Bitcoin is the original crypto currency. Released as a form of peer-to-peer digital transaction with the aim to remove the trust element that comes with third party financial services. Bitcoin allows you to manage your funds absent of a bank, removing fees and putting the security in your hands. This type of currency doesn’t require the opening of an account to send money, nor does it require any sort of personal verification, or identification at all. Simply download a Bitcoin wallet software on your phone or computer, and you’re ready to use Bitcoin, it’s that easy.
Bitcoin and cannabis have been intertwined since the early days of crypto currency.
The dark web started showing signs of bitcoin within days of it’s birth and this is essentially where crypto currencies value in the global drug trade started to be realized. Below we will walk you through a basic history of the Silk Road, early Canadian cannabis vendors online, how traditional dispensaries have adopted techniques from the dark web and what the modern day ecosystem looks like for buying weed online.
Stoners Guide To Using Bitcoin Contents
Bitcoin is one of thousands of crypo currencies that exist in the digital world today; each offering it’s users varying fundamentals for how the currency works, and typically each targeted at solving a specific problem. For instance, certain coins target the issue of anonymity, while others focus on low cost transactions. For the most part, many crypto currencies aim at a peer to peer relationship between sender and receiver, minimizing the reliance on financial services.
Crypto currencies are held in “wallets”. A crypto currency wallet is a software or physical device that holds your currency of choice. Each currency has it’s own wallet software that is available for download on mobile device or desktop. Once your wallet is installed, you will be able to sent, receive and store Bitcoins.
Bitcoin and other crypto currencies use 2 main addresses or keys to send and receive coins. The public address is the set of characters used for receiving and checking the balance of another wallet – this address is what you want to share with others who want to send you coins. You cannot access or send coins with this address. The private key is used to access your coins and spend them, and should never be shared with anyone. We will go through these in detail below.
Cryptocurrencies are traded on “exchanges”, platforms that let you buy bitcoin for credit, cash, Interac and a variety of payments popular across Canada. Since Bitcoin is the most fungible of the crypto currencies, it’s used as an on-ramp to the crypto world. Once you’ve got Bitcoin, you can essentially trade on any crypto exchange for other international currencies and crypto coins.
Bitcoin is the original crypto currency. The whole culture was popularized back in 2009 by an individual or group that goes by the pseudonym Satoshi. With the goal to offer a coin that was decentralized and offer a peer to peer system that utilized computer software to power the network, the White Paper was released on the Bitcoin Talk forums. These forums are where a large amount of Bitcoin chat happens, and it’s an alight place to visit and ask questions. r/Bitcoin is another Bitcoin community that’s extremely active. To this day nobody really knows who Satoshi is, although there is plenty of theories, 100% proof has yet to be shown.
There is a limited amount of Bitcoins in circulation and a limited number in total, 21 million to be exact. Bitcoin are released into circulation by running certain software on powerful computers, this is a thing called mining, in which computers complete mathematical equations in search for rewards called “blocks”. Blocks hold transactions that are sent and hold the equations that need to be solved in order to release fresh bitcoin. That’s right… Not only does mining release newly minted bitcoin to bitcoin miners, they also secure transactions that you sent, hence the reference to “confirmations”. When you send Bitcoin, miners actually see those transactions and verify to the network they happened, in turn rewarding the miner that solves the puzzle.
In recent times, the centralization or decentralization is debatable, as big companies, early adopters and pooled mining has put a lot of power in a few hands. This comes with the ability to influence decisions, and that’s an important topic when it comes to a thing called a “fork”.
A fork comes into play when someone submits a proposal to update the protocol. The bitcoin protocol is open source and anyone can update it. To keep it simple, this gives everyone contributing o the Bitcoin network a choice, and when another protocol is adopted by network players and a new”chain” is created. Bitcoin in nature is defined as the longest “chain” or the protocol that is most adopted. There’s a few different types of forks but that gets complicated.
This is what a Bitcoin wallet looks like, these are used to store, send and receive Bitcoins. Download a trusted Bitcoin wallet from the choices in our getting started guide below
Here’s an example of a Bitcoin exchange used to buy and sell Bitcoin for CAD. Buy and sell Bitcoin on Bitfinex with credit cards
Send and receive Bitcoin on any social media platform. Above shows a mod tipping everyone in the Discord Channel $5. Join the Team Extract Discord channel
While many claim that Bitcoin is anonymous, it’s not. Each transaction and public wallet address is completely transparent and accessible by anyone, at any date or time. When you have a public wallet address (the syntax you send coins to), you can also use a blockchain explorer to check the balance of the wallet address, and surf the trail of previous transactions.
Check out this study conducted by researchers at Qatar University and Hamad Bin Khalifa University, it might just help put to rest the myth that Bitcoin transactions are anonymous, because they are most certainly not.
Wired reports: In well over 100 cases, they could connect someone’s bitcoin payment on a dark web site to that person’s public account. In more than 20 instances, they say, they could easily link those public accounts to transactions specifically on the Silk Road, finding even some purchasers’ specific names and locations.
Keep in mind these are transaction dating back as early as 2011 and 2012. I’m not suggesting that Bitcoin puts your identity out there, but for professionals with the right knowledge, consciously tracing someones online footprints can lead to identity. Bitcoin provides an on ramp to the crypto currency world, from there anonymity is possible with the right movements and hardware.
When Bitcoin’s are sent and received, the network is notified nearly instantly as you will see on a blockchain explorer or within your wallet. While the coins are sent instantly, Bitcoin uses “verifications” which are essentially other computers verifying the transition happened to update the database used on the blockchain explorers so everyone using the network knows that transaction happened.
This all happens without centralization, so this whole network and database is a hybrid of a decentralized / distributed system, every bitcoin wallet and exchange contributing stability, essentially operating without a central location or database, rather shared around the world with everyone using bitcoin.
This gives you a look into some of the fundamentals of the Bitcoin world and how it works, we’ll explain how wallets, exchanges work and how you can manage your own bitcoin wallets a little bit below.
We can attribute part of Bitcoin’s popularity to the payment services it brought to the dark net market, originally the Silk Road Marketplace which was an online marketplace where vendors and customers could transact illicit substances, using bitcoin to complete the financial transaction.
The Silk Road started in early 2011 and the marketplace user-base rose in unison with the popularity and value of Bitcoin to be the #1 drug market on the deep web. It wouldn’t take much time for Canada’s West Coast to jump on the benefits of their location and start exporting cannabis in great quantities around the world, raking in the Bitcoin and showing just how convenient the cryptocurrency functioned for quick global trade of all sizes. Unfortunately, Canada wasn’t only known for cannabis.
British Columbia was also pumping out a number of Silk Road accounts linked to scammers, fake hit men, a number of larger gang activity and an insane rabbit hole that we’re going to include in another article, because, well, it’s so damn interesting. But for now, we’ll keep it cannabis and we’ll start at the top of the rabbit hole with a mysterious online account by the Name of MarijuanaIsMyMuse.
In 2013 one of the larger vendor accounts dubbed MarijuanaIsMyMuse had a thick foundation as a vendor and was generating massive sales as a dark web cannabis wholesaler.
MarijuanaIsMyMuse’s main inventory was cannabis, but the account was serving the dark web with a variety of substances. While this was an online account eventually attributed to two residents of British Columbia Canada, James Ellingson and someone by the alias of DAL, it’s been widely reported that this account was used by multiple people in a group.
After time, reports would surface that MarijuanaIsMyMuse took the dark web far past the cannabis trade, creating multiple big vendor accounts, growing them with fake reviews and then eventually scamming users on a big limited time vendor sale. And that’s just the start. Climbing the ranks and coming closer to Ross Ulbricht (the owner and operator of the Silk Road Marketplace) one of the individuals associated with the MarijuanaIsMyMuse account is accused of using some additional fake accounts to manipulate Ross and withdraw millions of dollars in Bitcoin from the Silk Road to local Canadian Bitcoin exchanges, some of which were verified with personal ID and would leave a trail of evidence pointing authorities to one of the men behind the cannabis vendor accounts, BC native James Ellingson.
The Star wrote an in-depth article showcasing two old forum posts from MarijunaIsMyMuse in the Silk Road forums. The quotes seem to align well with reports of eventual legal action that would come to two individuals behind the account.
“I/we am/are MarijuanaIsMyMuse. Or I/we suppose TeamMuse is more appropriate … What began almost a year ago as a one-man journey on a bold new marketplace has become a multi-man operation,” the user wrote in one post.
“We have dropped 2 team members and added 2 new ones that are on their game,” the user wrote on July 15, 2013. “We are fully functional and not scammers. Hope this sheds light on any doubt that we are and still want to be your one stop shop on SR.”
According to the Vancouver Sun: “Interestingly, James Ellingson, 42, communicated with Silk Road owner Ross Ulbricbht using the handle “redandwhite” which is usually a reference to the Hells Angels”.
James Ellingson who was a pioneer of the international export of Canadian cannabis on the dark would end up extorting Ross Ulbricbht for hundred of thousands of dollars in multiple successful extortion attempts in which James would play the side of an information leak and the crew hired to silence leak, making money on both sides of the murder trade, and completely fabricating the entire thing.
Between November 2011 and April 2013 US authorities suggest James Ellingson along with a user nicknamed DAL (said to be 2 brothers) had cashed out multiple millions on Canadian bitcoin exchanges under the MarijuanaIsMyMuse vendor account, until a slip up with DAL would see the seizure of 14kg of dried cannabis flower and roughly 226 bitcoin ($2.7 Million today). Stored on hard drives, these Bitcoin would eventually lead up to civil forfeiture cases and a back and forth between DAL and Canadian authorities as well, James Ellingson battling extradition charges from within the United States which are currently still in motion.
It seems as though DAL ended up dealing with the heat locally, while James has been fighting off extradition on serious charges of exporting schedule 1 narcotics to the USA.
With changing regulations and shifting policies towards certain drugs especially cannabis, vendors would have to adapt and change based on consumer demands, ensuring that the Canadian cannabis vendors on the darknet were explicitly using the platforms for international export and larger quantity orders.
According to the government of Canada, Canadian cannabis consumers who are shopping with Bitcoin tend to buy in greater volumes or wholesale. “Moreover, Demant et al. (2018b) suggest the presence of wholesale purchases rather than personal use and social supply purchases. This finding is supported by Décary-Hétu et al. (2018), who found that half of all revenues generated for cannabis on cryptomarkets were for transactions between 28 and 454 grams. At least in the U.S., the price per gram of cannabis appears to be higher on cryptomarkets than on the streets (Décary-Hétu et al., 2018).” – https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/2019-r004/index-en.aspx#a14
In recent years cannabis sales have remained strong, in 2015 cannabis was the #1 illicit substance traded taking nearly 31% of the total darknet marketplace transactions. Vendors have moved beyond the Silk Road and the cycle of darknet marketplaces rising and falling continues with new big names moving in and out of the space daily.
The Canadian Government has been watching cannabis crypto markets since the beginning in early 2011 and haven’t really stopped, in fact, nobody has to do anything, a software named DATACRYPTO is constantly scraping all the dark net markets for vendor and listing information, and it gives anyone who wants a cool look into cannabis pricing on the dark net markets over the years, especially in response to the Cannabis Act, and legal cannabis in October of 2018.
A Paper titled Patterns in the Cannabis Crypto Markets published in 2018 suggests the introduction of the Cannabis Act in 2018 changed the face of black market cannabis in Canada quite significantly.
It’s not that the Cannabis Act killed inter provincial cannabis trade within Canada, it’s the fact that the dark web still hold quite a learning curve, and with accessibility and competition increasing significantly, illicit cannabis would require an easier on ramp for the everyday cannabis consumer. Canadian dark net crypto cannabis dealers would start to focus on international growth, and inner Canadian competition would drop to under 10 vendors on the dark web.
Mail order marijuana existed for nearly a decade leading up the Cannabis Act and would see a trickle effect of cannabis vendors from the dark web moving their own ventures on the world wide web accessible by anyone, anywhere.
A Canadian Government study concluded that leading up to legal cannabis in Canada, the mail order marijuana market was thriving.
Prior to legalization, Mahamad and Hammond (2019) investigated the number of illicit retailers and the price they offered across the largest municipality of each province and territory in Canada. They found a total of 997 cannabis retailers and 215 physical storefronts. They state that the average price of cannabis ranges between $7.80 and $12.30 per gram depending on the cannabis strain, which converged with Ouellet et al.’s (2017) analyses.
Source: https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/pblctns/2019-r004/index-en.aspx
According to the MOM list on Canadianmom.co, at the time of writing this article in 2020, roughly 38 of over 300 vendors are accepting Bitcoin, touching in at 10% of advertised online cannabis marijuana retailers.
The Cannabis Act would have an impact on pricing across the country, and around the world. Cannabis prices on the dark web would rise an average of 15% and Canadian vendors would start growing internationally in the dark net cannabis trade. Canada would rank #2 for global cannabis exports according to AlphaBay marketplace statistics gathered by the Tinbergen Institute Amsterdam.
Over time, each alternative cannabis marketplace would serve a different function and bitcoin would maintain it’s importance both as a mail order marijuana payment alternative, and a dark net market exclusive payment option. The dark web would fall into the wholesaler / distributor tool for larger cannabis exports, and import of drugs not available locally for Canadian distribution. Mail order marijuana platforms provide a consumer facing and friendly dispensary feeling, catering to smaller ordering from strictly Canadian cannabis consumers.
We first started accepting Bitcoins in October 2019. We have had many members from within the Bitcoin community reach out to us to offer their support along with curious customers asking us about it. The reception has been very positive.
Bitcoins makes up about 2.5% of our sales at the moment. The ticket sizes of Bitcoins are usually much bigger than credit card or email money transfer. Most of the transactions are over $500.
My partners and I have been big fans of Bitcoins. Being veterans of the cannabis space, we have had to deal with a non compliant banking system (although it’s slowly getting better) so Bitcoins is a tool that we have been using for many years now, not only with accepting it for product, but also using it to pay for a lot of our expenses. We accept it because of the demand, but also because we want to support and grow the cryptocurrency community. Yes, we definitely see a future with cannabis and Bitcoins. It fills a void from an unfriendly banking system, and as the infrastructure of Bitcoins develops and there’s more widespread adoption we believe more and more people will be using it to make their cannabis purchases.
CannaPanda.net
Today, Bitcoin has yet to make an appearance within a legal cannabis dispensary retail location, or eCommerce website as a payment alternative. And that’s okay. Cryptocurrencies are still in their infant phase, and so is cannabis legalization. While I do think that crypto currency transaction optimize digital payments and streamline eCommerce shopping, as cash remains king for in-person, retail transactions.
This isn’t really a negative though, and I feel as though Bitcoin and eCommerce cannabis dispensaries in Canada have a promising future that will take a few years to adapt. The main hump that remains is the lack of access to privatized provincial online cannabis dispensaries.
Heavily regulated distribution means provincial regulators have been given the power when it comes to online distribution, and that means that at the time of writing this article, it’s pretty much 1 provincially ran website serving the citizens of each province, territory or region.
According to the government of Canada’s website each province or territory determines:
This significantly complicates cryptocurrency access, as government agencies and contracted brands tend to shy away from the uncertainties that come associated with the cryptocurrency culture, so we probably won’t see bitcoin in any legal online dispensaries until dispensary licenses are issued to private business for online sales of legal cannabis.
While Bitcoins decentralized, distributed nature brings many positive attributes, it leaves a free market open to large fluctuations in value and the discussion of manipulation. the volatility of Bitcoin has certainly met its skeptics when it comes to consumers spending the crypto currency, and businesses accepting the crypto currency for payment.
We’ll let you be the judge, check the graph below:
At one point Bitcoin’s value was nearing $25,000 CAD and it’s adoption was at an all time high and we saw mail order marijuana sites across Canada start adopting the crypto currency. With fungibility at an all time high, consumers started using Bitcoin and marijuana vendors across Canada felt the benefits of low cost, more anonymous transactions that side tracked the bank and authority that comes with it.
This trip to the moon didn’t last, and Bitcoin would end up falling over the next years finding it’s home between $9000 and $15000 CAD. It’s this uncertainty that keeps bitcoin from taking over the payments industry as the fluctuations in value aren’t a risk many are willing to forego. Merchant tools developed by companies such as BitPay and other bitcoin wallet software brands that all businesses to accept bitcoin without the risk. These tools hedge Bitcoin to the value of a regional currency such as USD or CAD protecting merchants from extreme movements in bitcoin’s value.
On the consumer side, it’s still a free for all. Bitcoin holders should know that on any given day their wallet value can increase and decrease in a large way.
Believe it or not, cannabis has a few of it’s own crypto coins that are currently sustaining some type of value.
How To Use Bitcoin Contents
Learn all the basics of getting started with Bitcoin. Below we teach you how to download a wallet, use a Bitcoin exchange and find the best, trusted local services for your new crypto currency adventure.
Bitcoin wallets are the software used to send, receive and store your bitcoin. Think of your bitcoin wallet the same as your online banking app on your phone; the only difference is, you actually own your bitcoin. that means you need to backup your wallet in case you lose your phone. Each bitcoin wallet will have their own instructions for how to do this.
Most popular bitcoin wallets are available on desktop and mobile, this helps users access bitcoin from both devices for added convenience. Your bitcoin wallet gives you total control and access to the bitcoins sent to the addresses you own. With this software it’s easy to separate accounts and create multiple wallets on the fly all within one interface. These are also knows as hot wallets as they are internet connected and ready to send your coins.
Cloud wallets are bitcoin wallets typically provided by services or businesses and add convenience to the situation by making your wallet accessible online from a website; this takes away from the whole “you own your funds” idea, as keeping bitcoin in a cloud wallet doesn’t mean you control your bitcoin and should that website go down, you’re SOL.
Physical wallets and cold storage are physical devices that hold your bitcoin offline, meaning they can’t be accessed without additional steps. This adds a layer of security and is a good option for those not spending but holding coins for a long period of time. A popular type of cold storage accessible to everyone is the paper wallet, a print out of the QR codes and custom addresses and keys needed to access your Bitcoins. By scanning QR codes or entering the custom text, you can send you bitcoin to a piece of paper that only you can access – that’s correct!
How Bitcoin Wallets WorkThere’s two custom syntax’s you will receive with your Bitcoin wallet. They are very important to send and receive coins, and each comes with a QR code for easier scanning on mobile devices. QR Codes are important because addresses and keys are made up of uppercase and lowercase letters plus a variety of numbers. They are case sensitive and it’s 100% crucial to send to the exact address or your coins are gone. Never manually enter an address, always use the QR code or copy / paste features.[vc_column_text]
Example of a public address: 1BXHxWXDtKvfNkLoy8vGhFVkGpNBy7qeYu
Public Address – The public address is the custom syntax that you can share with others when you want to receive crypto currency. This is your address for others to send coins to. You can also check the value and past transactions associated with the Bitcoin address publicly with a quick visit to any blockchain explorer.
Private Key – Your private key (s) is used to access you bitcoin and should NEVER be shared with anyone but yourself. This is the key / QR code used to spend coins. If you store bitcoin on a paper wallet, this is what you will scan to sweep the coins on to your mobile device or desktop wallet. Anyone with this key has access to all your funds.
| Desktop Wallet | Linux | Windows | Mac |
| Armory | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Bitcoin Core | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Bitcoin Knots | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Bither | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| BitPay | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Electrum | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Wasabi | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Mobile Wallet | Android | iPhone |
| Bitcoin Wallet | ✔️ | ❌ |
| Bither | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| BitPay | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| BLW | ✔️ | ❌ |
| BRD | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Éclair | ✔️ | ❌ |
| Edge | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Electrum | ✔️ | ❌ |
| Mycelium | ✔️ | ❌ |
| Samourai Wallet | ✔️ | ❌ |
Bitcoin exchanges are what you will use to buy and sell bitcoin. At some point you have to buy bitcoin with traditional payment options and there’s a bitcoin exchange for nearly every type of payment including gift cards, credit cards, Interac email transfer, Interac online, cash in person, wire transfer and more. In 2020, you can trade nearly anything for Bitcoin. For those who want to buy bitcoin locally, try Googling bitcoin ATM and there might be a local place for you to exchange cash for bitcoin instantly. Please note, bitcoin ATM’s tend to have extremely high exchange rates for both buying and selling although they give a convenient method to buy or sell for cash instantly.
There’s a few different types of bitcoin exchanges depending upon how much you want to be involved in the process. Simple exchanges that allow you to buy smaller amounts of bitcoin instantly with credit or debit typically charge a little higher rates but offer the quickest way to buy bitcoin.
The typical bitcoin exchange allows you to deposit CAD or BTC and place your own buy and sell orders at your desired rates. These exchanges give you far more freedom with all aspects of trading but require a little learning curve and usually some sort of identity verification.
Here’s how your average bitcoin exchange works:
We’ll take you through all the verified bitcoin exchanges below for every type of buy and sell situation you might be in.
| Quickbuy Exchange | Credit Card | Interac | Bank Wire | Other |
| MYBTC.ca | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | Flexpin & Cash |
| Coinberry | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Canadian Bitcoin Exchange | Credit Card | Interac | Bank Wire | Other |
| Coinsquare | ❌ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| Bitbuy | ❌ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
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| Exchange | Credit Card | Interac | Wire Transfer | Other |
| Binance | ✔️ | ❌ | ❌ | Cash |
| Coinbase | ❌ | ✔️ | ❌ | Paypal withdraw |
| Gemeni | ✔️ | ❌ | ✔️ | |
| Coinmama | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ | |
| Kraken | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | Cash & in-person debit |
| CoinCorner | ✔️ | ❌ | ✔️ | |
| Paxful | ✔️ | ❌ | ✔️ | Gift cards, Paypal, Skrill, Neteller, Cash |
And it has a lot of potential to positively influence the world
That’s all for now guys! Thanks for reading and I hope this helps detail the history of Bitcoin and cannabis in Canada. I know there’s a learning curve when it comes to crypto currencies and this guide is meant to make that experience easier. If you have any questions, suggestions or feedback hit me up in the comments below. If you found value in this guide, tips are greatly appreciated: 1BXHxWXDtKvfNkLoy8vGhFVkGpNBy7qeYu
If you want me to cover a topic regarding cryptocurrency in cannabis that I missed let me know in the comments below.
There is 2 follow up articles in the cannabis crypto series that we will be publishing in the coming weeks:
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