Cryptocurrency Marries Mary Jane
Originally posted on 420beginner.com
It’s becoming increasingly obvious that the US marijuana market needs a new form of currency, and bitcoin is here to fill the void.
Moving the green
Because banks and credit card companies don’t do business with marijuana dispensaries, some of which rake in millions of dollars a month, the sort-of-legal marijuana business has been dealing in cash—wads and wads of greenbacks.
And since the largest US bill is now the Bennie (for our non-US readers: Ben Franklin is on the $100 bill), a business doing $1 million a month in sales is collecting, storing and moving a lot of paper.
Ten thousand pieces of paper.
As #trumpolini might tweet: “Disgracefull! Very ineficient” [sic].
(We’ll let you make up your own joke about crypto-fascists.)
Bitcoin at the dispensaries?
Now the business press is taking note of the obvious consequence: the crypto-pharmaceutical MaryJane can be purchased with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, perhaps soon to include a specifically marijuana-linked crypto—HashCash?
Is this the reason that Bitcoin recently popped a new high around $3500 (almost three times more valuable than a gold Krugerrand)?
The Markets Insider blog from Business Insider reports that:
"Specialized holding company SinglePoint, Inc. (OTC: SING) . . . is developing (http://nnw.fm/2wJlF) a proprietary bitcoin exchange system aimed at solving payment processing issues in high-risk markets including the cannabis industry. This . . . will allow consumers to obtain bitcoin at any point of sale and will be available for use to any legal marijuana business in the 29 states and the District of Columbia where cannabis has been legalized."
This all makes perfect sense—use your encrypted phone app to buy your crypto-pharmaceutical with cryptocurrency. Nobody, including the Jeff Sessions Thought Police, will know what you are doing, or what you are ingesting/smoking/vaping.
And it’s none of their business.
But here is a word of caution/prediction/warning—don’t count on the Feds leaving this lucrative source of tax revenue and point of control unregulated for long.
[EDITOR’S NOTE: We hope you enjoyed this break from our regular programming. More reviews coming soon!]