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.
I agree that decentralizing the transactions of stocks, bonds and mortgages may have advantages. I guess I'm just slightly annoyed by the meme that "currency is
only the first app of blockchain technology." What needs to eventually be understood by the media is that:
(1) Currency is the
foundational application of blockchain technology; without a valuable currency, no other apps are possible.
(2) The native blockchain units (bitcoins) are the only asset with no counterparty risk.
Many people have a problem conceptually separating the need to trust a counterparty to fulfill a contract, and the need to trust a ledger system to accurately record ownership information.
It's possible to make the latter arbitrarily small, but there's no technological solution to the former as it's inherent to the problem space.
Yes, well said. We need to stress the distinction between trust of the ledger system and trust of the counterparty (and then point out that bitcoin is fundamentally different as it has no counterparty [or perhaps the counterparty is the ledger system itself]).
Justus, I see you're giving a talk via telepresence in Vancouver on Thursday. What will you be speaking about?