using bitcoins to track ownership

[udibr]

Just a thought:

An agreed central authority (i.e. government, company) assigns the objects it governs (parcels of land, shares in a company) to owners of these objects.
The assignment is performed by sending a bitcoin to each owner and at the same time writing a document which states that the object belongs to the owner and using the same key used in the bitcoin transaction to sign the document.

Each owner can show his ownership at any time by presenting the document and proving he owns the key used as the receipient of the transaction.
This can be done by generating another transaction with the same key or by using the key to sign the document again.

Each owner can move onwership to another person by using the original transaction to transfer a bitcoin to the new owner.
In other words, the original transaction (which may cary a very small bitcoin value) is very special and should only be used to transfer ownership of the object (which maybe much more valuable than the transaction amount)

The new onwer can show his ownership by presenting the list of transactions that led to him and showing the original document and proving he has the key used as the receiver of the last transaction.

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[Alex Beckenham]

Interesting concept. So now when I lose my wallet.dat I'm losing my house and my car instead of just a few bitcoins

[jtimon]

Interesting concept. So now when I lose my wallet.dat I'm losing my house and my car instead of just a few bitcoins

Worse, no one can ever own your house again.
My squatter friends would also like the idea.

What you're trying to do is to replace the property registration government entity with the block chain. But the property registration doesn't make sense without government and law. Maybe it's a good idea for them to use public key cryptography instead of signed papers, but they don't need the block chain because they can just run a server. After all they're already the authority in what they do.

[udibr]

The question is who is doing the enforcement.  If it's the police then you are right but with bitcoin the enforcement can also be done by a peer to peer network of social ties. In other words, it will be evident to all that you took an illegal position of a property and as a result you will be rejected from society without the need of a police force

[jtimon]

The question is who is doing the enforcement.  If it's the police then you are right but with bitcoin the enforcement can also be done by a peer to peer network of social ties. In other words, it will be evident to all that you took an illegal position of a property and as a result you will be rejected from society without the need of a police force

Maybe it's a better idea than a first thought. But if almost none of my friends agree with me in privatizing education, this kind of private law is way too much.
Interesting idea but, as any attempt to have private law, too futuristic in my opinion.