Tokenized Whiskey Is Real — And You Can Borrow Against It
How BAXUS is bringing transparency, liquidity and DeFi utility to the $2T alcohol market, one bottle at a time
Each month, we’re diving into one founder’s journey building on Solana, as well as noteworthy network updates to help readers get up to speed.
The latest Solana Sessions podcast
For this month's Solana Sessions episode, we interviewed Tzvi Wiesel, co-founder and CEO of Baxus.
Baxus is a global spirits marketplace that lives onchain. It raised $5 million in seed funding to make the spirit and wine collectors market more transparent.
We discuss how Baxus is tackling inefficiencies in the alcohol market, from price mismatches and shady gray markets to turning whiskey collections into onchain collateral.
We also dive into his founder journey from helping run a whisky festival to founding one of the biggest online rare-whisky trading platforms in the world, why he chose Solana as a network to bring alcohol onchain, and how he is targeting the $2T global spirits industry a Solana-powered marketplace for high-end wine and spirits.
This is a part of the Solana Sessions campaign that Token Relations and the Talking Tokens podcast are doing, diving into founders’ journeys and startups building on Solana.The episode is available on Talking Tokens on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
Uncorking the Alcohol Market
Over the past year, tokenization of assets has gained significant mindshare. From assets like real estate and stocks to trading cards and luxury goods - millions of investable assets are being minted every month. And this includes high end spirits, too.
While rare spirits have historically been coveted collectibles and alternative investments, its pricing may not always be consistent. If you walk into two different liquor stores, you might see the same bottle listed at wildly different prices. This was one of the reasons Baxus was created.
“If I could pay $80 for [alcohol], and somebody’s willing to pay $900 in the city, I can sell it to them for $600,” Tzvi Wiesel, co-founder and CEO of Baxus, said on Talking Tokens. “This got me thinking of what happens when you can get access to bottles that are priced inefficiently on a global scale.”
Through this arbitrage opportunity and price discrepancy, Wiesel wanted to create a solution where customers or collectors can enjoy alcohol, while knowing they’re getting the best price.
There are marketplaces that provide this, without the use of blockchain technology, but they’re missing a number of benefits for the end user and provider, he noted.
For traditional platforms, in order to pay for goods, you need to use a credit card. Most of the time, it comes with a fee. With crypto, users can buy and sell using stablecoins, removing the associated fee, he added.
“A number of users who were buying with credit cards were getting hit with a 4.5% processing fee and they wanted to know how they could save that 4.5%,” Wiesel said. “People who never would’ve touched crypto are now buying USDC and on ramping to crypto because it means they could save money on what they want.”
While many blockchains have stablecoin options and can process transactions in real-time, Wiesel chose to build Baxus on Solana because of its low gas fees at less than 1 cent.
“Part of the reason we’re bringing this onchain is for lower costs, more efficiency, more transparency,” Wiesel said. “So many of our initial users were not onchain users, it was whisky people - we needed to make this as comfortable for traditional buyers as possible.”
Since it's onchain, it opens up a number of doors for users who view these high end spirits as investment pieces and can use the bottles as collateral. “There are bottles where you don’t want to open this or sell it, but it has value,” Wiesel said. “[With Baxus], I can use a bottle I own as collateral and take a loan, and it creates this market where borrowers get something that's not available anywhere else and lenders get access to overcollateralized high yield loans.”
(Note: This is possible through Baxus’ partnership with Loopscale, which we featured on Solana Sessions last month.)
All in, Baxus wants to provide transparency for the high end spirits market, while creating a marketplace where customers, collectors or traders can access alcohol globally for whatever needs they want.
“The global wine and spirits industry is $2 trillion, but the actual value of assets sitting in private hands is closer to $50-100 billion, just sitting in closed off spaces,” Wiesel said. “Being able to bring assets onchain with price discovery and then make it accessible, we can put money back into the hands of the owners and create a new economic asset class for an industry that has traditionally lacked that transparency.”
BAXUS by the numbers
Transaction volume: $25M
App downloads: 150K
Bottles tracked across collections: 1M
The biggest updates on Solana
Outside of our spotlight…here’s what’s happening on the blockchain:
Check out this video about DePIN projects on Solana, its role for community-powered infrastructures and experiences from Capitol Hill in Washington DC
Kamino shared it reached $4B in total deposits, while its borrowed amount hit an all-time high of $1.68B according to DefiLlama data
RWA holders on Solana rose 680% on the month to 57.8K, RWAxyz data shows
BackedFi issued xStocks, a standard for tokenized stocks onchain, to Solana
Crossmint launched its wallet software development kit with Solana network integration, among other blockchains
Bullish, a centralized exchange for institutional investors, collaborated with the Solana Foundation to integrate Solana-native stablecoins as the primary digital asset used across its services
GUNZ announced its releasing its token for its web3 game Off The Grid to Solana
Participate in the Solana Mobile Hackathon and compete for a chance at a $100K prize pool
Pre-ordered Solana Seeker? Confirm shipping details before they ship out August 4th
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This information is for entertainment purposes only. It should not be considered financial advice, nor should it be used to make investment decisions. Cryptocurrencies are high risk and you should consult a financial professional before making any financial decisions. Make sure you do your own research.