A grand opportunity looms for Jibrel in one of the largest markets in the world — the commodities trading market. By leveraging blockchain technology, JCOM (Jibrel Commodities) will bring about huge benefits to the industry in the form of cost savings, instant settlement, increased transparency, and currency risk protection. Furthermore, JCOM will unlock this asset class to an entirely new category of investors by algorithmically facilitating Sharia compliance of Islamic products. In doing so, Jibrel would be taking the next logical step to position itself as a leader in the evolution of commodity markets.

The Current Industry Landscape

Despite the size of the industry, much of the global commodity business is still run manually and on paper. This is particularly true in the trading of non-industrial, agricultural products. Hordes of middlemen and observers weigh on the industry’s profits, all capitalizing on the principal question:

How do you ensure that the cargo you receive was exactly what you ordered?

Currently, such trading is all about manual documentation. Since there is no trust between counter-parties, both sides hire middlemen and intermediaries to check the accuracy of documentation. Thus, documents and invoices are stamped and scanned manually before being emailed back and forth. That arduous process not only cuts into economic efficiency, but also creates multiple opportunities for fraud at each point of contact.

As cargo changes hands, it goes through individuals, vessels, companies and countries — all of which need to adhere to different regulations, systems and formats of documentation. That makes it difficult for fraudulent alterations to be detected. In other words, it is entirely possible for almost any document to be intercepted and changed at each stage between the original supplier and end consumer.