The Tennessee governor has now signed a bill that recognizes the legal authority of smart contracts and blockchain technology in conducting electronic transactions. The state law also guards the ownership rights of specific information secured by blockchain technology.
According to legislative tracking site LegiScan, Governor Bill Haslam signed the bill on Thursday after being presented in January. The bill describes blockchain technology as quoted below.
Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that utilizes replicated, shared, decentralized and distributed ledger, which may be private or public, permitted or unpermitted, or spearheaded by tokenized or tokenless crypto economics. The ledger data is secured through cryptography; hence it’s immutable and provides an uncensored truth.
The bill defines smart contract as follows.
Smart contract is an event-driven program that operates on a decentralized, distributed, replicated and shared ledger and that can take custody and instruct transfer of assets on the ledger. According to the bill, smart contracts can also exist in commerce.
Similar laws have been proposed in Nebraska and Florida for implementation. In the recent past, Wyoming approved a bill to build a new asset category of cryptocurrency while Georgia passed a bill to endorse cryptocurrency for licenses and as state tax.
