Conflict Minerals: Ethical Metals: Cobalt Traders Adopt Blockchain to Gain 'Automated Trust' as Demand from EVs Sector Grows

Sep 26, 2018 | Siobhan Hall, Diana Kinch, and Xinyue Zhang, S&P Global Platts
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Demand for clean, responsibly-sourced metal for use in electric vehicle batteries and smartphones has spawned a new market for technology companies: offering blockchain services to traders to track metals' provenance, particularly for cobalt. One data management company, DLT Labs, says it hopes to see as much as 10% of the market for cobalt shift to use of blockchain within 24 months, in processes that could involve sealed bagging, electronic tagging, weighing, recording and GPS tracking of batches of cobalt at all transactional stages.