Block chains and rights registers.

Abstract

The media attention being given to blockchain technology has recently led to a call for its use to be extended to other sectors beyond the field in which it was initially applied: Bitcoin.

This article, after first describing how it operates, in its specific application to Bitcoin, looks at whether it could be used to replace rights registers, but provide the same effects. The conclusion, however, is that this technology, ap- plied without modification, would radically reduce the quality of the preventive legal certainty provided by registers of this kind and would, in any case, require major legislative changes and considerable restrictions on freedom of contract.

Private blockchains with modified versions of the operating protocol could however be established, and this would eliminate some of those problems, but they would change its character, making it more like other types of solution that are already being applied successfully in some countries. An example isthe Spanish system, which is analysed briefly.