What is held?
Distinguish a pattern of information, a token, a contractual permission and a capability that a system recognises. A clear account of the object comes before a claim about its scarcity.
Digital Scarcity · A major research area
What does it mean
to give up a digital thing?
A file can be copied without leaving its sender. A transferable digital good raises a different question: can the recipient acquire effective control while the sender relinquishes the ability to exercise that same control?
This research area brings property theory, economics and security engineering together to examine possession, transfer and the institutions that make digital exchange credible.
01 / The research agenda
Control. Transfer.
Evidence. Accountability.
The object of study is a defined capability within a stated system and trust boundary. An attestation does not prove that every external copy of information has vanished.
This is a distinct research area from Teranode and transaction scaling. Its focus is the integrity and meaning of possession and transfer, and the economic and institutional conditions supporting them.
Explore research collaborationWhat changes hands?
Examine whether a transfer gives the recipient a determinate capability and extinguishes the sender’s competing control, with evidence beyond the sender’s own assertion.
What makes the promise credible?
Connect detection, containment, accountable attestation and incentives to the cost of enforcing possession. Identify who bears the risks that technical evidence cannot resolve.
02 / Research stories
Two routes into
the central problem.
Property · Institutions
What changes hands?
A transferable title can identify a defined power to obtain a service without claiming ownership of every copy of the information involved. This story examines the proposed right, notice and evidenced divestment.
Read the capability-title storyEconomics · Security
The price of digital possession
What does it cost to make a transfer divest its sender? This story connects accountable attestation, detection and containment to the incentives and residual risks behind exclusive effective control.
Read the enforcement-price story03 / Underlying research
The manuscripts
behind the questions.
These works are listed as research manuscripts. The stories explain their arguments and conditional models; the catalogue records retain their stated status.
September 2026 revision
Research manuscript
Divestment Without Deprivation: Bearer Titles to Capabilities and the Limits of the Scarcity Argument
Craig S. Wright. An institutional account of capability titles, notice and evidenced divestment.
View the manuscript record1 July 2026
Research manuscript
The Enforcement Price of Digital Possession: Threshold Attestation, Extinguishment, and the Economics of a New Property Object
Craig Wright. An analytical model of accountability, detection, containment and the cost of enforcing exclusive effective control.
View the manuscript record