Just Here for the Diamonds

IBM pitches blockchain for cannabis sale
Nov 2017, BBC

Blockchain technology could provide a secure way to track the legal sale of cannabis in Canada, IBM has said.

IBM said: "Blockchain is an ideal mechanism in which BC can transparently capture the history of cannabis through the entire supply chain, ultimately ensuring consumer safety while exerting regulatory control - from seed to sale.

Technology company Everledger is already using the technology to verify the history of diamond transactions.
-BBC


However interesting to see the blockchain and the pot trade finally meet, I am here only looking at the fact that diamonds already have their own currency, as it were. The blockchain, which enables cryptocurrencies, is being used, so it seems, to give every commodity its own currency. Then again, it's not even the currency part that is useful here, but the recordkeeping part.

Diamonds demand the airtight recordkeeping that the blockchain provides. Not only do people want to know if their's is a blood diamond or not, they want to know if it was created in a lab, by humans, or in the Earth, by physics. (In the end, it's hard to argue that there is any difference - the diamonds are identical whether they come from one or the other place.) See what happens.

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