Property has been fundamental to the progress of humanity from hunting and gathering nomads to where we are today. In the Second Treatise of Government, a document that laid out the foundational principles of the American government, John Locke wrote, “Government has no other end but the preservation of Property.” He used the term property in reference to the familiar refrain of life, liberty, and possessions.

This book played a key role in the creation of the Declaration of Independence, which declares we all have a right to our “Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness”

At first the idea that government exists to preserve property may seem counter intuitive, but every government service from the police, firemen, and the military to libraries, schools and social security each preserve at least one of our life, liberty or possessions. For example, Police protect our lives from murder, our liberty from kidnapping, and our possessions from theft.

A prerequisite to the preservation of property is agreement on property ownership. This includes agreement on both distribution and proof of ownership. Without these agreements, preservation is not possible. Jerusalem, for example, has been the center of an ownership disagreement for millennia and as a result has been destroyed over 100 times.

Agreement on property ownership has two components, distribution and proof of ownership. The best method to distribute property is a cultural question depending on the preferences of the group. Each society has chosen their own method to distribute property, varying on the scale from full communism to full capitalism with tax policies as the main mechanism for control. On the other hand, there could be a method to prove ownership that is globally regarded as the best. We can all agree that the best method to prove ownership would be a system that cannot be faked, does not rely on the trust of third parties, and does not decay over time.

We have so many methods to prove ownership of our own identity it can be confusing and hard to keep track of.

Unfortunately, every single one of our current solutions either can be counterfeited, relies on trust or suffers from decay. Receipts, money, social security cards, and other pieces of paper can be counterfeited to fake ownership, or lost, along with the ability to prove ownership. We have birth certificates, social security cards, passports, and ID cards all as fail safes so that we can hopefully always prove our identity. The deeds of homes and money can become so valuable that we need to trust banks and title companies to protect them for us. Anyone who has has ever been the victim of identity theft or lost a winning lottery ticket, or couldn’t return an item because they had lost the receipt, understands the costs of these problems.

Cryptocurrencies offer us an immutable public ledger that can eternally store proof of ownership, be edited by anyone without a trusted intermediary and cannot be faked. This is an order of magnitude improvement on our current solutions. This problem of proof of ownership that humans have been working to solve since the creation of society is undergoing an incremental leap forward. Public blockchains plus global internet access are the key components driving this new system. They are going to unlock a host of new possibilities for us to organize as a society.