CAHrenheit and the Cars of China

CAHrenheit, an enterprise backed by some of the heavy hitters of China’s ride-sharing ecosystem, looks to use blockchains to shake up the market for buying and selling second hand cars.

At the heart of the business case they make there say they’ll offer a decentralized system of listing, ratings, and review based on real transactions, verified by blockchain. This could be coupled with Internet of Things devices that could be installed in cars providing real-time performance and condition data. These devices could also do the system’s mining, growing the supply of tokens.

An analyst at Hacked cautions against too much enthusiasm, saying that CAHrenheit “is in a very preliminary stage with no working product, barely defined token economy, no concrete details on token sale, etc.”

Still, the idea is intriguing. On the one hand, used car dealers will benefit from participation by “better customer acquisition and retention by establishing a trustworthy presence … or using CAH tokens for targeted promotional campaigns.” On the other hand, buyers benefit by a reduction in the asymmetry of information that has so characterized the automotive aftermarket since around the time horse-drawn carriages went out of style.