08 Mar Here Come the Weed Exchanges

As reported by Bloomberg Business yesterday, an innovative entrepreneurial group has launched Amercanex Corp., where cannabis can trade on an electronic platform. They’re already handling sales of up to 150 pounds of pot per week. It’s not dissimilar to how the New York Mercantile Exchange started. In fact, Richard Schaeffer, a former Chairman of the NYMEX, is Chairman of Amercanex. For now the exchange operates only in California and Colorado. Seats on the Amercanex are going for about $10,000. There’s another exchange that started a few months before Amercanex, called the Cannabis Commodities Exchange. They operate only in Colorado.

The challenges? Buyers and sellers have to be in the same state given the federal legal restrictions. And having clear potency and consistency guidelines, much as we have in wheat, corn or oil, is both harder to do and also very new with cannabis. But the exchange operators are undaunted and say the kinks are being worked out. And laws that previously required sellers of pot to have actually grown it have been phased out, allowing the exchanges to develop.

With over $5 billion in legal weed sales last year and growth on the horizon as more states are voting to legalize this year, the exchange seems like a logical next step as Wall Street pays more and more attention to this growing business.