Legislators from the US state of Wyoming have tabled legislation that would allow the issuance of tokenized stock certificates using blockchain technology.
This piece of legislation was tabled on Wednesday by several lawmakers’ chief among them being republican lawmaker Jared Olsen, and Democratic Party lawmaker, Chris Roth-fuss. The two enjoyed the backing of 6 other house members as they tabled House Bill 0185 which was titled “Corporate stock-certificate tokens”. The bill proposes an amendment that will permit the use of tokenized digital share certificates in lieu of paper based versions.
The proposed bill states that;
“The articles of incorporation or bylaws of a corporation may specify that all or a portion of the shares of the corporation may be represented by share certificates in the form of certificate tokens,”
If this bill is passed, share certificates which represent stocks ownership would be able to be stored electronically, and the information entered into the blockchain as well as any other auditable database. This information will then be shared electronically to the issuing corporation.
These certificates would also be authorized via network signatures, which are uniquely identifying hashes- of two directors or two officers of a corporation.
If this bill makes it through the house and is made law, it will come into effect from the 1st of July this year according to the document.
This is not the first of efforts made by the state of Wyoming towards the enactment of several crypto related legislations. The state approved a bill to let blockchain startups operate within a regulatory sandbox for a legislative vote, just last week.
The same state had unanimously passed a bill that exempts utility tokens from securities regulations last February, which proves just how serious the state is promoting crypto adoption
