[oarsinsync]

The change is in the trust model.

The centralised approach described requires that one trusts the database administrator. For a lot of things (probably the vast majority), this is good enough.

For the rest, there's decentralised distributed immutable ledgers.

[acdha]

Trust is an interesting topic: I think many people – and especially courts – would be actively disinclined to trust an anonymous blockchain but might be interested in one where it’s identified participants with reputations, liability, etc. Pay the USPS, Western Union, etc. and get a signature backed by insurance.

Trying to explain something like Bitcoin just seems like you’d have a hard time meeting reasonable doubt standards in a dispute but that’s not the only model.