CBD & Crypto - the Best Team Up Since Riggs & Murtaugh?

One’s the ‘old-guard’, been around the block one too many times, the other, tried and tested but still a lot of miles left on the clock. As much as that sounds like a buddy cop movie, it’s also the story of CBD and crypto. CBD, as we all know, is derived from the cannabis plant, which has been smoked, chewed, eaten, sown into cloth, used for psychoactive and medicinal purposes, for thousands of years. Crypto and blockchain technology, in comparison, are still in their infancy – and were simply a theory in 1982 when a cryptographer by the name of David Chaum proposed the protocol in his dissertation.

Cannabis has been a major part of anti-conformity since the early 1970s, when Nixon-era politics were in full-swing and anti-establishment sentiment was at an all-time-high (no pun intended).

Despite their age gap, there are a lot of similarities between the two; starting with the crash that affected the crypto market in 2018, then one year later cannabis industry stocks took a nosedive. Both are disrupting major legacy industries that have traditionally been led by elitist, centralized monopolies, which has generated a surge of emerging start-ups in the financial and healthcare sectors.

However, there’s a lot more to the relationship between crypto and cannabis than boom/bust market cycles. Cannabis has been a major part of noncompliance since the early 1970s when Nixon-era politics were in full swing and the anti-establishment sentiment was at an all-time high (no pun intended). By the same token (I’m not doing this on purpose, I swear), crypto has been the digital thorn in the financial sector’s side since 2017, when adoption exploded, relatively speaking. Considered the best chance at ripping power away from trillion-dollar financial institutions, by allowing anyone to control their own finances and maintain financial privacy, crypto has become the greatest weapon against centralized control.

This not only hurts the consumer by making them overpay for an inferior product, but the CBD industry in general, because it plants the (hemp) seeds of distrust.

Right now, several CBD companies are going all in, leveraging blockchain tech and cryptocurrency, creating solutions to the biggest problems the industry faces because it operates in a legal grey zone. These are namely financial services and proof of provenance for the multiple ingredients that go into CBD products. Because of the lack of regulation, some ‘shadier’ operators are taking advantage, and passing off poorly designed and manufactured CBD products as ‘high-quality’ and charging a premium. This not only hurts the consumer by making them overpay for an inferior product but the CBD industry in general because it plants the (hemp) seeds of distrust.

One of the foremost organizations making progress on this front right now is the Coop Network (GEOMA DAO COOP), which has created its own blockchain, a fork of NXT, a proof-of-stake blockchain. In doing so Coop delivers a secure and private network for manufacturers and suppliers to trace the provenance of ingredients, from seed to shelf, allowing for ‘proof’ of a superior product. For an industry that’s still finding its feet, and navigating the murky waters of regulation as well as consumer confidence, this is a much-needed addition.

“We love the immutable quality of blockchain. Right now we’re talking to several projects in the space who’ve provided their solutions to other manufacturers, enabling them to show the materials they use are sustainably-sourced.”

Another company championing transparency in the CBD industry is Orange County CBD. One of the UK’s largest manufacturers of premium CBD products, who, a few years ago, were one of the first CBD companies to publicly share their products’ lab reports. This essential step towards building ‘trust’ within the CBD space meant they fast became the go-to brand for consumers who wanted to know more about what was actually ‘in’ their CBD. “We need to maintain our reputation for innovation and trust, and blockchain technology is the best way to allow for the traceability of our lab-tested ingredients all the way through the supply chain. We love the immutable quality of blockchain. Right now we’re talking to several projects in the space who’ve provided their solutions to other manufacturers, enabling them to show the materials they use are sustainably-sourced.”

When a customer, through blockchain technology, can now know the cotton used in their clothing wasn’t generated through slave labor but sourced from suppliers who practice fair trade, that’s going to be a major USP for brands. When it comes to an industry like CBD, this level of transparency could be a game-changer.