EY, WiV Technology Collaborate On Fine Wine Investment Trading Blockchain Platform

Blockchain, News | August 14, 2019 By:

Accounting services firm Ernst & Young (EY) has been selected by blockchain-based trading platform WiV Technology to provide technology services to help develop its fine wine investment trading blockchain platform.

WiV’s platform enables clients to trade bottles and cases of premium wine, with the origin, quality, and value of assets verified on a continually updated blockchain network. According to the firm, the platform, designed to combat counterfeit wines, will make it easier for producers and merchants to offer their wines, distributors to know where specific bottles are and buyers to understand the provenance of what they are buying.

In a press release, EY revealed that they have developed a non-fungible ERC-721 token structure for WiV known as WiV Wine Asset Tokens, which will be deployed on the Ethereum blockchain. It utilizes smart contracts to trace wine ownership and transaction history. Wine properties are also stored in the metadata.

“With the wine secured in a bonded warehouse and fully tokenized, a broad range of financial services can be provided against those assets on the blockchain. Investors are expected to be able to trade, sell, transfer and even seek financing against their blockchain-based assets at a fraction of the cost and time required previously,” EY said.

Tommy Nordam Jensen, WiV Technology CEO and Founder, said that fine wine is a fully tradeable asset, and it is vitally important that provenance is protected, because provenance is the only way to prove a wine’s true value without actually opening the bottle.

“Currently, many wine trades often slow to a crawl because the extensive paper trails must be manually checked at every step of the process, massively reducing the potential size of the market,” Jensen said. “We are enhancing the ecosystem so that fine wine investments can be traded as quickly, easily and safely as books are online. We want to make fine wine an asset that people invest in with confidence.”