Budbo: blockchain based cannabis business within the law
Crypto Finder sat down with Budbo co-founder and president Luke Patterson to discuss how Budbo is above others in the market and is working to scale the business whilst staying within the law.
Interview from Blockchain Week London. 23rd January 2018.
Check out the initial Budbo interview
Read the transcript:
Well, in the crypto sphere, there's a few other companies that are looking to solve the banking industry problem with cannabis in the United States.
It's a Schedule 1 narcotic so we're still federally illegal, but there's 38 states that allow the states rights to have either medical or recreational use.
So with the banking industry, it's kind of fractured. So there's coins out there who have tried to solve it but we've kind of approached it from a different angle where it's a utility token for API keys.
So we don't allow the buying or selling of cannabis with the token, we just allow the data aggregation.
So there's no true competitor on the API key space. And some of the resistance to the other cryptocurrencies has essentially been because you can't buy or sell a Schedule 1 narcotic with the cryptocurrency, still be anti money laundering laws and things like that that would come into play.
So we're really the first one that has seen the amount of traction that we have because of the way that we've set it up, you know, be very careful to stay compliant, you know, with the regulators and the team that we've assembled.
And how about outside the crypto sphere. Why is it better to use your platform?
That's a great question. The thing that separates us from all the other applications out there, mobile applications out there in the cannabis space, is we really focus on the user experience. So there's a lot of good applications that will tell you where a dispensary is and you can scroll through a menu, where ours is heavily focused on the product.
So instead of showing you where a dispensary is, we actually show you where the individual products are. We allow you to sift through those very quickly.
Strain match feature allows you to put in your symptoms, what you might be suffering from, or if it's a recreational thing, what kind of experience you'd like to have – enlightening, enjoyment, couch lock ...
One of the different things that you can get and then we'll give you the strain of best fit.
So we've really focused our research on the user experience and letting them find exactly what they want.
And have you run up against a lot of legal hurdles?
No, not so much in all honesty. Our law team is very good. They're out of Lower Manhattan, they've got everything by the book. As long as you operate within the states that are legal, there's really no issues there whatsoever.
But how scalable is it? I mean, what's the growth plan given that the law is very black and white?
Well, we're in Canada right now, which goes fully legal in July. So we're operating in that space.
The United States, there's a little bit of pushback with the current administration, but it hasn't hurt the market at all. So we see hopefully within the next two to four years, cannabis becoming federally legal in the United States.
It's already about a $15 billion market there, so there's just too much money at stake for the states right now who are counting on that for the budgetary needs and fulfilment. So we see the growth only accelerating, you know, from here on out.
