Blockchain's Struggle to Deliver Impersonal Exchange

Benito Arruuada
2017 Social Science Research Network  
The paper identifies what value blockchain adds to the contractual and property processes, exploring its potential and analyzing the main difficulties it is facing. It argues that, contrary to naive conceptions that proclaim the end of intermediaries and state involvement, blockchain applications will rely on a variety of interface, completion, and enforcement specialists, including standard public interventions, especially for property transactions. Without these interventions, blockchain
more » ... cations will at most enable trade in in personam claims instead of in rem rights, therefore facilitating personal instead of truly impersonal-that is, asset-based-transactions.
doi:10.2139/ssrn.2903857 fatcat:5a62522i7rf6bk5c7icbhcnk6i