Twig takes $35M to turn stuff you own into a way to pay

In that scenario blockchain becomes useful… We want to increase the liquidity of this asset and make it very easy for consumers to trade the physical goods for virtual goods and use the virtual goods to buy physical goods or experiences.“So we just want to make it much easier for them to trade, essentially.”Cupi has a background in blockchain and the circular economy — which has included, back in 2018, selling a denim upcycling business to Levi’s Albania.Physical items that resell well include fashion from brands like Nike, Gucci, Chanel, Hermes and other luxury makers, according to a Twig white paper — which talks about “redefining the future of ownership” and “empowering Gen Z to live a circular lifestyle”.Apple electronics also hold their value well on the secondhand market, per Cupi — who notes that after Twig added electronics to the secondhand items it’ll buy, expanding out from buying fashion cast offs, its demographic shifted from over 90% female to around 70:30 female to male.Twig takes care of the resale of pre-owned items for its users — providing them with an instant valuation and (potentially) instant cash to spend on whatever they like if it’s happy to buy the stuff they’re selling. While if Twig ends up being unable to sell an item it says it donates the goods to charity rather than binning them to avoid sending stuff to landfill because that’s bad for the environment.Cupi says it’s in a growth-focused phase at present so is not seeking to make chunky margin on resales.The value it’ll offer for an item varies, depending on various dynamic factors — its white paper notes that it uses a “market-based pricing algorithm” to analyze more than 100 million products on the secondary market to provide “representative resale values for brands, item categories and market segments”.Etsy asks, ‘How do you do, fellow kids?’ with $1.6B Depop purchaseCore to its premise is that factoring in resale value changes the concept of total cost of ownership for the consumer — which may have the power to shift buying patterns (it could, for example, encourage consumers to opt for high-end fashion to get value longevity over environmentally ruinous and low resale value fast fashion, say).Combining bank-like functionality — Twig accounts come with a Twig Visa debit card and include capabilities like the ability to make domestic and international money transfers — with a baked-in secondhand goods resale service is a pitch tailor-made for the target Gen Z and younger millennial demographic which has shown a keen and growing interest in both the thrift and sustainability of secondhand marketplaces.Twig’s target demographic also explains its marketing being heavy on talk of environmental friendliness via circularity. And there is a risk that such intensive energy costs could end up erasing potential environmental gains (if Twig is able to turn increased liquidity of secondhand goods into a net reduction in manufacturing of new items via reduced demand from consumers to buy new).But it’s also possible that such a radical reimagining of what can be used to make a payment — all sorts of items/things/stuff; in theory a consumer may not need to ever spend actual money in a world of tokenized value — could lead to substantial shifts in consumption that can actually move the needle on circularity.