Legislative Efforts, Supply Chain Visibility, and More — Tokes Platform April 2019 Newsletter
It’s April, month of the cherished stoner holiday of 4/20 — (which you can hear the curious origin on the true crime podcast Criminal). This 4/20, there’s lots to celebrate for both the Tokes team and our supporters. With a cannabis banking bill moving its way through the Nevada legislature — not to mention California’s recent push to legalize cryptocurrency for cannabis tax payments — the team at Tokes is excited to work within these new regulatory frameworks to provide our services via state sponsored means. We also have several updates around product developments, integrations, and marketing buzz.

Nevada Legislation

There has been positive progress on Nevada’s Assembly Bill 466 — which proposes to put in motion a pilot program for cashless payments within Nevada’s legal cannabis industry. Tokes founders Michael Wagner and Gabriel Allred testified in front of the Assembly Taxation committee on April 2nd in support of the bill. After some minor revision, the bill will soon be moving to an Assembly floor vote, which will be followed by hopefully a successful senate passage and signoff by Nevada’s Governor Steve Sisolak. What does this all mean for Tokes? The short answer is that it will produce a state sponsored path to easily interface our payment processing functionality with the state for tax purposes. For example, a dispensary that utilizes the Tokes Platform Merchant Gateway for consumer payments in their facility can then use our payment functionality to remit tax payments to the state, reducing the cash liability for both operators and state employees. This will take several months to become implemented, but we are proactively gearing up for this deployment in the lead up to the program’s implementation.

Additionally, April 2nd was designated Blockchain Education Day in the Nevada Legislature. As one of the state leaders in progressive legislation surrounding blockchain and cryptocurrency, the legislature invited the Tokes team along with Blockchains LLC and Filament to give product demonstrations and to talk about blockchain to legislators and employees within the legislature building throughout the day. As an added honor, the Tokes Platform founders were acknowledged by head of the Nevada Tech Caucus, Assemblyman Steve Yeager on the Nevada Assembly floor — as shown in the YouTube video below…

Nevada is positioning itself as one of the leaders in progressive legislation around blockchain — as evidenced by Senator Ben Kieckhefer’s three bill proposals SB 162, SB 163, and SB 164 in support of this emerging technology. We will continue to share updates of the progress on legislative efforts within the state and the progress of the pilot program as we learn more.

Supply Chain Visibility

A product we have not discussed in some time is our EPCIS Chain — the supply chain visibility product we are deploying with our partners at Theracann International. The goal of this product is to produce a system that tags the cannabis plant at a more fundamental level — as opposed to QR codes on packaging — facilitating a better chain of provenance from seed to consumer. The current regulations for the legal cannabis industry domestically require cannabis products produced within a state, to be sold in that state. Also, no products grown outside of that state jurisdiction can be sold within that state. This framework aims to ensure two things; first, that the plant is being taxed appropriately, generating revenue for the state at both wholesale and consumer levels without product diversion bypassing taxation points, and two; that the appropriate laboratory testing for contaminants and quality is occurring — ensuring the consumer is receiving a safe product. The current QR code based safeguards allow for gray market product to slip in and state grown product to slip out with minimal difficulty.

To curb this problem, Theracann International in conjunction with Applied DNA Sciences has produced a molecular biotag known as ETCH Biotrace which is sprayed on the plant in the latter stages of cultivation. This spray is safe for human consumption (measurable only in parts per billion) but can be detected on the plant even after extract processing into oils or edibles. Tokes takes this biotag data and puts it on our EPCIS Blockchain to ensure that the data is secure and tamper proof.

We are pleased to announce that we are focusing efforts this quarter to bring this product to market with our partners at Theracann, in hopes of curbing the gray market cannabis problem and providing a safer, cleaner product for the end consumer. The efforts here will run parallel to our legislative efforts in Nevada, but in other states and countries, as Theracann aims to be a leader in seed to sale tracking of legal cannabis products both domestically and abroad. Keep an eye out as we intend to demonstrate the EPCIS Chain within the coming months.

Tokes Events

We announced last month our sponsorship of the High Tech Cannabis Technology event in Downtown Los Angeles. Due to a scheduling conflict this event is being postponsed to May 23rd. However in the interim, on April 26th, Tokes will be in Culver City California for a screening of PRØHBTD’s new cannabis series, Dope State — a new mockumentary series on cannabis culture featuring a number of guest stars in each of its six episodes — from Dan Harmon and the Lucas Brothers, to Sam Jay and Adrian Grenier. Tokes will be screening our documentary feature in conjunction with the event!

The May 23rd event will be a unique cryptocurrency affair, produced in conjunction with the LAWeekly and Arcane Revelry. This event is special, as we will be integrating Tokes (TKS) into multiple features of the event. Upon arrival, guests will receive a small allocation of TKS to be spent inside of the venue with sponsoring companies and for experiences inside of the venue. Vendors and event staff will utilize the Tokes Merchant Gateway for these purchases.

The event will also feature live musical acts and entertainment, including Krayzie Bone (of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony) & DJ R-Tistic.

For this event we have launched the website Tokes.io which focuses on the usage of our mobile application for guests at our promotional events like High Tech. We announce updated event details through our social channels as the date approaches!

Litecoin Demo

As many of you may have noticed, the Merchant Gateway in its current version supports the additional payment options of Bitcoin and Litecoin. While both the speed and inexpensive cost of Tokes (TKS) transactions make it the preferred cryptocurrency for point-of-sale checkout within the Gateway, we know that other tokens and their supporters would like to see business ready tools for adoption of their crypto. As we prepare to make the Merchant Gateway public, we produced the first (of several) demonstrations of the Gateway utilizing additional tokens — with this initial demo showcasing Litecoin.

As you can see in the video, the Litecoin payment does not settle as quickly as a Tokes transaction, but does demonstrate the general utility of the software for multiple token integrations. Additionally, these demonstrations serve as a means for us to garner additional brand recognition from some of the larger cryptocurrency communities in the space today. Also, you can see the fun new widgets we’ve implemented in the current production build!

Recent Media

The Tokes team has been busy doing the rounds for various podcasters, YouTubers, and writers this past month. A few great examples can be found below…

Periodic Effects Podcast
['Multichain News']
['Blockchain', 'Cannabis', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Cannabis Business', 'Fintech']