Conflict diamonds markets pushed back using blockchain

Good morning readers, blockchain people and everyone else, who is reading.

Just yesterday we talked about some of the financial dinosaurs, Buffett and his buddy Munger, giving all the talk they could muster at cryptocurrencies in general. Buffett's stance seems to vary from time to time, with reports of him badmouthing the cryptotrade, yet businesses related to him slowly creeping in.

So what are some of the giants up to now?

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Richline Group, a company fully owned by the Bershire Hathaway (Buffett gang!) along with other major companies in the industry are teaming up with IBM to create a proper backtracking tool for the source of diamonds and other precious metals. Richline has tried something like this in the past as well, but with little success, as it still involved too much manual labour and data entries - as opposed to the blockchain, where its all public, avoiding double work and if any party is skimping his part, it will be fairly obvious.

The project, dubbed Trustchain, involves precious metals refiner Asahi Refining, jewelry retailer Helzberg Diamonds, precious metals supplier LeachGarner and third-party verification provider UL, as other parties in this project.

The project itself will ensure that diamonds and precious metals will be tracable for every retail buyer in the world, from it's shelf in the store until to the very beginning of it's origin, eliminating the possibility of conflict area valuables ending on your girlfriends finger, as the younger generation is very aware of this issue.

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IBM announcement reads:

The supply chain is long and complicated, involving miners, gemological scientists, certifiers, regulators, shipping managers, wholesale suppliers, designers, retailers, insurers and other interested parties. Information is not shared across the entire network, so there are often multiple versions of the same documents that must be reconciled. Fraud can occur because jewels and precious metals change hands so many times along the supply chain.
Participants in the blockchain network can easily keep track of all of the components in a piece of jewelry from the time they are mined, as they’re fabricated into consumer products, such as diamond engagement rings, until they’re sold.

IBM has already made name for itself working with Walmart and others to track and log data on the blockchain. The Trustchain project should be live for all consumers by the end of 2018.