2015-03-08 - Bitcoinist - Block Verify Turns Bitcoin Into Life-Saving Technology

[jdebunt]

http://bitcoinist.net/block-verify-turns-bitcoin-life-saving-technology/

While I was attending the Inside Bitcoins Berlin conference over the past few days, all of the event’s guests were treated to a surprise announcement made by the people over at Block Verify. This unexpected intermezzo had everything to do with using the blockchain technology in such a way that can benefit each and every one of us : combating counterfeit products and goods. Block Verify believes the blockchain holds the technology needed to combat counterfeit goods on an universal scale. Block Verify will use an advanced blockchain solution to allow monitoring of the whole supply chain including trading partners and product sourcing.

[unamis76]

This seems like a really cool idea, but I'm not getting how they want to implement this.

One thing is writing an article and putting it's original file hash on the blockchain, a hash that can be verifiable, and if it doesn't match you know you haven't got the original file. But medicines have no hashes... Even if one used their barcodes for hash verification, you can easily replicate a valid barcode and put it in all counterfeit medicine (unless they found a way to make the hash verifiable only once).

Am I missing something here? Their website has nothing beyond a login form and the news article doesn't really say much.