Blockchain Potent Force but 'No Cure-All' for Land Rights

Tim Robustelli was quoted in a Reuters article following his presentation on blockchain-for-land at the 2019 World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty.

From Georgia to the United Arab Emirates, countries are testing the technology behind the bitcoin currency to make land records more transparent or enable residents to find a flat and sign a lease within minutes.

But it is still poorly understood by governments and cannot solve every problem, said Tim Robustelli of New America, a think tank.

“There’s a general notion that blockchain is a magic bullet, can save the rainforest or solve world hunger – that’s not true,” he said at a World Bank conference in Washington, D.C. this week.

“It cannot, for example, make up for sloppy or incomplete data collection,” he said, adding that digitizing land records for example was a “huge bureaucratic and logistical” task.

If used correctly, it can tackle corruption “such as officials tampering with land records”, make services like property sales more efficient and provide greater protection against cyber attacks, said Robustelli.