John Mauldin...
The Bitcoin blockchain technology allows for the most secure electronic transactions ever devised. Its adoption and acceptance seem inevitable to me.
Actually the 'security' of transactions is not derived solely from blockchain tech. More essential is asymetric crypthography. PoW is 'just' used to avoid double-spends (find consensus), which in case you're going to back bitcoin with gold anyway can be solved more easily using a centralized ledger (with asymetric crypto to sign transactions).
It will be used to validate everything we purchase: stocks, homes, investments, airplane tickets, etc. It will be a far cheaper and much more secure way to validate your ownership of anything, from your home to your stocks.
Bold claims! We have the same problem as with a gold-backing of tying tokens in the blockchain to the real world. If centralized institutions (courts, police) are necessary for enforcing property rights anyway, why not have the ownership ledger managed by those (or related) institutions, too. If you need mechanisms external to the blockchain to go from 'token control' to 'legal property', I don't see much added value of using a blockchain. (It changes a bit with smart property as envisioned by Mike Hearn (leased car functions only on blockchain ownership proof), but that's a long way to go still and I doubt Mauldin is thinking of this. Also a derivative products can be built on top of blockchain-based tokens more securely than on central-ledger-based ones. Also: paying dividends and holding votes based on stock ownership can be integrated into a blockchain if it is linked to a liquid value-carrying monetary ledger)
So, Mauldin 'getting' those potential applications and 'not getting' the fact that bitcoin is the best (better than gold) sound money we've ever had (w/o backing) seems strange to me. It can probably be explained easily by looking at his portfolio... very similar really to Peter Schiff in that regard.