[turtlesdown]

> For example, you can have a perfectly legal contract, but the other party is in a corrupt foreign jurisdiction that would never find in your favor in the event of a breach. Then you can't contract with them because they have no incentive not to breach, without an alternative method of ensuring compliance that doesn't rely on their corrupt government.

International trade has perfectly good mechanisms for dealing with this at present. See: Letters of Credit.

> You may also have jurisdictions (like the US) where the process may be more fair, but it's unreasonably expensive, so if you're transacting with parties with a high probability of getting into disputes, something that can resolve them programmatically without litigation is an advantage.

The easy workaround to this is just to factor in additional costs for doing business...

> You're not a criminal, but you have bad credit or are from a disreputable country etc., so you're treated as one by the government or the rules targeting actual criminals cause companies to not want to do business with you, and you thereby need some alternative way to engage in your legitimate activities.

Probably still illegal to do business with you if the government has outlawed work with specific sanctioned countries, etc. Also, letters of credit.

[AnthonyMouse]

Your workarounds have potentially higher overhead. "Just factor in additional costs" is equivalent to destroying otherwise-productive low margin transactions. Even for higher margin transactions, higher overhead is no advantage.

> Probably still illegal to do business with you if the government has outlawed work with specific sanctioned countries, etc.

The whole point is the cases where it's not.

Many banks and payment processors won't do business with you when your business isn't worth the effort of verifying you. That doesn't mean it's necessarily illegal for the bank, much less the seller of whatever you're buying, to do business with you. But you can't do the perfectly legal transaction if the customer has no way of paying.

[turtlesdown]

> The whole point is the cases where it's not.

So your argument is that blockchain is only useful for international trade with tiny businesses?

> Even for higher margin transactions, higher overhead is no advantage.

Most people consider low corruption, high rule of law countries ideal places for business, with the higher overhead...

[AnthonyMouse]

> So your argument is that blockchain is only useful for international trade with tiny businesses?

That is one use, not the only use. And don't discount the scope of international transactions with individuals.

> Most people consider low corruption, high rule of law countries ideal places for business, with the higher overhead...

When the overhead comes with something worth more than it costs you. Sometimes it doesn't.

[Mirioron]

>International trade has perfectly good mechanisms for dealing with this at present. See: Letters of Credit.

This works until you deal with a subject matter that (some) banks don't like or with people that (some) financial institutions don't like. It's entirely possible to be banned from Visa and MasterCard's services and this can sometimes mean that banks simply won't do business with you. Sometimes it's the subject matter you're dealing with that can be banned, eg certain types of (legal) porn.

>Probably still illegal to do business with you if the government has outlawed work with specific sanctioned countries, etc. Also, letters of credit.

He didn't say that the government has outlawed doing business with the country. He said that the government treats people from that country much more harshly. This would mean that businesses wouldn't want to do business with people from that country. Letters of credit don't work if the other country's banks aren't interested in dealing with businesses from your country.