The 'World's First' Crypto Beer Vending Machine Has Arrived

Announced Friday, the Palo Alto-based startup will unveil the world's first "Crypto beer vending machine" at CoinDesk's Consensus 2018 next week.

No gimmick, Civic sees the prototype, built and branded in partnership with beverage giant Anheuser-Busch, as a way to demonstrate the utility of blockchain-based identity verification schemes.

In short, any conference attendee will be able to walk up to the machine with their Civic app, where they can verify whether they are of legal age and make a purchase.

Going even further, the demo illustrates how blockchain technology could one day enable the makers of all kinds of age-restricted products to move into the vending machine market.

While the prototype is now said to be in transit to the New York Hilton for the event, it's the first and only in production by the company, and there are no plans at this time for either Civic or Anheuser-Busch to move forward with any wider distribution.

Civic said the machine will aim to release up to 600 free beers daily at the conference.

Still, there are additional considerations for Civic aside from marketing.

Looking ahead, the demo also provides a glimpse of how a wide range of devices could soon be connected to Civic's identity marketplace, now scheduled for a Q3 launch.

Announced last June, Civic sold $33 million-worth of its CVC tokens to investors ahead of an initial coin offering for its protocol that saw more of its custom cryptocurrency dispersed to users.

Essentially, vending machines that need to verify that an ID is valid will need to purchase Civic tokens in order to enact the query and verify the blockchain data.