Washington Proposes Confusing Bitcoin Amendment to Legal Marijuana
It’s a well-established trope in the mainstream financial press and even in much of the modern consciousness that Bitcoin is merely the Cayman Islands of currencies. Criminals use it to hide their money (same as they do cash, but with more efficiency) from the government. While Bitcoin is nearly impossible to actually eradicate itself, the fear of government intervention to prevent merchants from using the currency has long pervaded conversations about Bitcoin. The marijuana industry in states where the plant has become legal also faces large swaths of legal gray areas in regards to their....
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Washington State and Colorado State have become the first states in America to legalize marijuana at the state level. The beginning of green celebrations in the aforementioned states at the beginning of this month led to a satirical piece claiming 37 dead due to marijuana legalization. Many people have applied for commercial licenses from their states to legally grow and distribute marijuana. Concurrently, many followers of legal marijuana news have noted that the majority of legal marijuana dispensaries, medical in most places, recreational in Washington and Colorado, must pay their state....
Will Bitcoin processors move first on this opportunity? Up to now, the largest Bitcoin payment processors have turned down businesses that sell legal marijuana in Colorado and Washington, but that may change with news today that the U. S. government has clarified anti-money laundering rules regarding these legally-peculiar businesses. The government has made it clear that banks may provide services to appropriately licensed marijuana dispensaries. Today FinCEN has issued a memorandum to prosecutors regarding the legal status of marijuana dispensaries and their payment processing. Marijuana....
Legal marijuana has been having banner year after banner year since various states have legalized the sale and consumption of the plant and its derivatives starting back in 2012 within Colorado and Washington. It should be noted that the process of marijuana’s status as a demonized drug has been slipping for much longer than the past 4 years. The first medical marijuana dispensary in the United States was in California back in 1996. As a business model, it’s hard to beat being a legal seller of pot, whether in a medical capacity or fully legalized manner. It’s common to see business owners....
It is no secret that the medical marijuana industry in the United States faces an uphill struggle, indeed our readers will remember that we covered the issue in detail recently and discussed how dependence on cash is putting both medical marijuana businesses as well as consumers at a great deal of risk. It is interesting to note that there have been developments in this field and there is now a payments solution at hand for regulated medical marijuana businesses as well as customers. CanPay has recently announced a solution for the legal marijuana industry that has become available to....
Ann Rivers, a Washington State senator, introduced a bill last week to ban the use of Bitcoin in purchasing or selling marijuana-related products. Rivers claims that Bitcoin isn’t transparent enough to be used as the underlying currency of the marijuana industry. She noted in the bill that Bitcoin does not have an actual value recognized by the US government. The bill reads: “‘Virtual currency’ does not include the software or protocols governing the transfer of the digital representation of value or other uses of virtual distributed ledger systems to verify ownership or authenticity in a....