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L
ate last year, English online property sales site clicktopurchase.
com made news by completing the sale of a residential property
only three days after it hit the market.
Yet that wasn't the only unusual aspect of the approximately
$1-million sale. Enabled by a blockchain-based shared ledger that
recorded the deal's details, the transaction itself reportedly took
place in less than four seconds — and all without the need for a
title search, land survey vetting or verification of tax records.
In other words, it happened without a lawyer.
After closing the deal, a clicktopurchase.com spokesperson predicted blockchain
would bring to property transactions more speed, ease, certainty and efficiency by
"removing intermediaries" (aka middlemen) from the process.
Around the same time, Sweden's land registry authority announced it was using
blockchain to cut to a few days from four months the time that passes between writing
a purchasing contract to registering change of ownership. (Initial results appear prom-
ising.) Then, a month later, Dubai's land department claimed it had become the world's
first government agency to carry out all property transactions with blockchain.
TECHNOLOGY
GAME-CHANGING
THE
UNDERPINNING
CRYPTO-CURRENCIES
SUCH AS
BITCOIN
THREATENS
TO SUPERSEDE
AND OTHER
INTERMEDIARIES
LAWYERS
TRUSTED
BY SCOTT NEILSON
