China's apex court legally recognizes blockchain-based records as evidence

Electronic data recorded on a blockchain can now be submitted as evidence in legal disputes in China, the Supreme People’s Court announced on September 6.

The apex court has announced new rules, which come into effect today, September 7, address a number of issues relating to how internet courts should deal with legal disputes in the country.

The regulation has been passed by the Supreme People's Court Judicial Committee at its recent meeting held on September 3, 2018.

"Internet courts shall recognize digital data that are submitted as evidence if relevant parties collected and stored these data via blockchain with digital signatures, reliable timestamps and hash value verification or via a digital deposition platform, and can prove the authenticity of such technology used," the Supreme Court said (as translated by CoinDesk).

Previously, in a copyright infringement case, the Hangzhou internet court had ruled that blockchain-based evidence was legally acceptable.