Systems and methods for confirming the presence of a person or asset for a given purpose, and recording this information in a distributed ledger. The distributed ledger records and confirms presence indicia in connection with a transaction said facilitates remote and/or automated signatures. The systems and methods detect the presence of one or more humans and/or computing devices at a specific location at the time of a transaction, and contemporaneously recording information concerning the transaction in a distributed ledger. Presence can be determined using network presence sensing (NPS), other types of sensors, or the combination of NPS with other sensors.