Medici Ventures, the blockchain accelerator and subsidiary of Overstock.com, has made a seven-figure investment in the VinX startup blockchain.
VinX, based in Israel, is developing a supply chain platform for trading futures on wine, allowing connoisseurs and collectors to buy a vintage while still in the barrel, a year or two before being bottled and marketed.
By registering these futures as tokens on a blockchain, the startup believes that it will be possible to follow the wine to its origin and cut the fakes that afflict the industry.
While the exact sum of the investment is not made public, the president of Medical Ventures Jonathan Johnson told CoinDesk that his company has acquired 20 percent of VinX.
Johnson said that Medici was attracted to the startup blockchain use case, explaining:
"There are many intermediaries in the wine industry that can be eliminated with blockchain, there are many problems with counterfeits and we also think that this technology is democratizing the purchase of wine".
In fact, with a $ 302 billion global market and up to $ 3 billion paid by customers for counterfeit products, VinX is aiming for the big game.
However, it is not the only company that moves to put wine on a blockchain. Chainvine, a Swedish startup with a similar vision, raised $ 3 million this summer, and Everledger, known for tracking down the provenance of diamonds, said two years ago that he had recorded the first bottle of wine on a shared ledger.
Direct-to-consumer
VinX was founded by Jacob Ner-David, a co-founder and president of Jezreel Valley Winery in Israel. He also has experience in technological startups.
In a statement, Ner-David framed his company's mission in line with that of Overstock, the e-commerce giant founded in 1997 by Patrick Byrne, who later became an important evangelist for bitcoin and blockchain technology. in general.
"By bringing consumers into direct contact with producers at the start of the winemaking cycle," said Ner-David, "we are riding the direct-to-consumer wave, which Overstock has been a leader for almost 20 years".
Doctors has previously invested in a number of blockchain activities, including Voatz, Ripio, Symbiont, Bitsy, Bitt, Factom and others.
Vintage image of wine through Shutterstock
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