrictive crypto tax rules that were in place in 2022.
Apart from that, here are some of the top stories from the crypto industry this week.
India’s largest retail chain, Reliance Retail will begin accepting retail payments in digital rupee in a move that could supercharge the adoption of the country’s CBDC.
Reliance has partnered with ICICI Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, and fintech Innoviti Technologies to launch in-store support for the digital rupee.
Shoppers who opt to utilize the nation's CBDC, known as the e₹-R, will receive a QR code that can be scanned at the store to complete payment. The dynamic QR code is a crucial component of the digital rupee acceptance system.
India’s central bank started to pilot the e₹-R in December for retail markets across select Indian cities.
Finland-based company Membrane Finance has launched a fully-reserved stablecoin backed by the euro. The new "EUROe" coin is reported as "the first and only EU-regulated crypto stablecoin," according to the corporation, which holds a license from the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority (Fin-FSA).
According to the company, each EUROe token is backed by at least one fiat Euro. The company expects that the stablecoin will enable "near-instant payments" at almost no cost as opposed to the high costs and cumbersome processes of traditional finance.
The EUROe will initially be available on Ethereum, with support for additional blockchain networks planned for the future.
Auto giant Toyota Motor Corporation, the largest conglomerate in Japan, is set to delve into the use cases of blockchain technology by sponsoring a Web3 hackathon for decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) developers.
The Astar Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping advance the development of the Astar Network (ASTR) has announced the upcoming Web3 hackathon with the support of Toyota Motor Corporation.
Toyota is hosting its first Web3 event as it seeks to use cutting-edge technology to "support its objective of boosting the company's operations."
In 2020, Toyota opened a blockchain lab to research the potential of distributed ledger technology and its application to the auto sector.
BNB Chain, a blockchain platform launched by Binance has released the white paper for BNB Greenfield, a new decentralized data storage system that will round out Binance’s existing decentralized network.
The decentralized storage system that integrates Web3 applications with smart contracts will be powered by BNB tokens, according to the project release. To facilitate website hosting, publishing, data storage, and private cloud applications, the system aims to give users and decentralized applications (dapps) full ownership of their data.
Users who own BNB tokens and a BNB Chain address can store data on BNB Greenfield, similar to Web2 cloud storage services like DropBox.
Retail giant Pick n Pay will now accept bitcoin for payments throughout all of their stores in South Africa.
Across its 2000 outlets, customers will be able to make purchases using cryptocurrencies via smartphone apps or by scanning a QR code and accepting the exchange rate to the South African rand at the time of payment.
This came after the country’s financial regulator, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), revised its financial advisory legislation in 2022 to classify crypto assets as financial products.
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Disclaimer: This article was authored by Giottus Crypto Exchange as a part of a paid partnership with The News Minute. Crypto products and NFTs are unregulated and can be highly risky. There may be no regulatory recourse for any loss from such transactions. Please do your own research before investing and seek independent legal/financial advice if you are unsure about the investments.