Nevada finally greenlights weed stablecoin pilot — but experts doubt it
Marijuana users in Nevada could soon buy their bud with a tailor-made stablecoin.
Blockchain studio Multichain Ventures says it now holds a contract to fulfil Assembly Bill 466 — which demands the state run a ‘closed-loop’ pilot that lets the local cannabis industry transact electronically within federal laws.
Right now, Nevadians can only buy weed with cash, even though it’s been legal in the state since 2016. Banks still refuse to work with sellers, on account of the soft drug’s classification as a federally controlled substance.
Instead, Bill 466 forces Nevada to pilot a Venmo-like system in a bid to alleviate the need for the weed ecosystem to store tons of fiat.
Most business operators take traditional banking for granted, but the cannabis industry is cut off from most financial services in the US. Operators have had to be particularly innovative when it comes to managing their cash.
Brave New Coin founder and CEO Fran Strajnar
Multichain Ventures’ solution tokenizes dollars one-to-one upon deposit in a federal bank.
Those dollar-backed tokens can flow within the system’s ecosystem, which is powered by fledgling blockchain Solana, and a press release states users can also cash out their tokens for fiat.
A weed stablecoin might be a little too easy
It’s worth noting local news The Nevada Independent last year relayed concerns from experts, who said states were “woefully unequipped to get at the heart of the problem,” and that similar bills in Ohio and Colorado proved unsuccessful.
“I think it’s important for the first states to understand there’s very little they can do from a state perspective to affect this in any way,” one industry insider told journalists.
“So many of these states and municipalities have spent six figures on feasibility studies. All come back to the same conclusion: they will never work.”
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It should also be said Nevada reportedly gave no money to the winning bid for the pilot, so the “contract” just an opportunity to have the project “blessed” by the state.
Still, centralized blockchain solutions like these have slowly worked their way into the still-green cannabis industry, but for now it seems a little gimmicky.
Maybe the worst: British medical marijuana ‘entrepreneur’ Maximillian White recently hinted plans to launch a weed-backed cryptocurrency by the end of the year.