The distributed ledger technology that started with bitcoin is rapidly becoming a crowdsourced system for verifying transactions of all types. Could it replace central banks, notary publics, and manual vote recounts?
An expensive work of art changes hands. Neither the buyer nor the seller is named publicly, but the exchange is verified, the provenance of the painting travels with it, and the artwork is automatically insured against theft.
A voting machine records votes in a frontier country known for past political corruption. Though there is no central government repository, each vote is tagged to an individual with no duplication. The individual identities remain anonymous, and the results of the election are undisputed.
