Luxembourg parliament passed a blockchain bill into law to facilitate the use of blockchain technology in the financial services.
According to the February 14th official announcement, the new law will provide transparency to the financial market participants and assure legal certainty for the circulation of securities using the blockchain technology.
“The transfer of securities via the blockchain does not yet have legal certainty. The bill should provide greater certainty for investors and make the transfer of securities more efficient by reducing the number of intermediaries,” the Chamber of Deputies, the country’s parliament, noted.
A Landslide Victory
The bill 7363 was passed with a massive approval as only 2 out of 60 lawmakers voted against the bill.
The new legal framework will grant blockchain-based transactions the same legal status as traditional ones, according to the local news outlet the Luxembourg Times.
Talking to the Luxembourg Times last year, the country’s Finance Minister Pierre Gramegna said: “The goal is to make sure that, if you do transactions using blockchain, you have legal certainty and the same legal strength as if you had done the same transaction without using blockchain, in a traditional manner.”
With this move, Luxembourg has joined the with a legal framework for the blockchain ecosystem.
Last year in March, the Financial Regulator CSSF issued a warning against investments in cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings (ICOs) to aware the investors against the volatile market of digital currencies. The warning stressed on the shady business practices of various blockchain firms as they are not entirely transparent with incomprehensible business models. The regulator also noted that Luxembourg’s central bank does not consider cryptocurrencies as legal tender.
Despite being one of the Financial hubs in Europe, the country has a very with only 4 percent of Luxembourg’s population owning cryptocurrencies, according to a 2018 survey by Ipsos.
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