Quote from: thezerg on December 02, 2014, 02:47:27 PM

Quote from: Peter R on December 02, 2014, 06:52:51 AM

Quote from: molecular on December 02, 2014, 05:34:49 AM

John Mauldin...

Quote from: Zarathustra on December 01, 2014, 12:21:49 PM

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).

Quote from: Zarathustra on December 01, 2014, 12:21:49 PM

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.

Great points, Molecular. Crypto 2.0 applications like stock certificates and property-title transfers are often discussed in the abstract where they may appear like the natural evolution of blockchain technology. However, upon delving into the details, the concept is not as enticing as it may first appear due to the "messiness" of the link between the blockchain token and the property that exists in the outside world.

Like you pointed out, there's a fundamental difference between the transfer of a bitcoin, and the transfer of a token that represents a claim on some external-to-the-blockchain property. In the later case (asset-backed tokens), all that is transferred is ownership (and ownership is really a social construct, valuable only to the extent that one's society is willing to enforce property rights [as control of the property in question remains a physical problem]). In the former case (bitcoin), what's transferred is control itself.

Yes but there are still advantages to decentralizing the transaction even if redemption must be centralized, because redemption happens rarely. Also, if stocks, bonds or mortgages are directly offered on the blockchain (as opposed to representing certificates stored in a vault) they simultaneously represent something but also are themselves property.

for those assets, what are the advantages of decentralization? other than the one-offs we hear from Patrick Byrnes enabled by unsound money, when have you had stocks, bonds, or insurance contracts reneged upon?