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to integrate a blockchain application because the property
conveyance is performed peer to peer, between buyer and seller.
velox.RE will soon begin to issue Blockchain deeds in all 50 states, Space limitations prevent full data sharing here, but
which property owners can immediately use to transfer their conclusions are as follows for private blockchains: After
property. The government is not involved in the conveyance, but concluding that private blockchains were not appropriate, I
rather, has the authoritative copy of the conveyance, should the compared public blockchains, quickly narrowing the choice
new owner choose to submit it to them. between Bitcoin and the two Ethereum blockchains: Because
In contrast, in the Title Registration system, the property Bitcoin best met the ten criterion, I recommend it for real estate
conveyance is not performed directly between buyer and seller, applications, especially title.
but rather, by a government official. One solution is to have a
(Bitcoin) multi-signature transaction, with one private key held by
the government, and one by the property owner.

4. Conveyance vs. registry
The goal of a blockchain title system should be to first
convey (transfer) the property using blockchain, with a ‘copy’
of that transfer being the registry of ownership. This can
be the blockchain itself or could be a regular paper record.
Unfortunately, most pilot programs are doing it backwards, first
transferring ownership using traditional methods, followed by
inserting a transaction identifier into a blockchain transaction.
This is putting the cart before the horse. It misses the greatest
strength of blockchain, transferring a (digital) asset with a public,
distributed network instead of a human with a stamp. “Bitcoin has been running for eight years with no
downtime, has more processing power dedicated to

5. Charity is an unsustainable system; use capitalism it than the largest supercomputer in the world and
Many are trying to create a blockchain title system that relies on has a simple scripting language with the smallest
sponsorship by non-profits or hoping for government funding. attack vector.”
The former is economically unsustainable and the latter is —Adam Back, Co-founder and CEO of
extremely challenging. Instead, a property transfer system that Blockstream and inventor of Hashcash
uses blockchain should have economic incentives that will allow
for-profit companies to adopt it. Conclusion
Digitizing real estate assets with blockchain has far reaching
6. Pick the best blockchain implications, some that will be realized immediately and others
In my upcoming white paper, I spend several chapters evaluating over several years. These include lowered dependency on third
blockchains for real estate, based on ten objective criterion: parties, greater liquidity, increased ownership transparency,
1. Real estate functionality decreased fraud, shorter escrow periods, and lower closing costs.
2. Decentralization The principles and practices presented here will increase the
3. Stability likelihood of success.
4. Track record and future survivability
5. Liquidity, market capitalization and price of cryptocurrency Ragnar Lifthrasir is a speaker, author, entrepreneur, and early
6. Native currency and payment system pioneer in applying Bitcoin and related technologies to property
7. Community transactions. He founded the International Blockchain Real
8. Permissionless and open source Estate Association (IBREA) in 2013 and the blockchain real
9. Proof of work estate platform velox.RE in 2016.
10. Immutability

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