this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
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I'm not sure I agree with your mortgage insurance example.
The problem isn't record keeping, but answering the question "if you use an asset as collateral for a loan to purchase that asset, what happens to the loan if the purchase is invalidated"?
Block chain might make title searches easier, but it wont have any impact whatsoever on the existence of a legal system that can independently audit and invalidate contracts after the fact.
The asset isn't digital, so ownership can't be enforced digitally.
The current system is a pile of digital databases and paper records that need to be checked before sales can happen. Actual questions or disputes are handled by the courts. Block chain can't change that, only change the underlying way we store the data.
And the solution to that problem is good record keeping. Blockchain can improve the record keeping by making it public and verifiable.
Again, it's not a record keeping problem, it's a problem with people being able to dispute the records, and transactions being able to be nullified.
The records are public today, and you can go check them. It's usually even accessible via the Internet.
Part of buying a house is the mortgage company checking all those records, and other ways things can go sideways.
Issues usually aren't because someone misread the records, but because a record was created that was invalid, or things you can't record on the block chain, like "back taxes" or "grandma had two wills".
The block chain doesn't add anything that a public website doesn't provide more simply, and it's just as susceptible to the courts coming in and saying that a transaction was invalid because the estate executed the wrong will, or something like that.
Your two examples of the causes, "back taxes" and "grandma has two wills" would be solved still in the case of Blockchain. I'm no die hard fan of crypto currency. However if taxes were verifiable on chain, wills were verifiable and unique globally, then there would be no second will.
Say what you will about Blockchain being one big slow database, it is still one big slow database of huge magnitudes that enforces global uniqueness. Again I'm not entirely sold on the premise but look at how our taxes are done, social security numbers, identities. All these problems stem from a lack of a decentralized authority. If some random credit agency says bill down the street is me, we have no concrete and secure means of verifying uniqueness.
Personally, i have been saying for years that identity should be tied to asymmetric encryption. Definitely do not need Blockchain exclusively to solve these problems, but it's better than what we have now.