The Italian government – Senato della Repubblica released an official statement on 23rd January, pointing that an amendment on crypto and blockchain technology regulations has been positively voted by the committee of Public Works and committee of Constitutional Affairs.
This amendment is the first official move by the Italian government to regulate the mechanisms of implementing blockchain solutions and cryptocurrencies in Italy. The amendment states that blockchain-driven data records can now be legally utilized to timestamp and proof the validity of documents. According to the statement, timestamping and recording IT documents with the help of DLT and blockchain would be a legal time validation tool, as referred to in EU regulation Article 41 no.910/2014.
The amendment, however, does not mean that Italy will soon have a working crypto regulation framework. The document must be approved by the “Agency for Digital Italy”, where specialists have to underline the basic structure of what can and what can not be done with DLT and blockchain technologies.
Also, the voted amendment clarifies the differences between Distributed Ledger Technology and Smart Contracts, which would also be a part of the new regulatory framework.
After the report from “Agency for Digital Italy” and the necessary tweaks in the framework, the final form of the amendment must be voted yet again – this time by the Chamber of Deputies and Senato della Repubblica.
Italy is still behind countries like Switzerland and Malta which already have established themselves as global blockchain industry hubs.