Recently while reading aloud about medieval law I was challenged by a friend who was present in the room at the time to write a blogpost with the very title you see above. Naturally, I could not refuse a good challenge, so here is my tentative parallel.
Without getting into the theory of what disseisin is, let's just focus on the short passage with which Wikipedia describes this legal procedure:
The action became extremely popular due to its speed (...), accessibility, and expediency. Rather than dealing with the issue of lawful possession, it simply asked whether a dispossession had taken place.
The core idea, namely the focus on valid transfers rather than valid possession, is something that this legal procedure has in common with the blockchain. Instead of constantly reviewing who owns what quantity of a given crypto, the blockchain merely approves transactions, resulting in a much greater throughput of the resulting legal system (for a blockchain could well be described as a digital jurisdiction). The resulting ease of use makes the resulting system of arbitration (not to be confused with arbitrage) more common. Compare the process of setting up a bank account with setting up a crypto wallet. While setting up an account with a conventional bank the main focus is on identity. This is so that the banking system can then establish which numbers belong to you, so that you are granted certain rights over digital assets within the system (being able to transfer them, cash them out, etc.). In crypto, the only thing you need to become a crypto holder is for someone to transfer you some crypto. Yes, you do need an address for that, but those can be generated literally within seconds, even with setting up a wallet with any given program. The focus is clearly on the transaction itself rather than establishing ownership of funds.
And yes, this is a hairline distinction, since banks absolutely do handle transactions and the blockchain basically validates and contains a record of "who" owns what, however the slight change of focus from ownership to transfers is what I think distances crypto from banking ever so slightly, making it more proximate to this, now obscure, procedure from medieval law.
