Tech Fights Conflict Minerals

- David Rocks and Dimitra Kessenides

Tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold, often grouped together in mining industry jargon as 3TG, are vitally important to the industrial economy, used in high-tech products from smartphones to jets. But these conflict minerals, as they’re known, frequently follow a sketchy path from mine to factory, coming from mines whose profits flow to violent militias, criminals, and even terrorists. As human-rights groups step up pressure on big companies to better police the provenance of raw materials in the $600 billion industry, Nathan Williams says he can help.

He’s chief executive officer of Minespider, a startup that’s using blockchain, the technology at the heart of Bitcoin, to better track shipments of metals as they move from mines to smelters and then on to factories worldwide. Blockchain, a database file from which information can’t be deleted, is infinitely expandable to accommodate new entries. Williams has adapted the technology to create files that can be attached to gold ingots, pallets of tin, or truckloads of tantalum and tungsten as QR code labels. The codes ultimately provide manufacturers with proof their metals come from relatively peaceful places such as Peru, rather than, say, a rebel-run mine in war-torn Congo. “There’s a shift,” Williams says, “from the concept of ‘I can sell metal anonymously’ to ‘I must include a story with my metal.’ ”