Explore wine on the blockchain with your tipsy Valentine

Quick Take

  • Wine on the blockchain?
  • Yes, wine on the blockchain
  • VinX, a Medici Ventures-funded company, has created the first blockchain-based wine futures

A bottle of red, a bottle of white, remember that Merkle trees keep your chain size light. That's right: wine is now on the blockchain.

Vinsent, a new app that allows purchasers to pick up a bottle of fancy (mostly Israeli) vino, is turning to the blockchain to register wine futures purchases while ensuring that the bottles are authentic.

Vinsent came from VinX, a Medici-funded company that sought out to create a digital wine futures platform similar to the Bordeaux model.

“Vinsent brings consumers in direct contact with wineries early in the winemaking cycle, giving early access to fine wine for consumers, and providing greater cash flow for wineries throughout the process,” said CEO Jacob Ner-David. “Simply said, we are reinventing the way wine is bought, owned, and experienced.”

The app tokenizes the bottles and allows for "permission-less selling and trading of wine futures on a transparent and secure blockchain." This means you can buy and sell a bottle without a middleman and bottle registration ensures each bottle is authentic.

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“The wine industry is ripe for blockchain disruption, as the technology solves significant problems with supply chains, transferring ownership and establishing provenance,” said Jonathan Johnson of Medici Ventures. “By building its platform with blockchain technology, Vinsent is establishing a secure marketplace for global audiences.”

The pickings are slim on the app right now and it's not even available on stores - perhaps they have to finely age the blockchain in new oak barrels before release? That said, connecting some bottles of the sweet nectar of Bacchus should be a good way to go, especially if you're trying to avoid a Billionaire's Vinegar kind of situation.

That said, until a nice bottle of Two Buck Chuck shows up on my cellar side chain I'm going to stay skeptical of current utility of this system.


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About Author

John Biggs is an entrepreneur, consultant, writer, and maker. He spent fifteen years as an editor for Gizmodo, CrunchGear, and TechCrunch and has a deep background in hardware startups, 3D printing, and blockchain. His work has appeared in Men’s Health, Wired, and the New York Times. He runs the Technotopia podcast about a better future. He has written five books including the best book on blogging, Bloggers Boot Camp, and a book about the most expensive timepiece ever made, Marie Antoinette’s Watch. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. Disclosure: Biggs owns and maintains cryptocurrencies in a private account and has been consulting with startups regarding blockchain-based products. He also edits and writes for startup clients.