Summary

Potcoin is the first tokenized cannabis cryptocurrency. It was created as a way to make transacting in the legal cannabis space easier for people. The project aims to facilitate the tokenization of seeds, implement merchant vendor solutions and utilize smart contracts to disburse profits to token holders. Potcoin is the the largest cannabis coin with market capitalization of around 6 million USD. The coin was given a brief moment of serious publicity when the team sponsored Dennis Rodman, known friend of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to be involved in the US-North Korea Summit held in Singapore of last year. The ticker for Potcoin is POT.

Distribution

To be expected, the total supply schedule for Potcoin is 420,000,000 tokens. The current circulating supply is around 221,000,000 tokens.

Company Foundation

Mission

The project has stated that it intends to become a leader in the cannabis space by leveraging blockchain technology like the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to facilitate the creation of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). This will allow for community voting, censorship resistance and decentralized development. In order to achieve this goal, Potcoin has outlined several channels such as the Potcoin Seed Bank and even a rewards program.

Current Team and Size

Potcoin is the brainchild of three Github developers from Montreal who released the coin under the aliases of Hasoshi, Mr. Jones, and Smokemon 514 on January 21, 2014 at 4:20 pm. The time is a popular symbol among cannabis smokers and was chosen deliberately for that reason. On April 9, 2014, the development team behind Potcoin revealed their identities, as co-founders and lead developers Nick Iversen and Joel Yaffe gave a talk at the New York Cryptocurrency Convention.

Technical Design

Summary

Potcoin started as a Scrypt variant of Litecoin using a proof-of-work hash algorithm. Unlike Litecoin, Potcoin had a quicker block generation time, quicker halving schedule and a greater number of total tokens. Before the initial release, 55 blocks were mined for checkpoints and the initial block reward was set at 420 coins, but later halved to 210.

Algorithm and Functionality

The algorithm changed to a proof-of-Stake Velocity (PSOV) algorithm at block 975,000 on August 1, 2015. The development team work in their own trees, and can submit pull requests when new features or bug fixes are ready. Simple changes are simply pulled by the Potcoin development team. More difficult or controversial changes require discussion before any action is taken and developers are urged to use establish means of communication for this. Developers are also encouraged to write unit tests for new code.

Mining of Potcoin can be done on GPUs, CPUs or Scrypt miners. Potwallet is the proprietary hot wallet provided by Potcoin for online storage, use, and trading. The hot wallet is accessible on Android and pending for IOS. Desktop cold storage wallets are also compatible with Mac OSX, Windows, and Linux.

Economics

Summary

The Potcoin team has been involved in some charitable activities since the project launched in 2014. They use the crowdfunding tool found in PotFunder. They donated to the Snoop Youth Football league that year, and also donated 18500 POT to the Cannabis Health service, a UK based organization. The team present the FRAXA Research Foundation with a check for US$2000 on July 8, 2014. This fundraising campaign was spearheaded by team member Russell Thomas; who’s son suffers from Fragile X syndrome (a condition that has been linked to autism).

Dennis Rodman sponsored by PotCoin at US-North Korea Summit

Source: Business Insider

Adoption

Potcoin went through a rough period in 2015 as the original development team split and went their separate ways. When this happened, the initiative behind Potcoin Labs, which had done work for the project before, took charge and saved it from becoming just another community driven coin. It was at this time that the team moved away from proof of work to PSOV.

The publicity surrounding the US-North Korea Summit of 2017 held in Singapore garnered an unlikely price increase for Potcoin. They sponsored Dennis Rodman who is a known friend of the North Korean Dictator to give comments live on CNN during the summit, while wearing a Potcoin t-shirt. This drove the market price to nearly 60 cents.