Any discussion of programmable currencies is always going to run straight into the oracle problem. It is extremely hard to join on-chain to off-chain things without dragging in a party that is implicitly or explicitly trusted. And the moment you do that, the purpose of cryptocurrencies goes away, as a single database run by the trusted authority is several orders of magnitude more efficient and convenient.

Economic != financial, which was the point of the parent I believe.

The vast majority of finance deals with "real" assets--stocks of companies (arguably blockchainable, like the Topl thing that a sister comment mentioned), commodities (e.g. futures), logistics, etc etc

Not sure how that all can be trustlessly secured with blockchain technology

Finance is one of the largest sectors of the US economy, it is central to its role in leading the world economy.

Additionally, finance is what controls and directs the economy. It is the business of money itself, in both the public and private sector.

Banks play a central role to any economy. Digital currencies can be centralized and controlled in the same way as any state owned enterpeise.

A firm created at Rice University is actually trying to solve exactly that problem. [0]

[0] - https://statistics.rice.edu/news/student-founded-blockchain-...

And how exactly are they going to blockchain-ify the coporation's interactions with other normal corporations?

I don't follow it at enough of a detailed level other than to know the UN is using it as a proof of stake concept for the transactions, and then reimbursing the token holder in their local currency (caveat - I think this is correct, but again I'm not involved with them at any detailed level).

You may also want to see these for more info:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/darrynpollock/2020/02/27/blockc...

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201203005110/en/Tra...

That's not programmable today, but may be in the future.

Presumably the shipment has a series of checkpoints, which add some amount of traceability. There's also the potential for insurance for blockchain contracts.

I only recently learned about oracles, but I suspect we're only getting started on unlocking the potential of blockchain.

If there are oracles making the progress at each checkpoint along the way available from the blockchain, and insurance contracts for potential disruptions at each stage, your contract can ensure payment on delivery, and the supplier can be insured against any disruptions.

Who operates those checkpoints? Isn't there going to be some sort of implicit trust there? Even if somehow you built a machine that executes instructions that is verified on the blockchain, how are you going to make sure that machine's firmware is secure?

edit: I think this is a valid thing to tackle potentially as a company, but right now it seems impossible.