For the past decade, blockchain, along with the recent ascent of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), have been hailed as revolutionary tools with the power to reshape the global economy, particularly in the context of property rights. In this chapter, drawn in part from the authors’ earlier work, the use of blockchains and NFTs in real property transactions is questioned by interrogating how the existing technologies work against the backdrop of the realities of real property transfers. Moving beyond the hype, the authors explain that a blockchain system would provide few if any benefits to the system of real estate transactions. Yet they think there is indeed a potential use case for blockchains and crypto technology when it comes to property rights. But, it is not in the world of real property – which our existing system has largely shown itself to be sufficient – but rather for intangible property. American law developed to deal with tangible assets, whether personal or real, owing to their historical prominence as primary wealth. But tracking and transferring rights in intangible property has always been underdeveloped. It is here, so we argue, that blockchain technology and NFTs might have the highest utility.

In GC II 2, Aristotle discovers the contrarieties that constitute the principles of all perceptible bodies. They are the hot and the cold, the dry and the moist because they are the basic tangible contrarieties that interact as active and passive powers in a way that can result in a new affection. In GC II 2, Aristotle also attempts a reduction of all other tangible contrarieties to the basic four. I argue that the active/passive relation does not hold only between the two basic pairs of contrarieties but also within each pair. I compare the reduction of other contraries to the basic four with what Aristotle says in Meteor. IV. Despite minor differences and the wider scope of analysis in the latter work, Aristotle’s admirable effort to reduce the rich variety of tangible properties to a limited number of contraries and elements is the same.