The tech behind bitcoin could be a good approach for the cannabis industry, assuring the legal flow of the product while also keeping safe the costumers’ privacy.
Health Canada, through the Cannabis Act, will implement a national tracking system that will follow the product from the beginning to its sale. This way, they will protect the integrity of the legal market, but what about the confidential data?
Here is where bitcoin’s blockchain technology can help because it can keep the information secured through the encryption used in a blockchain and the many stages of verification.
Considering that on 17 October it will become legal, it’s time the industry finds a secure way to store sensitive information. The government demands, according to a spokesperson for Health Canada, that there should be a record-keeping to “help prevent diversion of cannabis; that is, the movement of both legal cannabis to the illegal market and illegal cannabis to the legal market.”
Monthly Reports and Security Measures
Whoever is authorized to operate in the cannabis industry will have to send a monthly report of how much marijuana they grew, sold, destroyed, used for research, lost or was stolen. The spokesperson added that “relevant security measures have been taken and requisite precautions have been implemented to safeguard cannabis-related data.”
But a cannabis tracking system sounds vulnerable, considering that analysts predict that this market will bring over $7 billion in sales in 2019.
Health Canada stated that they considered blockchain, along with several other options, as a potential solution to track movements of cannabis throughout the supply chain.”
However, it all comes with a catch: Health Canada added that the tracking system would first be launched on another platform, considering that there is no government standard for using the tech behind bitcoin.
A CEO that founded a blockchain for the cannabis industry explains that blockchain will help regulators, who won’t have to “be looking for a needle in a haystack. We’re going to be a lot more secure than anything that is not on the blockchain.”
Doris’s passion for writing started to take shape in college where she was editor-in-chief of the college newspaper. Even though she ended up working in IT for more than 7 years, she’s now back to what he always enjoyed doing. With a true passion for technology, Doris mostly covers tech-related topics.