2 things. 1: even a private blockchain significantly helps with trust. If someone attempted to double spend, such an attack would be immediately obvious to eve

2 things. 1: even a private blockchain significantly helps with trust. If someone attempted to double spend, such an attack would be immediately obvious to everyone. At which point you send in the lawyers. That's valuable. Blockchain Purists will disagree. But the point is that it is easy to make untrusted transactions with people, if attempted attacks are merely illuminated, and you know who the attack is coming from. And 2: even if we assume everyone is "trusted", financial settlement is a very outdated system. Mistakes are easy to make when people are looking though filing cabinets to figure out who owns what. My definition of a "Blockchain" is merely a shared database where people sign transactions with their private keys. The mere act of everyone signing everything with private keys, and store in a shared data as is valuable in and of itself.