“...forever Laura, forever.”
— Michael Saylor, 01/2021
Setting aside whether it is feasible (technically), or practical (economically), or desirable (socially), we believe that embedding bitcoin into goods at the start of their lifecycle can incentivize collection at the end of their lifecycle.
All goods have inherent value, first in their usefulness, and second in the materials from which they are made. The latter is the embodied value in the constituent elements of the good. As usefulness declines, the embodied value may not be enough to motivate collection of that good for material recovery, even though if recovered, the materials could be reused to make new goods. For one thing, the cost of refining the constituent elements may be higher than their value in the commodities market. Thus many end-of-life goods are abandoned or otherwise disposed.
We propose a system to embed restricted value into goods at the time of manufacture. This value would be released upon presentation of the good to a qualified material recovery specialist (MRS). The value would be split between the presenter of the good (as a bounty) and the MRS (as subsidy for material refinement costs). Thus the embedded value serves to incentivize the collection of goods at the end of their useful life at a location well-suited to extract the embodied elements of those goods. Said materials can then be returned to the market in the form of physical commodities.
The system describes a possible implementation utilizing Fedimint, a federated Chaumian mint protocol integrated with the Bitcoin Lightning network, to establish the value and ownership of the object and to ensure the privacy and security of transactions. The protocol incorporates a unique ownership verification mechanism. This ownership identifier can be used to prevent theft, transfer ownership, and could also be used to store additional information for the purposes of verifying characteristics of the product.
The system has the potential to reduce the costs and regulatory burden of traditional recycling programs as well as provide stakeholders in a given supply chain with a composable, transparent data primitive that could be useful in the larger goal of evolving a more efficient, closed-loop supply chain.