If I get a piece of paper that says I own some asset there is offices full of people who are dedicated to ensuring that piece of paper properly represents some piece of land, car, security etc. Why would you not want to automate such a system?
I've been saying this for couple of years now: the most likely "disruption" from blockchain technology is going to be in notarial functions. The concept of coloured coins[0] allows to use a globally available, publicly verifiable, and for all intents and purposes a forgery-immune register to verify contracts.
Cutting through all the [templated] legalese, we can say: "Contract A, between parties K and L, concerning transaction T: T shall be considered done and legally binding once Coloured Coin X has been paid from address [foo] to address [bar], and has been verified by no less than 20 subsequent blocks."
There will be lawyers involved, of course. Someone has to actually enforce the contracts and deal with off-blockchain disputes. But dealing with the actual physical transactions and transfers of ownership could be streamlined.
The legal side will be one of the last barriers I agree, if a court doesn't recognize the immutability of the system then it can't be used as evidence of anything. If blockchains can't be used as an audit trail for legal means then a lot of the value goes out the window.
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I've been saying this for couple of years now: the most likely "disruption" from blockchain technology is going to be in notarial functions. The concept of coloured coins[0] allows to use a globally available, publicly verifiable, and for all intents and purposes a forgery-immune register to verify contracts.
Cutting through all the [templated] legalese, we can say: "Contract A, between parties K and L, concerning transaction T: T shall be considered done and legally binding once Coloured Coin X has been paid from address [foo] to address [bar], and has been verified by no less than 20 subsequent blocks."
There will be lawyers involved, of course. Someone has to actually enforce the contracts and deal with off-blockchain disputes. But dealing with the actual physical transactions and transfers of ownership could be streamlined.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colored_coins
The legal side will be one of the last barriers I agree, if a court doesn't recognize the immutability of the system then it can't be used as evidence of anything. If blockchains can't be used as an audit trail for legal means then a lot of the value goes out the window.