[speedplane]

Agree there is much hype over blockchain, but there is some advantage in the context you raised.

Currently, if you want to buy or sell real-estate, you have to record that transaction on a central government database. These "databases" used to be paper documents, but are now slowly moving to electronic systems. But they are still centrally controlled, and often even new systems are horribly out-of-date and require specialized real-estate companies to record transactions and pull transaction history, with hefty service fees, often several thousand dollars per sale.

If this real-estate system was based on the blockcahin, it could remove the government as a central source of trust and title companies that specialize in interacting with it would face far more competition. In theory, it could reduce transaction costs to buy and sell real-estate. Admittedly, this may solve some problems but create others, but the benefit is quite clear.

[shanghaiaway]

Just a transaction record from one account to another of $2M isn't proof that ownership of that property was transferred.

You need to connect that transaction to a contract and the contract in turn needs to be verified by some third-party and some process. In a develop country, that process is going to be tied to government.

[speedplane]

"Proof" is a legal definition, and legal definitions are defined by the government. Accordingly, I entirely agree that any real property transaction must be tied in some way to the government.

That said, you should take a look at the current system. In many counties, it's still a large ledger of transactions in pencil and paper. In "modernized" counties, but with with extremely restricted access, made intentionally hard-to-access to keep title insurance companies in business.

Title insurance companies charge thousands of dollars on every sale to insure legal claims to property. Any trustworthy publicly accessible database, crypto-based or not, would be a huge improvement over the current system.