A new tool for the war on fake luxury goods

Blockchain plays a key role in the mechanism to reduce counterfeiting

Almost any recent reader of the business press could attest to the near-constant reporting and commentary about bitcoin’s underlying technology, known as blockchain. The conversation has focused almost exclusively on how businesses in the financial-services industries could benefit. So far, most of these conversations have been of little relevance to the rest of the business world.
 
That shouldn’t be the case, because blockchain, an independently validated, distributed and unalterable transaction ledger, has the potential to help all sorts of other industries, perhaps none more than retailing and manufacturing. Let’s consider just one problem these businesses face: vulnerability to counterfeiting.