The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

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Bitcoin Points Way to ‘Massive Change’ for Commodity Businesses

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-14/bitcoin-points-way-to-massive-change-for-commodity-businesses

“We’re talking about this massive change in the way that business is being done,” said Eric Ervin, the chief executive officer of Reality Shares Inc., a San Diego fund manager that created an index to track returns of companies adopting the technology. “Everything happens automatically, without a bunch of paperwork, processing and transferring.”

In most food-supply chains, “it might take weeks to figure out where it went from source to destination,” and in some cases, the source may not be known, Arvind Krishna, IBM director of research, said at a Dec. 5 technology conference in Park City, Utah. “On a blockchain, it takes just seconds.”

De Beers is investing in a blockchain platform to track the origin of diamonds to avoid selling gems from war zones.

Blockchain also is becoming a key tool for shipping companies. AP Moller-Maersk A/Sin March disclosed a ledger system with IBM that will help manage and track the paper trail of tens of millions of shipping containers. About $16 trillion of physical raw materials are transported around the planet each year, and better tracking offers the promise of big reductions in record-keeping costs. Current spending on documentation alone accounts for 7 percent of global trade, according to the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation.