"IBM Has a New Blockchain Idea: Tracking Marijuana Sales"

From Fortune:

Companies are using the digital ledger technology popularized by bitcoin in banking, insurance, and contracts—but how about using a blockchain to track marijuana sales?

Canada is planning to legalize cannabis sales next year, with some regulation of distribution and retailing done at the province level, following the same model used for tobacco and liquor. So when the government of British Columbia asked for suggestions about everything from age minimums to retail store rules, IBM came up with an innovative idea: use a blockchain.

The idea, as IBM laid out in a brief four-page submission, is to track pot supplies as they move up the supply chain from farm to distributor to retailer to consumers. The most well-known blockchain, typically a publicly-available digital document that uses encryption techniques to validate transactions, tracks the bitcoin economy and other cryptocurrencies like ethereum. But tech companies have been finding all sorts of new uses for the technology, such as Walmart’s  experimental blockchain tracking livestock and other farm products. And IBM has been at the forefront....MORE