DeFi Platform Partners With Georgian Government To Tokenize The Country's Fine Wine As NFTs

What Happened: WiV Technology, a blockchain trading platform for “unique assets,” has partnered with the Georgian government to move some of the country’s wine onto the blockchain.

In a press release shared with Benzinga, WiV said that several Georgian wines and their associated Non Fungible tokens (NFTs) would be made available to a global network of wine producers, collectors, and enthusiasts on the WiV platform.

Why It Matters: WiV is a DeFi platform that specialized in selling NFTs physically backed by fine wine.

It also allows producers and collectors to instantly buy, sell, and borrow money against their wine, enabling them to circumvent the “extensive bureaucratic processes” typical of the industry.

Last year, the company completed the world’s first tokenized wine transaction on a blockchain. Seven cases of Chateau Croix Mouton 2018 were issued with ERC-721 tokens.

“Economics is changing. Physical assets can now be turned into digital representations of the physical assets so that they can be traded more quickly and efficiently,” noted Salome Zourabichvili, the President of Georgia.

“This process works exceptionally well for wine because the digital certificates of the wine, also called wine tokens, can confirm the wine’s provenance. We want to be the first wine-producing country that embraces this new approach, bringing Georgian wine to a new standard and new audiences,” she added.

WiV also plans to enhance the credibility of Georgia’s wine by developing a quality assurance program featuring a panel of expert judges.

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“By connecting fine wine with quality assurance and immutable provenance on the blockchain, we will be putting some of Georgia’s exceptional wines in front of wine merchants, collectors and enthusiasts from right across the globe. It will make it simple to trade the wine quickly, simply and cost-effectively,” said Tommy Nordam Jensen, co-founder of WiV.