Nepal, June 21 -- If Elon Musk had been born in Kathmandu instead of Pretoria, he would've had a Cyber Bureau file long before he had a company. PayPal moved money outside the banking system, which is a case under Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. Starlink runs on an unpermitted satellite spectrum. The crypto he keeps championing has been illegal in Nepal since 2021. We would have criminalised the man before anyone got the chance to believe in him.

That is the reflex I want to talk about. Something new arrives, and instead of working out how to govern it, we ban it, and then we never get around to understanding it. Crypto is the clearest case. The IMF said it plainly in its June 2026 report: The ban did not work; money kept flowing in the...