Molly White Tracks Crypto Scams. It’s Going Just Great

It’s a piece of land in a poor position, not well connected to anything, with a right of way through it, that will never get permission to build.

The person trying to sell it for 1.9 million is having a laugh, to put it mildly.

...but we already have useful, globally distributed databases that are vastly more efficient than blockchains, and have for a decade or so: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c...

Bitcoin is 14 years old at this point. We are _not_ early. Surely if blockchains are as great as their proponents claim, at least one clever company would have done something unquestionably impressive with them? But maybe I'm the crazy one here.

(For context the time between the launch of Sputnik and the first commercial communications satellite, Intelsat I, was 8 years)

No, I understand why investors want legal guarantees. Actually, the endorsement and legal guidelines by the government for crypto would send its price soaring.

Being decentralized means no single party controls it, and thusly no single party can debase it or prevent its distribution. You need to understand why gold is still used as a store of value, and the role of government bonds as safe havens in the modern economy.

You have trust in a system because it works (for you) now, but you're not looking far enough into the future, and you're not weighting risk appropriately.

Crypto isn't just about sending money or making money. This is a completely new "thing", and part of the way its used is redefining what money actually is, based on programmatic protocols, consensus algorithms, etc.

Having data on chain changes everything.

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Speech-M... -- head of civil justice for the UK discusses smart contracts and commerce.

Read points six through ten here. This is entirely the point: having the data and contracts on chain is hugely important. If you don't understand this, you don't understand critical features about how everything really works.

1) Did you read the Smarter Contracts report I linked to for yourself? There's a full chapter on how the process of conveyancing will be significantly streamlined by digital ID, digital signatures, automation and interoperability between data stores. No blockchain required.

2) By KYCAMLCTF/source of funds, I'm assuming you're referring to what happens when someone buys ETH on an exchange? The problem is that only covers trading on the exchange. Once it leaves the exchange it leaves that regulatory environment, and it becomes impossible to prevent things like wash trading in NFT marketplaces. Are you really trying to tell me that exposing the property market to that is a good idea?

3) What you're actually saying here is that what Mattereum does isn't actually equivalent to conveyancing. In order to make doing this with NFTs work, you've created an inferior legal framework to actual property law, based solely around contract and arbitration law, that you expect people to use instead. The trade of the NFT is faster than conveyancing, not because it's doing the same thing more efficiently, but because it's not actually doing the same thing at all.

4) Large property companies will want actual conveyancing, not your substitute for it. They also don't want to trade property like NFTs. They'll be pleased about digital contract solutions that streamline the process of actual conveyancing.

5) A database can clear a $1.2m payment in real time. In the UK we have near-instant, free bank transfers with a limit of £1 million per transaction - to send more it can just be split into multiple transactions. Neither a database NOR a blockchain can create legally binding signatures on e-contracts without middleware like DocuSign or Adobe Sign. For electronic conveyancing, the answer is to... just use that middleware, it's fine. Transfer of an NFT does not count as a legally binding signature (isn't that the whole reason Mattereum exists)?

"Right now there is no meaningful electronic trading venue for real estate." Maybe - here's an idea - property shouldn't actually be traded like NFTs are? Maybe property law isn't just useless red tape and it exists for a reason? Maybe high frequency trading of property on a pseudonymous marketplace is actually NOT a good idea?

Speaking of Mattereum, I note the article on your website from April 16 2023 claiming that you have tokenised a "prime beach-front property on England’s south coast". Although the article uses a stock image of a building, the property is actually just a land parcel. Just curious, why was the NFT burned and recreated four months ago? It wasn't because the property sold. Why is it only now possible to buy the NFT by emailing Tokenised Properties to be added to a whitelist? Doesn't that rather defeat the purpose of what you're trying to do?

"DISCLAIMER: The land is sold as is without any planning permission. Images are for reference only for possible uses. Buyers are to make their own investigations and due diligence." Hmm, an empty plot of land with no planning permission... not exactly a house, is it?

"[...] the required searches, title deed and reference media for due diligence are displayed accurately and transparently so that the NFT purchaser can sell on the property without the next purchaser needing to go through the process all over again. What the NFT purchaser gets for their money is an interest in the property. If they wish to take full ownership of the property itself, they simply pay an extra pound, and full legal title is transferred to them, they can then do as they wish with the property and the NFT is burned."

Wait, one moment it's a property, the next it's just an interest in the property? What is your NFT actually adding here? If they take full ownership of the property, say, to build something on the land and sell it on, they're actually going to have to start that whole process over again, right?

I see absolutely no upside to tokenising property interests as NFTs and plenty of downsides, such as the potential for market manipulation, scams and thefts. Which is probably why the Smarter Contracts report focused instead on technological developments to fully digitise the traditional conveyancing process that already exists under property law.

But you've hitched your wagon to public permissionless blockchain ledgers like Ethereum and marketplaces for trading NFTs, so you have a vested interested in convincing us that this is the proper technology for the use case. Yeah, there are a lot of naïve grifters in the blockchain space - and you're one of them.