Under the Law
Cannabis and cryptocurrency are traveling similar paths. After all, both of them are finding an emerging recognition under the law. Both of them enjoy advocacy from younger generations, and both promise to deliver some change to the foundation of traditional attitudes across many nations.
While most readers would recognize similarities nonetheless do not certify a connection, it’s also a reality many among ‘traditionalists’ in our world cryptocurrency and marijuana are always put in the same basket. Both are seen as unqualified threats to the traditional order, especially when there’s an intersection between them.
The availability of many cannabis cryptocurrencies is something of a perfect storm to traditionalists, just the same as it may be seen as an opportunity to invest in ‘two for one’ growth of a drug growing in availability, via emerging currency.
Cryptocurrency and cannabis also share a similarity in their legal security. Some territories are crypto-friendly, while others are cannabis-friendly. Since effective regulation is still being formed in many states — and some still retain outright bans of cryptocurrency exchanges and cannabis — the intersection of both are rare.
Crypto/Cannabis
While Japan may be a crypto-friendly nation, getting caught there with marijuana, as former Beatle Paul McCartney famously did in 1980 ultimately spending nine days in jail, will still deliver you a bad time.
By contrast, while it may be perfectly legal in U.S. cities like Portland, Oregon or Denver, Colorado to buy an ounce of cannabis, bitcoin is not held to be legal tender in the U.S. The differences here can partly be explained by a question of culture.
While a nation like Japan is often very progressively technologically, when it comes to civil freedoms such as gun ownership and use of drugs, the country retains a strong social conservatism. While the U.S. also has a strong culture of social conservatism in some states, others like Oregon and Colorado are more liberal.
Beyond individual social attitudes to cannabis — or approaches to legal tender regulation of cryptocurrency — the ongoing sale of cannabis, and cryptocurrency’s use on the black market is something in which virtually all stakeholders in the issue can find common ground.
It just may also need to come with a trade-off. Many decent tax paying citizens across a nation may share the concern with traditionalists over cryptocurrency’s use in crime but also find it odorous that buying cannabis is still a criminal offense.
By contrast, many people who may seek to buy cannabis using cryptocurrency on the dark web may do so only because it’s not available to them locally, and legally. Legalization of it in their territory would deal a big blow overnight to the online trade.
