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> If property deeds were on the block chain then it'd be trivial. True, but then a ton of other things would be much, much more difficult. Like, what happens

> If property deeds were on the block chain then it'd be trivial. True, but then a ton of other things would be much, much more difficult. Like, what happens if Joe has the deed to a home, but then Joe dies, and nobody has the key to his wallet? If you have some kind of way, on the blockchain, to solve this problem, and reassign the property without Joe’s private key, then what you have is a situation where human decisions take priority over cryptographic guarantees. You can’t have it both ways—either the human decisions are trusted over the cryptographic guarantees, or vice versa. This is essentially just a reinvention of centralized real property registration systems, where the current owner of a particular piece of property must be registered either at some government office (in a registration system) or on the blockchain (hypothetically). One of the reasons you want title insurance is because some deed (a piece of paper) may be defective for various reasons, and having a centralized registry (either at a government office, or on a blockchain) makes this problem much less likely. I don’t see what advantage blockchain has here.

Pet_Ant 3y ago
> If you have some kind of way, on the blockchain, to solve this problem, and reassign the property without Joe’s private key, then what you have is a situation where human decisions take priority over cryptographic guarantees. I have thought about this and it's solveable. Physical goods have to have some sort of "sanctioned violence" to enforce, so there is always a government. They have a public key that is known and publish updates. So if something gets legally confiscated, there is a message published by the government that amends the chain. "The owner of X is now Y". > I don’t see what advantage blockchain has here. Because it unifies ownership under a central mechanism and you don't need to wait in line at a government office. You have an API and a log. It doesn't really need to be distributed just public I guess, but having the ability to have a private copy for reference would be a benefit.
- klodolph 3y ago
  I still don’t see how blockchain is a part of this. You can have an API and a log anyway, if you want one.

Pet_Ant 3y ago

> If you have some kind of way, on the blockchain, to solve this problem, and reassign the property without Joe’s private key, then what you have is a situation where human decisions take priority over cryptographic guarantees. I have thought about this and it's solveable. Physical goods have to have some sort of "sanctioned violence" to enforce, so there is always a government. They have a public key that is known and publish updates. So if something gets legally confiscated, there is a message published by the government that amends the chain. "The owner of X is now Y". > I don’t see what advantage blockchain has here. Because it unifies ownership under a central mechanism and you don't need to wait in line at a government office. You have an API and a log. It doesn't really need to be distributed just public I guess, but having the ability to have a private copy for reference would be a benefit.

klodolph 3y ago
I still don’t see how blockchain is a part of this. You can have an API and a log anyway, if you want one.