Countering the counterfeits: how to spot a fake Prada

investmentnews.com:

For almost a decade, I’ve been listening to digital prophets predict a future where banks save billions of dollars, customers can trace their mangoes back to the organic farm where they were grown, and financial intermediaries are a thing of the past, all thanks to the blockchain. I’ve been waiting for that future to arrive, but I’ve never come across it in my daily life.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I encountered the word “blockchain” inside a Miu Miu bag.

I’d recently purchased the bag, and a little white card was tucked away in a pocket. On the piece of 100% recycled fiber, it read: “This authentic Prada product’s certificate has been uploaded on Aura Blockchain Consortium’s platform to record and guarantee its integrity.”

Miu Miu’s parent company, Prada Group, is one of several major luxury houses investing in high-tech ways to track their most coveted and most expensive products. Over the past year, brands including Loro Piana, Louis Vuitton and Maison Margiela have launched services built on the Aura consortium’s blockchain that allow customers to verify that their item isn’t a knockoff.

The hope is that tracking handbags, coats and diamond rings this way could be a game changer in the industry’s fight against the ballooning counterfeits market. As much as $464 billion worth of counterfeit and pirated products changes hands each year, accounting for 2.5% of world trade, according to a 2019 estimate by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Blockchain technology is just one of the weapons deployed by the sector in a years long battle against fakes. Recent efforts include Richemont’s new platform for sharing information about lost or stolen watches and jewelry and LVMH-owned Patou launching an