Introduction to Cannacoin: An industry specific coin with genuine community roots

Cannacoin has its roots in Seattle, Washington, one of the hotspots for the newly created legal Cannabis industry in the United States.

The state of Washington has actually had quite a long history with Medical Marijuana, so much so that Northwest Greenthumb, an online community of over 16,000, has grown into a thriving forum for Cannabis patients, growers, and merchants to trade ideas and medicine. It is out of this community that Cannacoin was born.  Co-founder of the NWGT forum and software developer, Josh, or Subcreative as he goes by on the Cannacoin subreddit, started this coin for what he considers a very real reason.

Having been introduced to Bitcoin in early 2012, Subcreative wanted to create an industry specific coin that could serve not only his needs, but the needs of his social network of growers, breeders, and patients in the Northwest US.

In an interview back in March, Josh told us:

Northwest Greenthumb quickly became a staple resource for the cannabis community here in Washington and after witnessing the rise of Bitcoin and the cannabis industry almost simultaneously it didn’t take a long to conceptualize the idea.

Cannacoin launched with the idea that the Cannabis industry needed a payment method that did not have the same limitations as cash, paypal, or credit cards.

Particularly in the state of Washington, the tax burdens of the legal marijuana industry present some distinct challenges.  State regulators want to tax 25% on 3 tiers of business.  The producer (grower), the processor (label, testing, packaging), and the retailer. Plus an additional state/city sales tax at the retail level. That’s 25% at each stage of the supply chain.

Some of this friction can be solved by creating new and innovative applications for cryptocurrencies like Cannacoin.  Cannacoin is hard at work on that front and already has a fully functioning website, block explorer, IRC and Reddit tip bot.

On the horizon is a full functioning Point-of-sale merchant application and NFC payment cards (pictured).

These solutions will not only be helpful to the needs of Cannabis consumers in Washington, but also in Colorado and elsewhere.

The development team behind Cannacoin is hard at work and actively recruiting more people to join their community.  If you would like to find out more about Cannacoin, check out their official website, or for the more informal route, check the IRC channel #cannacoin on the Freenode network.  To purchase some of your own, you can currently find Cannacoin on Swisscex.com.