BudTrader.com, the largest online cannabis marketplace, has announced that it now will accept Bitcoin as a payment method from advertisers on their site, as well as BitcoinCash and Litecoin.
This announcement comes after PayPal suspended BudTraders account abruptly last week, due to a PayPal policy which disallows CBD advertisements. (CBD - or cannabidiol - is an extract of the cannabis plant which has no psychoactive qualities.) Up til this point, BudTrader had been accepting payments from advertisers primarily through PayPal, but BudTrader CEO Brad McLaughlin made the call last week to switch the site over to allowing cryptocurrency as and acceptable payment method.
McLaughlin has been talking about the synergy between bitcoin/cryptocurrency and cannabis for some time. “I’ve seen the future of the cannabis industry,” he said to a room full of attendees at the Marijuana Business Conference in Las Vegas, “and it’s in blockchain and cryptocurrency.”
BudTrader was successful in raising $150k in Bitcoin via a PPM private offering from two separate parties at the MJ Biz Con Show (mjbizconference.com) in Las Vegas , which is the pre-eminent conference for professionals looking at emerging technology in the cannabis industry.
As for the headaches the company has gone through with PayPal, McLaughlin is hesitant to air his frustration at the online payments system. “I don’t want to say anything bad about PayPal,” he commented. “However, if I were going to say something bad about them, I would say their Terms and Conditions are outdated and that they are on the wrong side of history with legal cannabis and CBD. I might also say that they are like any other big bank, but just disguised as a tech company. No offense to the Great Elon Musk and the Great Peter Thiel, I got nothing but respect for you guys, but PayPal looks very different today from what it was supposed to be when it was founded. It’s essentially Wall Street disguised as a online payment solution/bank. For now, we’re done with PayPal though!”
The site also recently began to offer cryptocurrency as a payment option to pay its employees using Bitcoin, becoming the first known tech or cannabis company to do so. In addition to conducting business with Bitcoin, BudTrader has also long been rumored to be creating its own cryptocurrency, specifically for its users within the cannabis space to help ease the banking problems that still plague the cannabis industry.
BudTrader has risen through the ranks to become one of the most innovative and fastest growing cannabis tech brands in the industry, and currently touts more than one million registered users. BudTrader.com is the largest online cannabis marketplace, it’s platforms available in the 29 states where cannabis use is legal, as well as Canada and Puerto Rico. With over one-million people registered to their platform, BudTrader’s user base rivals that of industry giants Weedmaps, Massroots and Leafly.
