The cabinet of Angela Merkel, the president of Germany, has passed a law aimed at allowing the sale of securities without a paper certificate, Reuters has reported.
The law, which is part of the country's blockchain strategy, will allow the trading of securities without the need to document transactions on a paper certificate.
Olaf Scholz, the German Finance Minister, said:
"The paper certificate may be dear to some for nostalgic reasons, but the future belongs to its electronic version."
It should be noted the German word for values is wertpapieren or "papers of value," so the term itself seems to be outdated.
From now on, the paper certificate can be replaced by an entry in a central securities depository or in a register maintained by private sector banks. It is also possible to make an entry in a crypto securities register based on blockchain technology.
Even though both the German Ministry of Finance and the BaFin, the country's financial regulator, are among the strictest in Europe, the country is at the forefront of adopting security tokens.
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