7 ms·

Except real estate. Someone can already come with a made up deed and say they own your house. Blockchain would make this much more secure than it is today.

oblio 5y ago
How does this work with privacy, though? Would you be able to see all the properties someone owns?
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Would you be able to see all the properties someone owns? Property records are public in most jurisdictions.
- crysin 5y ago
  You kind of already can, at least in the US. Property ownership is public record and so are the property taxes individuals pay.
- wombat-man 5y ago
  that's how it works in my city. If you want, you can incorporate a company and buy the property through that though.
  - bena 5y ago
    Still traceable though. I had a friend who did that and his name was still got attached to his physical address.
    - wombat-man 5y ago
      hm, maybe. I can't find my landlord's name attached to the building I owned. But his name is associated with the company which owns it. My old boss also would buy property through LLCs, so if I looked up his address he would not be associated with it. I was not able to link him to the company because the LLC didn't actually transact any business aside from holding this property. But maybe I just don't know where to look.
wombat-man 5y ago
I mean a fake deed document will only get you so far. Depends on what kind of scam you're trying to pull though. I am renting someone's apartment and I didn't look at any deed, but every property is registered with the city and I can verify ownership that way.
wpietri 5y ago
Perhaps you could break down the exact steps that mean a fraudulent claim of ownership would be impossible? Given the frequent theft of cryptocurrencies, it seems like false claims of ownership on the blockchain would not only be possible, but common.
- skybrian 5y ago
  Typically such theft happens not on the blockchain but rather blockchain-adjacent. This works because blockchains are too expensive and inconvenient to use. Instead people use exchanges, which provide none of the guarantees. And that’s a basic rule of finance (and fraud): security measures will be bypassed because trusting people is always cheaper and easier, until it fails. I read a fantastic book about this recently: Lying For Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of Our World https://www.amazon.com/Lying-Money-Legendary-Frauds-Workings-ebook/dp/B078WFT5JV https://www.amazon.com/Lying-Money-Legendary-Frauds-Workings...
  - wpietri 5y ago
    I agree plenty of theft is happening on exchanges. But that's because most of the actual use has shifted to exchanges. Why? Convenience, sure, but also safety. Back when direct blockchain transactions were more popular, there we plenty of stories of thefts recorded right on the blockchain. Mt Gox was one of many examples.
    - skybrian 5y ago
      Wasn't Mt. Gox an exchange? (One of the early ones.)
      - wpietri 5y ago
        Yes, and somebody stole a lot of money from them via the blockchain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox#Bankruptcy;_stolen_bitcoin_(2014%E2%80%93ongoing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox#Bankruptcy;_stolen_bit...
neatze 5y ago
There are multiple copies of deed within multiple organization, what kind of person just trusts single copy without due diligence ?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
avianlyric 5y ago
Maybe in your country. But where I'm from pretty much all property is recorded by the government run Land Registry, and their DB is the source of truth. Not a single blockchain in sight, and has been working fine for decades.
ska 5y ago
Real estate has most of the same problems as any other physical good. Really the only difference is that it's (usually) easier to locate & define. I'm struggling to think of one aspect of real estate records that is improved by blockchain that couldn't be improved equivalently by other technology (and in some jurisdictions, has). Any central registry addresses the problem you point out, especially with a court system backing it to resolve issues that run deeper.
defaultname 5y ago
There is a whole legal system around property transfer in most reasonably run countries. Title registration, a legal process including a process to refute a claim. Simply having a fraudulent piece of paper saying "Deed" doesn't go very far beyond getting you a free trip to jail. Further I don't see how a blockchain would help at all. So if I can acquire someone's keys I can transfer their property to myself and I'm thereby the full and legal, irrefutable owner? It has all of the same problems mentioned about the Mona Lisa.
- eldaisfish 5y ago
  You've hit the nail on an issue that bothers me about the tech industry in general - not understanding how the real world works and trying to create problems where none exist. This is in an attempt to shoehorn "tech" into the process when there is no need. The block chain in real estate is a great example. The blockchain and crypto currencies in general both seem to be solutions looking for a problem.
  - giaour 5y ago
    The real world problem in real estate titling today is the pervasive need for title insurance. In a typical real estate transaction, both the buyer and the seller will have an insurance policy to cover losses stemming from a sale based on an illegitimate title. In theory, because title registers are public (at least in the US) and run by a the local government, you could have higher trust in a title (and therefore lower title insurance premiums) if you could query the current holder from the appropriate government. That said, I'm not sure why blockchain makes more sense for this use case than, say, a read-only API at land-register.<city/county>.<state>.gov.
    - defaultname 5y ago
      Title insurance is very inexpensive because there are few actual title disputes. Those that do arise are usually of right of way claims, encroachments, or survey issues. Actual cases of someone defrauding someone of property is astonishingly rare.
- 5y ago
backtoyoujim 5y ago
And car registration. And with the rise of casual to state enforced surveillance in public and private spaces I can imagine near absolute resource tracking "cradle to cradle" via RFID, GPS, wi-fi, surveillance video, and block chain.
bena 5y ago
Yes, they could. You know why they don't? Because the courthouse keeps the records. And we trust the courthouse. No one is going to do shit for someone walking in with a piece of paper with "I own this house" written on it. Or, let me clarify, you aren't going to get far, because sooner or later, those papers will be checked against the records kept by the government.
yongjik 5y ago
"Sorry Mr. Anderson, the house you've been living in for twenty years now belongs to Ms. White. The blockchain has decided. You have to vacate your house in two weeks." "But... your honor, that's preposterous! The Californian Blockchain Deed Corporation was hacked last summer, and we all know their private key was stolen! I'm a simple man, I don't even know what's a 'private key,' how could the system do this to me?" "(clears throat) You Honor, my client, Ms. White, has already sold her house - as we all know the transaction is irreversible. If Mr. Anderson doesn't cooperate, Ms. White will be homeless in two weeks. We respectively request the court to proceed with the decision."
kingsuper20 5y ago
I hear what you are saying, but think a more interesting case can be made for items that are (a) fungible and (b) accepted as a medium of exchange. Ownership of gold in a vault would be a good one to critique, although I suppose you'd have to find some way to pay for the transactions. If gold fails this test, then I can't see any point in using a blockchain for any store of value but simply as an in-and-out mechanism for transmitting money.
praxulus 5y ago
If grandma loses her private key, or dies without sharing her key's passcode, what happens to her property? If the county has a mechanism to fix that anyway, how is that blockchain any better than a county-run, publicly readable database?
- TchoBeer 5y ago
  Because it can handle transactions without having to consult the centrally run database and is less likely to be down
  - leifg 5y ago
    Why is uptime such an important issue? It’s not like you want to sell high value properties 1000 times a second.
  - acdha 5y ago
    Do you really think the entire country runs on an old copy of Microsoft Access? Databases are routinely replicated and in this case there’s a natural partitioning scheme: your transaction is recorded by your local clerk and replicated to state mirrors. Since updates only happen in one place, each node only needs write capacity to handle local traffic – a huge advantage over a blockchain – and read replicas are trivial. Put another way, the banking system handles orders of magnitude more traffic with far fewer resources than a blockchain. There’s no reason to think people are suddenly going to start making real estate transactions at a significantly greater volume than credit card transactions.
not2b 5y ago
Someone can social-engineer your password out of you, and you're saying that if they obtain access to your Bitcoin wallet they can take your house from you (transfer it to another party), in exchange for nothing. That's a lot less secure than what we have today. Blockchain just trades one set of security problems for another.

oblio 5y ago

How does this work with privacy, though? Would you be able to see all the properties someone owns?

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> Would you be able to see all the properties someone owns? Property records are public in most jurisdictions.
crysin 5y ago
You kind of already can, at least in the US. Property ownership is public record and so are the property taxes individuals pay.
wombat-man 5y ago
that's how it works in my city. If you want, you can incorporate a company and buy the property through that though.
- bena 5y ago
  Still traceable though. I had a friend who did that and his name was still got attached to his physical address.
  - wombat-man 5y ago
    hm, maybe. I can't find my landlord's name attached to the building I owned. But his name is associated with the company which owns it. My old boss also would buy property through LLCs, so if I looked up his address he would not be associated with it. I was not able to link him to the company because the LLC didn't actually transact any business aside from holding this property. But maybe I just don't know where to look.

wombat-man 5y ago

I mean a fake deed document will only get you so far. Depends on what kind of scam you're trying to pull though. I am renting someone's apartment and I didn't look at any deed, but every property is registered with the city and I can verify ownership that way.

wpietri 5y ago

Perhaps you could break down the exact steps that mean a fraudulent claim of ownership would be impossible? Given the frequent theft of cryptocurrencies, it seems like false claims of ownership on the blockchain would not only be possible, but common.

skybrian 5y ago
Typically such theft happens not on the blockchain but rather blockchain-adjacent. This works because blockchains are too expensive and inconvenient to use. Instead people use exchanges, which provide none of the guarantees. And that’s a basic rule of finance (and fraud): security measures will be bypassed because trusting people is always cheaper and easier, until it fails. I read a fantastic book about this recently: Lying For Money: How Legendary Frauds Reveal the Workings of Our World https://www.amazon.com/Lying-Money-Legendary-Frauds-Workings-ebook/dp/B078WFT5JV https://www.amazon.com/Lying-Money-Legendary-Frauds-Workings...
- wpietri 5y ago
  I agree plenty of theft is happening on exchanges. But that's because most of the actual use has shifted to exchanges. Why? Convenience, sure, but also safety. Back when direct blockchain transactions were more popular, there we plenty of stories of thefts recorded right on the blockchain. Mt Gox was one of many examples.
  - skybrian 5y ago
    Wasn't Mt. Gox an exchange? (One of the early ones.)
    - wpietri 5y ago
      Yes, and somebody stole a lot of money from them via the blockchain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox#Bankruptcy;_stolen_bitcoin_(2014%E2%80%93ongoing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox#Bankruptcy;_stolen_bit...

neatze 5y ago

There are multiple copies of deed within multiple organization, what kind of person just trusts single copy without due diligence ?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

avianlyric 5y ago

Maybe in your country. But where I'm from pretty much all property is recorded by the government run Land Registry, and their DB is the source of truth. Not a single blockchain in sight, and has been working fine for decades.

ska 5y ago

Real estate has most of the same problems as any other physical good. Really the only difference is that it's (usually) easier to locate & define. I'm struggling to think of one aspect of real estate records that is improved by blockchain that couldn't be improved equivalently by other technology (and in some jurisdictions, has). Any central registry addresses the problem you point out, especially with a court system backing it to resolve issues that run deeper.

defaultname 5y ago

There is a whole legal system around property transfer in most reasonably run countries. Title registration, a legal process including a process to refute a claim. Simply having a fraudulent piece of paper saying "Deed" doesn't go very far beyond getting you a free trip to jail. Further I don't see how a blockchain would help at all. So if I can acquire someone's keys I can transfer their property to myself and I'm thereby the full and legal, irrefutable owner? It has all of the same problems mentioned about the Mona Lisa.

eldaisfish 5y ago
You've hit the nail on an issue that bothers me about the tech industry in general - not understanding how the real world works and trying to create problems where none exist. This is in an attempt to shoehorn "tech" into the process when there is no need. The block chain in real estate is a great example. The blockchain and crypto currencies in general both seem to be solutions looking for a problem.
- giaour 5y ago
  The real world problem in real estate titling today is the pervasive need for title insurance. In a typical real estate transaction, both the buyer and the seller will have an insurance policy to cover losses stemming from a sale based on an illegitimate title. In theory, because title registers are public (at least in the US) and run by a the local government, you could have higher trust in a title (and therefore lower title insurance premiums) if you could query the current holder from the appropriate government. That said, I'm not sure why blockchain makes more sense for this use case than, say, a read-only API at land-register.<city/county>.<state>.gov.
  - defaultname 5y ago
    Title insurance is very inexpensive because there are few actual title disputes. Those that do arise are usually of right of way claims, encroachments, or survey issues. Actual cases of someone defrauding someone of property is astonishingly rare.
5y ago

backtoyoujim 5y ago

And car registration. And with the rise of casual to state enforced surveillance in public and private spaces I can imagine near absolute resource tracking "cradle to cradle" via RFID, GPS, wi-fi, surveillance video, and block chain.

bena 5y ago

Yes, they could. You know why they don't? Because the courthouse keeps the records. And we trust the courthouse. No one is going to do shit for someone walking in with a piece of paper with "I own this house" written on it. Or, let me clarify, you aren't going to get far, because sooner or later, those papers will be checked against the records kept by the government.

yongjik 5y ago

"Sorry Mr. Anderson, the house you've been living in for twenty years now belongs to Ms. White. The blockchain has decided. You have to vacate your house in two weeks." "But... your honor, that's preposterous! The Californian Blockchain Deed Corporation was hacked last summer, and we all know their private key was stolen! I'm a simple man, I don't even know what's a 'private key,' how could the system do this to me?" "(clears throat) You Honor, my client, Ms. White, has already sold her house - as we all know the transaction is irreversible. If Mr. Anderson doesn't cooperate, Ms. White will be homeless in two weeks. We respectively request the court to proceed with the decision."

kingsuper20 5y ago

I hear what you are saying, but think a more interesting case can be made for items that are (a) fungible and (b) accepted as a medium of exchange. Ownership of gold in a vault would be a good one to critique, although I suppose you'd have to find some way to pay for the transactions. If gold fails this test, then I can't see any point in using a blockchain for any store of value but simply as an in-and-out mechanism for transmitting money.

praxulus 5y ago

If grandma loses her private key, or dies without sharing her key's passcode, what happens to her property? If the county has a mechanism to fix that anyway, how is that blockchain any better than a county-run, publicly readable database?

TchoBeer 5y ago
Because it can handle transactions without having to consult the centrally run database and is less likely to be down
- leifg 5y ago
  Why is uptime such an important issue? It’s not like you want to sell high value properties 1000 times a second.
- acdha 5y ago
  Do you really think the entire country runs on an old copy of Microsoft Access? Databases are routinely replicated and in this case there’s a natural partitioning scheme: your transaction is recorded by your local clerk and replicated to state mirrors. Since updates only happen in one place, each node only needs write capacity to handle local traffic – a huge advantage over a blockchain – and read replicas are trivial. Put another way, the banking system handles orders of magnitude more traffic with far fewer resources than a blockchain. There’s no reason to think people are suddenly going to start making real estate transactions at a significantly greater volume than credit card transactions.

not2b 5y ago

Someone can social-engineer your password out of you, and you're saying that if they obtain access to your Bitcoin wallet they can take your house from you (transfer it to another party), in exchange for nothing. That's a lot less secure than what we have today. Blockchain just trades one set of security problems for another.