How Walmart Triggered This Ballistic Cryptocurrency Rally

When publicly-traded companies like Walmart make a splash in crypto, they usually launch their projects on private blockchains.

On those rare occasions when they hazard to venture outside these walled gardens, it’s generally on a large-cap cryptocurrency network with brand recognition: Ethereum, Ripple (XRP), and Stellar rank among the usual suspects.

So when one of the world’s largest retailers announced that it would launch a food traceability platform on the public VeChain blockchain, it raised plenty of eyebrows – not to mention the lesser-known cryptocurrency’s token price.

VeChain Cryptocurrency Surges as Much as 68%

The vechain token price went ballistic following the announcement. On Binance, VET perched as high as $0.0114, up from a daily low of $0.0068 for an intraday gain of 68%.

By press time, the vechain price had tailed off to $0.089, representing a 24-hour gain of 25%.

At this level, vechain ranks as the 28th-largest cryptocurrency with a circulating market cap of $502 million. The asset has $255 million in reported daily trading volume, while its “Real 10” volume (which measures volume only from 10 trusted crypto exchanges) stands at $94 million.

Walmart China & PwC Choose VeChainThor for Supply Chain Platform

VeChain’s price eruption followed Walmart China’s announcement that it had formed a partnership with “Big Four” auditor PwC to launch a supply chain integrity platform on the VeChainThor blockchain.

Many analysts believe supply chain sustainability represents one of the most promising enterprise use cases for blockchain technology.

Here’s how Walmart China’s blockchain tool works. By scanning a QR code sticker on an item’s package, consumers can verify its origins and journey through the supply chain. Packaging information, delivery records, and other data points are encoded on the blockchain and accessible through the “Wal-Mart Block Chain Food Traceability” website.

At launch, only 17 product lines have been tested on the platform. However, Walmart China has ambitious goals for the project.

By the end of 2020, the retail giant expects that the platform will trace 50% of all packaged fresh meat, 40% of packaged vegetables, and 12.5% of packaged seafood sold in Walmart China stores.