Blockchain's struggle to deliver impersonal exchange

Benito Arruñada

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstract: 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 applications 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.

Keywords: property rights; enforcement; transaction costs; impersonal exchange; blockchain; distributed ledgers. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D23 G38 H41 K11 K12 L85 O17 P48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-01, Revised 2017-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law and nep-pay
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:upf:upfgen:1549

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