Overstock.com announces Medici Ventures investment in token-based wine company VinX. The company plans to create a digital wine platform that will allow for the selling and trading of wine futures via blockchain.
Israel company VinX’s primary goals are first, to develop a blockchain that will facilitate trustless wine futures trading and secondly, employ distributed ledger technology (DLT) to streamline and secure the supply chain.
Decentralizing the wine industry brings the following potential benefits to trading wine futures and beverage distribution: fraud prevention, lowered consumer costs, automation, global micropayment support, real-time tracking and more.
Overstock.com founder and CEO Patrick Bryne has been early on the crypto scene as a long-time public supporter, so it comes as no surprise that Medici Ventures would back a project like VinX as the blockchain startup‘s principals align with Bryne’s vision for the future. The Overstock.com CEO commented:
“VinX’s steps in tokenizing wine futures while allowing wine enthusiasts to know without a doubt that the bottles they purchase are filled with authentic wines will position the entire industry as a model of a new global economy that replaces old boys’ networks with frictionless trust through technology.”
Bryne also went on to mention how middle-men heavy the wine industry is and how blockchain can work to abridge the processes involved with wine authentication. While wine fraud might not be a part of everyday life for most consumers, counterfeit wine is an unfortunately ubiquitous part of the wine industry. Overstock.com’s press release mentions this shocking statistic, further confirming the need for fraud prevention:
“20 percent of all wine in the world has counterfeit labeling, so what a consumer believes is a high-end bottle of wine could have a decidedly more local origin.”
The announcement goes on to explain how even the most talented sommeliers can be all too easily fooled. Medici Ventures and VinX plan to reclaim the counterfeited 20 percent of the high-end wine market, using the latest blockchain technology and smart contracts to authenticate the product before distribution. With Medici Venture’s help, Vinx is poised to disrupt the multi-billion dollar wine industry.
