A Data Commodity Exchange: A Plan for Grading, Certifying, and Trading Recovered Records

Abstract

Two trends are converging. Households and businesses pay to destroy or store paper and digital records they cannot use, and the volume is about to rise as a generation’s homes change hands. At the same time, developers of AI systems and other buyers are paying substantial sums for human-made material they cannot obtain elsewhere. This paper proposes a market that connects them: an exchange in which recovered records are appraised, stripped of identifying detail, graded against published standards, certified, and sold in lots under use agreements that forbid reassembly. The design borrows the institutions that turned grain into a tradable commodity in the nineteenth century, grading standards, inspected lots, receipts as documents of title, and clearing reserves, and adapts them to records, which, unlike grain, are never identical. It sets out the participants, the stages from supply to use, who is accountable for what, the legal ground as it stands, the risks the design must contain, and the questions it leaves open. Valuation of a lot follows Latent Value Query, and the provenance a grade depends on follows Generative Temporal Referencing. Most of the market is designed rather than built; where a part already exists, the paper says so. Not legal, financial, or investment advice. It has not been peer reviewed.