The $100 Trillion Crypto Wealth Wave Has Started

How often do you think about barcodes?

If you’re like me, the answer is almost never.

You grab a package of cookies off the grocery store shelf and take it to the cashier. She scans it, you hear the beep, pay, and walk out.

Boring, right?

But 52 years ago, this system barely existed. Most people had never heard of barcodes. Plenty of retailers and manufacturers were still asking, “Why do we even need this?”

In 1973, the grocery industry agreed on a common standard called the Universal Product Code (UPC). Nobody looking at it back then could have known it would eventually become part of the basic plumbing of global commerce.

First, though, they had to get people to use it.

Stores had to spend money on scanners. But those scanners only made economic sense if roughly 75% of the products on their shelves carried barcodes.

Manufacturers faced the opposite problem: changing their packaging only made sense if enough stores had scanners to read the codes.

Everybody was waiting for everybody else.

Then, on June 26, 1974, a cashier at a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio, slid a 67-cent pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit gum across a scanner.

Beep.

For the first time, a UPC had been used in a commercial transaction. And once the technology started proving itself, mass adoption eventually exploded.

Checkout lines moved about 40% faster. Stores could track inventory more accurately. Retailers installed more scanners. Manufacturers printed more barcodes.

Eventually, barcodes became so embedded in retail that opting out wasn’t an option. If you wanted your products on shelves and moving through checkout, you had to use them.

Today, more than 1 billion products carry GS1 barcodes, and those barcodes are scanned more than 10 billion times every day worldwide. GS1 — the global standards organization behind UPC barcodes — serves more than 2 million companies across 150-plus countries.

I’m telling you that story because financial markets are approaching their own version of that first beep.

Blockchain Just Got Its “Barcode” Moment