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What do Somalian pirates, oranges, pineapples and Chinese pork bellies have in common? They are all in the crosshairs of a new technology that promises to change the supply chain.
Last week, IBM (IBM) and Maersk, the world’s largest marine cargo shipping company, announced they would use digitalization to improve cargo tracking, reduce fraud and lessen the time products spend sitting in ports.
Blockchain is the distributive ledger system that grew out of Bitcoin. What makes it unique is complete transparency. Participants see the entire supply chain, end-to-end in real-time. All of those prying eyes and encryption mean transactions cannot be tampered with or easily deleted. In theory, its foolproof.
“That was the ‘aha’ for me. This was not really about digital payments, but establishing trust in transactions in general,” Arvind Krishna, director of research at IBM, told The New York Times. “It is a technology that can change the world.”
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So far, it’s been mostly about streamlining red tape and reducing fraud.
In the case of Maersk, the task is mammoth. The company ships tens of millions of rectangular containers all over the world every year. Each has a paper trail handled by up to 30 different customs, tax and health organizations. A single lost document can cause an entire ship laden with thousands of containers to sit idle in port for days.
Maersk says a fifth of the cost of shipping is red tape. The potential savings range in the tens of billions of dollars.
And then there is fraud. While North Africa is still rife with seafaring Somali pirates, many bad guys have gone white-collar. The “bill of lading” is the legal receipt shippers use to document product delivery. Unfortunately, it’s also the most tampered with and forged document in the supply chain. Fake documents lead to billions of dollars of stolen and counterfeited goods.
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| Walmart is one of 400 clients currently trialing IBM’s Blockchain. |
Blockchain and digitalization alleviate this problem. All documents become part of the chain. Nobody can delete or change the record with the consensus of the entire network. The only end-around would be a system hack. Advanced cryptography makes that almost impossible.
Walmart (WMT) is one of 400 clients currently trialing IBM’s Blockchain. Last October it began using the open source software to track Chinese pork throughout the supply chain — from producers to processors to distributors to grocers to consumers. Each step left an indelible record.
Maersk reports successful trials tracking mandarin oranges shipped from California and pineapples sent from Colombia to the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
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The International Chamber of Shipping reports 90% of world trade is carried by the international shipping industry. More than 50,000 vessels are afloat, representing 150 nations. The potential impact of Blockchain is enormous.
This is a wake-up call for investors. It’s time to begin staking claims. Start with IBM.
Best wishes,
Jon Markman
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Here we go again, in theory it’s foolproof, in practice is isn’t; not by a long shot.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses
http://www.zdnet.com/article/dont-believe-the-blockchain-hype-examining-its-weaknesses-and-risks/
There are more such articles and papers; their not hard to find .
I couldn’t locate the paper that describes a premise blockchain relies on is the distributed nature of the transaction. No single computer has access to all of the transaction. Seller info details is not available to the purchaser and vise versa. But if the computers happen to reside in the same location, then a bad actor has access to everything needed to perform whatever fraudulent activity they want and leave no trace behind. My memory isn’t what it used to be (just ask the wife and kids) so my recollection of the details in this missing paper may be wrong but the gist of it is, blockchain isn’t as safe or as foolproof as advertised.
So when do The People get their identification chip?
This is great…durning the holidays I used, E-bay, unknowingly the packages were coming via China. My bank cards were hacked 2 times, and no merchandise. I closed, the account…the banks are still working on this mess. I will, never use E-bay or Pay Pal again. Seemly, they work in tandem. Still, recieving erroneous messages from them.
Is ANYthing safe anymore??!!