Bitcoin and other digital currencies are now legal in the US state of California. The news was announced by California’s Governor Jerry Brown after California’s lawmakers approved the AB 129 bill. The bill revises Section 107 of the state’s “Corporations Code” which forbad “anything but the lawful money of the United States” as payments for goods or services. The revision now allows “various forms of alternative currency such as digital currency”.
The bill was put forward by Democratic Assemblyman Roger Dickinson in a bid to bring California’s legislation in the area into the modern era. Without the bill being passed, digital points and rewards programs would have theoretically remained illegal in the state.
The move comes in the wake of “clarification” on digital currency usage across the United States. The Texas Department of Banking recently recognized that bitcoin was not a currency but legal in the state. As in California, bitcoin is still not regarded as “legal tender” in Texas.
An almost universal distrust of the digital currency followed the collapse of MtGox in February 2014, with some calling bitcoin nothing less than a “digital Ponzi scheme”. The failure of MtGox meant bitcoin holders lost in the region of 200 million dollars alongside a dramatic devaluing of the currency. Despite the issues, the market for digital currencies appears relatively resilient, with increasingly numbers of web hosts and other businesses adopting bitcoin payments.
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