California Passes Law Defining Various Blockchain And Crypto Terms
A draft has been created to amend California’s legislation for implementation of blockchain- and crypto related technologies.
For cryptocurrencies to become mainstream, they must be “approved” by countries and governments. Therefore, legislations are needed to make that happen. During the first part of 2018, many countries have been looking at how to implement and allow the blockchain to co-exist with them.
Korea’s government finally proposed the lifting of ICOs, a few months ago which would be a major move in the right direction for cryptocurrencies. It seems that government has finally realized the enormous potential of the blockchain industry and reconsidered its approach, via the special committee recommendation, which is chaired by none other than Korean President Moon Jae-in.
Soon after Korea’s proposal, Malta passed crypto friendly regulations. The rapport stated that these bills would give the cryptocurrency and blockchain technology the means to flourish.
The USA is an innovative country and is also looking at ways to deal with, and integrate the blockchain technology. A new draft states tell us that California might implement legislation for blockchain- and crypto related technologies. The bill was Assembly Bill 2658 that amends the California Civil Code, Government Code, Corporations Code, and Insurance Code to legalize the use of blockchain secured data and smart contracts in local and foreign commerce. The document contains important definitions of some key blockchain and crypto terms.
It was the Californian democrat and assembly member, Ian Calderon that has had success in his efforts to push through this draft, defining basic terms related to cryptocurrencies and the underlying distributed ledger technology (DLT). The Assembly Bill 2658 introduces legal definitions of “blockchain technology” and “smart contracts” and revises terms like “electronic record” and “electronic signature” to legalize record keeping using blockchain.
The bill states in section two that “The Secretary of the Government Operations Agency shall appoint a blockchain working group and designate the chairperson of that group on or before July 1, 2019, to evaluate all of the following; The uses of blockchain in the government and California-based business.”
In the same section, they also state the definition of the technology and not least, that it is secure and immutable.
“Blockchain technology” means distributed ledger technology that uses a distributed, decentralized, shared, and reciprocal ledger, that may be public or private, permission or permissionless, or driven by tokenized crypto economics or tokenless. The data on the ledger is protected with cryptography, is immutable, is auditable, and provides an uncensored truth.
Bill 2658 has been passed in the state’s Senate, on August 23 and in the Assembly, on August 27. Both houses have made several amendments since it was introduced in the California legislature earlier this year and for it to become law, it needs to be signed by Governor Jerry Brown.
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