There's quite a bit of work being done in this area, particularly with respect to the Counterparty.io project. In the case of Counterparty, monetary value/tokens are literally stored 'in decentralized escrow' on the bitcoin network. A spender merely attests to a spend by way of their signature on the transaction, subject to release by way of a small bit of code (Serpent is the language, it's very python like). At this time the code executes, miners release the funds. A miner can't 'lie' about the release, as all other nodes validate the work of the miner. Lies are not syndicated around the network, as the numbers simply would not work out upon transmission. I've paraphrased a bit, but that's the gist. If you decide to look down this wormhole, you'll be shocked at how sophisticated these systems are getting.