Powerhouse California Eyes Blockchain for Rapidly Evolving Times

California State Senator Bob Hertzberg has introduced legislation to enable the use of blockchain technology for certain business practices in California. The “Blockchain Bill” SB 838 would allow companies to store data on the blockchain and create more secure methods for corporations to issue and transfer share certificates.

“The world around us is changing, and government must adapt with these rapidly evolving times,” said Senator Hertzberg. “California needs to continue our legacy of taking on new and developing technologies, especially ones like blockchain, which is being embraced worldwide and presents a strong level of security that is resistant to hacking.”

SB 838 just passed the Senate’s Banking and Financial Institutions Committee and is expected to be heard in the Senate Judiciary Committee in early May. It represents a big step forward by the state to “explore the unharnessed potential of blockchain technology” and tap into tech labs at public research giants UCLA and Berkeley.

Leading the race to become the world’s first “smart” government on the blockchain is Dubai, which aims to shred all bureaucratic paperwork by the year 2020, with the digitization of bill payments, license renewals, real estate transactions, visa applications and more.

It will require radical legislation to see just how far blockchain can go in transforming California’s government. It has the power to become the single most effective tool for overhauling bureaucratic processes that generate mountains of redundancy, burdensome government paperwork and slow, broken or erroneous tracking systems. In addition to the fintech revolution that is quietly reshaping global remittances and merchant payments, blockchain is rewriting societal views on the creation of money and how we store value.

Hertzberg sees merit in blockchain applications for voting technologies, land titles, government contracts, stock certificates and more.

The bill would permit the use of “tokenized crypto economics” to align the government with the state’s legacy as a bastion of bleeding edge technology.

(12) (A) A provision authorizing records administered by or on behalf of the corporation in which the names of all of the corporation’s stockholders of record, the address and number of shares registered in the name of each of those stockholders, and all issuances and transfers of stock of the corporation to be recorded and kept on or by means of blockchain technology or one or more distributed electronic networks, provided that all of the following requirements are met:

(i) The records can be converted into clearly legible paper within a reasonable period of time.

(ii) The records can be used to prepare the list of shareholders.

(iii) The records can be used to record information required to be included on stock certificates pursuant to this code.

(iv) The records can be used to record transfers of stock required pursuant to this code.

(B) For purposes of this paragraph, “blockchain technology or a distributed electronic network” means a distributed ledger technology that uses a distributed, decentralized, shared, and reciprocal ledger that may be public or private, permissioned 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.

Home to Google, YouTube, Facebook and Apple, California is an economic powerhouse with a gross domestic product of $2.443 trillion, making it the sixth largest economy in the world after the United States, China, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom. It counts 53 companies within its borders that ranked on the Fortune 500 list. Apple ranked #3 on the list by total revenue in the US.

Fortune 500 California Companies

3 – Apple
5 – McKesson
19 – Chevron
25 – Wells Fargo
27 – Alphabet
47 – Intel
52 – Disney
59 – Hewlett Packard Enterprise
60 – Cisco Systems
61 – HP
81 – Oracle
92 – Gilead Sciences
98 – Facebook
119 – Qualcomm
123 – Amgen
156 – Molina Healthcare
157 – PG&E
161 – Aecom
178 – Gap
187 – Visa
198 – Synnex
214 – CBRE Group
217 – Western Digital
219 – Ross Stores
222 – Farmers Insurance Exchange
235 – Edison International
247 – Core-Mark Holding
264 – PayPal Holdings
265 – Applied Materials
280 – Sempra Energy
302 – Pacific Life
310 – EBay
314 – Netflix
320 – Reliance Steel & Aluminum
326 – Salesforce.com
330 – Live Nation Entertainment
357 – Charles Schwab
383 – Tesla
387 – Nvidia
395 – A-Mark Precious Metals
405 – Franklin Resources
406 – Activision Blizzard
414 – Sanmina
430 – Avery Dennison
440 – Lam Research
443 – Adobe Systems
453 – Clorox
464 – First American Financial
465 – Symantec
468 – NetApp
474 – Mattel
493 – Robert Half International
498 – Yahoo

Source: Fortune

At the same, California has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation with sprawling tent cities throughout Los Angeles, despite political stump speeches and real estate development dollars to address the problem.

As more bureaucratic processes are converted to digital ledgers, the use of blockchain technology can evolve to help track public funds, monitor disbursements for public programs and enforce accountability for every taxpayer dollar that gets spent.

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Powerhouse California Eyes Blockchain for Rapidly Evolving Times

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