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"id": 1583344,
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"type": "speech",
"speaker_name": "Kesses, UDA",
"speaker_title": "Hon. Julius Rutto",
"speaker": null,
"content": " Thank you very much, Hon. Temporary Speaker, for recognising me. I want to remind my good brother and senior from Endebess, Hon. Pukose, that being a member of the Committee I am happy to get an opportunity to weigh in on the information that we derived from stakeholders. It is true to say the market is dynamic. I appreciate this country for recognising that there are some things you cannot change. We say change is constant. One of the changes we cannot avoid is the aspect that the market is ever changing. The whole world is shifting. It came from steel money to stable coins to paper money to card money and now we are using digital money through M-Pesa and other platforms. As we speak, the market has shifted further to virtual assets where you store your value in an asset that is not visible. Something that astonished us when we engaged with stakeholders is that we learned a lot that this market has been existing for some time and the value transacted goes into trillions of US dollars. This is something that we cannot avoid. Something to note on the Floor of the House is that there are countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and many others that have accepted this as a medium of exchange, where you transact virtually and derive value by obtaining commodities in the market for your consumption. Therefore, this brought about the need for Kenya to adopt it in an unofficial manner. It is in use because many Kenyans and business people are in it and many great people who have been investing in other aspects of investments have even spread their risk portfolio to virtual assets. We, therefore, need to organise this market because the risk that comes with it is that there is no place or point where you can reference. There is also no physical office or structure to go to whenever you have an issue to inquire, obtain information, or even petition your complaints whenever you have a case arising out of it. This Bill will, therefore, put in place infrastructure that will organise the market into a tangible physical point where someone can be seen, engaged and issues addressed. I urge this House that as we look into it this is something that we must embrace since it is the way the world is going. If big economies like the United States, United Kingdom and South Africa in Africa, which is an economy we can refer to within our African boundaries have adopted it, Kenya should be proud that we have opted in as the fourth in line. We should adopt it, encourage and onboard many people to invest in a secure manner. The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for informationpurposes only. A certified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}