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The trick to this is that you have the ownership represented in an NFT and then have additional NFTs pointing to the title NFT to represent things like liens. This gets you to public and anyone can modify it. Then you have the normal legal infrastructure in place with a backdoor ability to void NFTs and punish people minting them illegally.
Yep. That could work. And then you've essentially replicated the existing system except with NFTs instead of instruments recorded with the county. Except without a team of clerks screening the instruments for basic legal requirements and making sure everything is indexed properly. So now it's like a recorder's office where there are signs and pamphlets telling you what to do but where everyone is left to their own devices jamming things into folders and creating their own index entries. And this is supposed to eliminate the need for title insurance?
It's supposed to essentially centralize things, ironic for crypto I know. Especially from a bank perspective being able to see at a glance the state of a title without digging through obscure county records is a win even if it doesn't completely eliminate title insurance. Hell, you could probably run automated health checks on securities this way.
I don't know what you think the current system is like, but to a large degree it already is centralized, at least as centralized as it could possibly get using blockchain; what do you think a county recorder's office is for? Computerized records and uniform parcel identifiers have made things a lot easier, at least as far as instruments recorded in the past 20 years or so are concerned. Hell, I'm at a recorder's office right now and I can enter a parcel number into the computer and it will tell me every instrument cross-referenced to that parcel number that was recorded since they started doing these things. And the system is available remotely. If I want to record something in this system I have to follow specific guidelines set by the county to make sure that I actually identify the property correctly, include all the necessary notary stamps, etc. And they will take time to make sure that everything is appropriately indexed and cross-referenced. Switch over to a blockchain that anyone can theoretically edit and now you're going to have every Joe Schmo who has no idea what he's doing entering instruments that only cause more title defects and situations where things aren't appropriately indexed or cross-referenced. If you don't think this will happen, go to your local recorder and ask the clerk for some war stories about people who try to write their own deeds without the assistance from an attorney, or how many people ask about "getting someone's name on the deed", or off the deed. Or go to a recorder's office in rural parts of West Virginia and try to run a title and see how things were done there prior to the 1990s, when clerks would apparently record anything and everything that was presented to them. And this doesn't even get into all the specific oil and gas stuff where things really get wild and wacky.
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