Overstock subsidiary Medici Ventures invests in VinX

Overstock CEO Patrick M. Byrne.

The wholly owned subsidiary of Overstock.com Inc., chief blockchain accelerator Medici Ventures, announced in a press release its communications agency, Method Communications, sent to CoinReport, its latest strategic investment in VinX, an Israel-based firm creating a blockchain platform to make wine futures trading more efficient, effective and simple while reducing fraud via secure supply-chain tracking from product origin.

VinX seeks to develop a coin-based digital wine futures platform founded on the Bordeaux futures model that enables wine futures selling and trading on an open and secure blockchain to present an equal opportunity for transactions on a worldwide scale. VinX plans on reducing fraud in the wine industry by utilizing the secure and immutable characteristics of blockchain to trace the origin of wine available to end consumer at a cost that the industry could bear.      

Overstock.com founder and CEO Patrick M. Byrne said in the news release we received, “Like any economy, the wine industry has difficulty scaling its middlemen-heavy systems in parallel with the growing demands of an increasing global market.”

He added, “VinX’s steps in tokenizing wine futures while allowing wine enthusiasts to know without a doubt that the bottles they purchase are filled with authentic wines will position the entire industry as a model of a new global economy that replaces old boys’ networks with frictionless trust through technology.”

According to a conservative estimation by experts, 20 percent of all wine in the world has fake labeling, with consumers believing they are buying high-end bottles of wine, while in fact they have more local provenance. Even most seasoned collectors often find it difficult to identify replicas. VinX, to fight against this growing concern, aims to utilize blockchain to link wine consumers directly with wineries, removing deceitful middlemen within the space and delivering consumers a direct line to the product origins.

VinX co-founder and CEO Jacob Ner-David commented, “We are so excited to partner with the Overstock/Medici Ventures family to help us realize the VinX vision, which meshes exactly with the core values of Medici Ventures. VinX is democratizing the capital structure of the wine industry by bringing consumers in direct contact with producers early in the wine-making cycle.

He added, “We are riding the wave of direct-to-consumer, which Overstock has been a leader of for almost 20 years. In addition, because we are registering all wine futures as tokens on a blockchain, we are bringing a powerful validating force that will go a long way toward reducing fraud. VinX looks forward to benefiting from the many years of e-commerce experience of Overstock and the blockchain leadership of Medici Ventures and the rest of the Medici Ventures portfolio.”

Image courtesy of Overstock.com