A new player serving the youthful US legal cannabis industry is rising – and this time, it seems the sky’s the limit.

The idea of a cannabis altcoin is nothing new. Potcoin, Dopecoin and Leafcoin have all had a stake in the space, and have met with varying degrees of success, and now Cannacoin is inching into the market with its promise to achieve real changes in the industry.

Born out of the Northwest Greenthumb community centered on Seattle, Cannacoin is designed to “provide an excellent well balanced transactional currency for cannabis users and supporters around the globe,” creator Josh told Coinjoint back in March.

“So much demand”

Josh, or to give him his more popular subreddit pseudonym, Subcreative, envisages the need for the legal cannabis industry to have access to a currency which is both more flexible than traditional means and able to create some much-needed slack for various elements of the supply chain.

As Coinjoint reports, state regulators are looking to impose hefty 25% tax levies on producers, processors and retailers in addition to point of sales tax. A cryptocurrency solution hence seems an obvious innovation in order to loosen the grip of the powers that be.

In the pipeline are POS terminals and contactless payment cards using the same near field communication technology as contactless debit cards.

The project has its skeptics, however, and creators were quick to rebut the naysayers on forums such as Bitcointalk. 

“Why Cannacoin? We already run and operate Washington state’s largest medical marijuana social platform […] and 1,000 local medical patients ready to accept and use Cannacoin on our website and within the community,” user Cannacoin wrote upon the launch in February.

Cannacoin event went as far as to say that “there is so much demand and need in WA for a coin like this, we feel it will succeed with or without large investors,” and indeed it is already listed on Swisscex exchange, with voting open for it to be added to a further four.

Acceptance has also branched out beyond the US, with the Berlin Hemp Museum now accepting Cannacoin for donations, it was announced on Twitter.

Time will tell now how the aforementioned officialdom takes the growth of the industry, and whether questions of taxation are dealt with in a way which allows for a mutually beneficial status quo to be maintained.

More information on Cannacoin can meanwhile be found here.