Right now I have to physically drive to a land records office, pay the people behind the desk to look through some old photocopied records; which they can't even fully guarantee the accuracy of.
Right now I have to physically drive to a land records office, pay the people behind the desk to look through some old photocopied records; which they can't even fully guarantee the accuracy of.
Most of the automated systems for land title seem to be the civil law approach, and for that a central registrar doesn't really map well to the blockchain. There's also no real anonymity -- at best, pseudonymity for keys, but the hard part is binding keys to legal owners.
Can you imagine what might happen if the land of the U.S. federal reserve building was somehow transferred to a random individual?
I used to get "free money" in my bank account all the time. Some banker would make an error, depositing a check from a member of a separate branch into my account with the same account number. The mistake was usually noticed during an audit and the money would magically be removed from my account.
Reversible transactions do have their place, I suppose.
Where it gets really interesting is with things like cars (and eventually cellphones and other similarly priced goods); putting effectively activation locks and DRM into the equipment. IFF you could trust the whole system, it would make theft much less of a concern, which is great.
It could make phone theft a lot harder depending on the hardness of the DRM.