Here’s something interesting for crypto traders and holders to rally about.
Brand-new reports are a real, tangible sign that governments in some more chaotic economies are dedicated to using cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies to track natural resources and products that make their way into global supply chains.
Today’s news is that the Rwandan government will use blockchain to track a metal called “tantalum” that you’ve probably never heard of.
Without going into too many specifics, tantalum is a corrosion-resistant metal that used to make capacitors for mobile phones and computers and other devices. Does it sound vital to today’s markets? That’s because it is.
The long and short of it is that Circulor, a blockchain platform startup, is going to help Rwanda to trace tantalum in ways that will promote conflict-free inventories.
“Our blockchain platform will empower consumers to understand where the materials in the products they buy come from and also make it harder for materials that are not ethically sourced to pass through the supply chain.” Said Circulor CEO Douglas Johnson-Poensgen, according to reporting at Cointelegraph. The national Rwandan Mining, Petroleum and Gas Board plans to use Circulor’s services to get contracting companies to verify the provenance of tantalum metals.
Some resource stakeholders will use startups like Circulor to change the game around products and materials that have often been characterized as washed in the blood of minors and harvesters; others will make their own blockchain systems.
Last spring, diamond giant DeBeers made headlines by announcing it will use its own proprietary tracking system to apply blockchain to the diamond industry.
Diamonds are far and away the biggest example of this type of ethical trade tracking. Most of us have heard of conflict diamonds at some point – we have friends and relations who shied away from the traditional practice of engagement diamonds because of their fears around brutal stories they’d heard about mining.
The blockchain technology services are poised to help deal with those kinds of concerns.
By using the transparency of an immutable ledger, governments and other holders can now guarantee to their customers that mining and harvesting was done without undue violence and disruption.
For precious metals and items like diamonds and tantalum that’s a big plus – because some of these concerns are some of the biggest obstacles in the markets themselves. Ethical trading goes to the core of how we see ourselves and our world – to many of us, it’s worth paying any premium to make sure that no one was harmed to produce our purchases.
Dig deeper, and you’ll see all kinds of other examples of sellers using blockchain to verify transactions and fight things like money-laundering and corruption, as well as unethical mining practices. These are very evident ways of how this cryptocurrency trend is reinventing trade in the 21st century and improving our global economy.