I live in Washington State (USA). Washington and Colorado were the first two states to legalize recreational marijuana. Where I live you can go to an cannabis shop and buy up to 1 ounce of marijuana. You must be 21 years old and you must have ID. No exceptions. We also have a medical marijuana law which is more expansive and allows for larger amounts and the ability to grow a handful of plants yourself.

The big problem in the United States is marijuana is illegal at the federal level. But the Feds are for now allowing states to do their own thing as long as they follow some guidelines. The big concerns are interstate movement of marijuana, children using marijuana and criminals getting involved in the market. So for right now their are two big concerns that businesses have . One is taxation and the other is banking.

Because at the federal level marijuana is illegal, businesses cannot deduct business expenses on their federal business income taxes. So your gross income is also your net income. :(

The primary reason for cannabis crypto coins is the second big problem. That because these businesses are consider to be involved in an illegal enterprise, banks theoretically cannot do business with them. So no business accounts, payroll accounts and no credit cards accepted. Nothing buts lots and lots of cash. Blockchain obviously solves a lot of problems as value can be transferred without the sue of banks. That is why these cannabis coins make some sense.

Here are the drawbacks. Number 1 is that there area lot of these coins in the market. So a lot of competition. But is not just the "potcoins", there is really no reason why many of the other cryptos would not fill the bill and actually have wider acceptance. Number 2 is that this is an American problem. Canada which is widely expected to go full legalization on July 1st, 2018 does not have theses issues. Other countries may decide to use the Canada model rather that the American one. Number 3, is there are members of Congress who are trying to change the banking and tax laws regarding marijuana. Number 4, there are plenty of businesses that trade on the stock exchange that are involved in the marijuana business. They have a big head start in most aspects of the marijuana markets, including social networking.

I think all it would take is a few relatively small changes in federal law and these type on "coin" would really not be necessary. To the extent they would have utility they would have a lot of competition. I wont be an investor. I was an investor in Potcoin, but I closed my position for the reasons I stated above.