The Value of Real Things

We all want to know that what we’re giving—and what we’re getting—is real.

That is true whether you are an artist selling limited prints, a buyer supporting local makers, or someone picking up a deck of cards that has been nearly 100 years in the making. Authenticity matters. Not just emotionally, but financially.

In a world of AI-generated imitations and mass-market counterfeits, value is too easy to undermine.

While updating and rereleasing my great-grandfather’s 1920s baseball card game, I encountered a fear shared by many creators:

What if someone copies it? The game, the art, or even the story?

Creators are not the only people who lose. Customers who believe they are buying something genuine can end up with a fake. Trust is hard to build and easy to lose.

Creators offer authenticity. Customers value it.

That is where much of a product’s value lives: in the story, effort, skill, and care behind it.

I felt that as I redesigned the game—not just as a product, but as a connection to my family’s legacy. I wanted a practical way for customers to distinguish a deck I had issued from an unauthorized copy. So I began building one.

Authenticity should be provable, not merely promised.

LiTPOW gives creators a way to issue verifiable credentials for physical products. It uses public, timestamped Bitcoin records to make those credentials independently checkable and resistant to later alteration.

Every deck in the first edition of my game includes a serial number and passphrase. Together, they correspond to a public authenticity record. A customer can check the credentials without downloading an app, creating an account, or owning Bitcoin.

A successful check does not make copying impossible, nor does a digital record examine every physical feature of an object. It provides something more precise: evidence that the supplied credentials were issued for an authentic product.

That distinction can help creators defend the value of official editions and help customers make better-informed decisions.

Built for independent creators

LiTPOW began as a way to protect the story behind my own work. I now want to learn whether the same approach can help artists, artisans, publishers, and small-batch brands.

I am especially interested in working with Hawaiʻi creators who want to test product authentication without adding unnecessary technical complexity.

If that describes your work, explore LiTPOW for Creators or contact me about participating in a future pilot.