US: New bill would legally recognize digital signatures on a blockchain
Congressman and Blockchain Caucus Co-Chair David Schweikert has advanced a bill to make good on the crypto adage, "code is law." Republican Congressman David Schweikert (R-AZ) has referred a new bill to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce that, if passed, would recognize digital signatures on the blockchain as enforceable by law.This is particularly important for the enforceability of smart contracts, which automate transactions or other contractual obligations according to binding, pre-specified rules. Smart contract advocates have long used the adage "code is law," and the new....
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The bill would give legal recognition to transfers and registrations made through blockchain smart contracts. On March 29, the Iowa House of Representatives passed a bill that seeks to legally recognize transactions and registrations made via blockchain smart contracts. The bill — SF541 — gained Senate approval earlier in the month. Under the auspices of the new bill, smart contracts would be given the same legal status as regular contracts, while distributed-ledger technology would be viewed as a reliable electronic store of record. Regarding smart contracts, the bill states:“The bill....
Rep. Soto and Rep. Schweikert call for recognizing blockchain signatures as legal instruments in their new bill.
If passed the bill would amend tax laws to recognize digital currencies as a form of property.
The Diet in Japan (the legislature consisting of the Lower and the Upper Houses) has passed a bill today that mandates the regulation of bitcoin and virtual currency exchanges by the Financial Services Agency (FSA) in Japan. Japan has enacted a bill today that will see the regulation of operators of virtual currency exchanges, a Japan Times report revealed. The revised law will see virtual currency exchange operators mandated to register with the Japanese Financial Services Agency. The bill also enables the agency to have the authority to conduct on-site inspections and will require....
Bitcoin solutions developerAirbitz has developed a mobile wallet that now supports deterministic transaction signatures. The transaction signatures support the RFC 6979 standard. To understand why this is significant, here is some background on signatures and why they are necessary. Bitcoin uses elliptic curve digital signatures which require a random value with every transaction. Multiple transactions utilizing the same private key and a poor random number generator for transaction signing may reveal a significant portion of the private key. Digital Signatures Explained. In an open source....