Tokes Platform Newsletter, December 2018 — Year end wrap up
Happy Holidays Tokes Platform Enthusiasts!
Happy holidays Tokes enthusiasts! As we bring the year to a close, we thought it pertinent to discuss our current goals and development objects for the upcoming year. While 2017 was a time of wild cryptocurrency speculation and a wave of new blockchain and tokenized projects; 2018 was overshadowed by bearish market sentiment. Despite bearish markets, Tokes, like many other projects in the crypto space, spent this year primarily heads down on software and business development fronts. With that in mind, this month’s newsletter will discuss how our efforts in the preceding year are leading to a culmination of deployments and implementations for our software in 2019.
2019 Plans
Having recently finished a full compliance policy and audit for the payment processing component of the Tokes Platform, one of our core aims of 2019 is deployment of the Tokes Merchant Gateway. Being one of the world’s first cryptocurrency point of sale platforms available today, Tokes is uniquely positioned to penetrate not only the cannabis industry as a digital payment solution, but to provide an entry point for any merchant to accept cryptocurrency for customer payments at brick and mortar establishments. With this utility in mind, we are in the final phases of implementing support for BTCPay Server functionality which will enable the Gateway to not only accept Tokes for payment settlement, but any number of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, etc. While our core deployments for the software will initially be cannabis dispensaries, the utility of the Gateway clearly extends past the green space. Additional functionality on the roadmap includes ecommerce integrations for easy web storefront deployment to existing content management systems like Wordpress, as well as a full plug and play web store deployment similar to the Shopify model (but for cryptocurrency payments).
Operating in Nevada strategically positions Tokes for adoption within the state’s legal cannabis dispensaries. Conveniently for Tokes, the newly elected state treasurer Zach Conine has spoken favorably about potentially tokenizing Nevada’s cannabis payments — reducing the industry’s cash reliance and digitizing the tax remittance system. We recognize the great potential of Tokes to be a technology leader in this effort and are already pursuing potential integrations with the state.
Blockchain has far more utility for the legal cannabis industry however than just payments. To this end, the EPCIS Chain will be another core focus of our product offerings in 2019. Electronic Product Code Information Services or (EPCIS) is an international standard for how objects within supply chains and events around these objects are tracked. The cannabis space exists in a unique vacuum of supply chain standards. Because of its legal grey standing, the current protocols in U.S. states are disparate depending on the state of operation, with generally little to no standardization of required tracking data between states. For example: the required testing data per weighed batch between the states of Nevada and California varies both in the required weight intervals in which the plant must be lab tested, and in the testing data that needs to be reported to the state. Because there is currently no system in place for state to state transit or sale of cannabis products, this is not an immediate issue. However, given the vast likelihood that we will see Federally legalized cannabis in the next decade, standardized protocols for testing and reporting need to be established in the coming years. By utilizing an existing set of best practices (i.e., EPCIS), the Tokes Platform is positioning our offerings to lead the charge in this evolution of the cannabis industry. With our partners at TheraCann International and their Etch Biotrace technology, in 2019 we will deploy the first iteration of the EPCIS chain in the cannabis vertical to ensure the provenance of cannabis data at the molecular level.
And lastly, developing all of these technologies has resulted in the production of a scalable, high availability, deployment and testing environment for our suite of applications. In 2019 we will be sharing this architecture with other teams as a Platform as a Service offering — both in a commercial capacity and a collaborative one. That is, teams developing blockchain or tokenized software solutions with potential integrations to our own offerings can potentially be onboarded for reduced or no cost to our system, while other teams wishing to utilize the service will have commercial access. We expect to launch this new company and announce the brand during the first quarter next year. In the interim, teams interested in our Platform as a Service or Blockchain as a Service can find more information and apply to join here.
Educational Videos
In the preceding months, we’ve produced a number of videos outlining the current inefficiencies within the cannabis industry and posted them to our Youtube channel. These explain succinctly the problems we are addressing with our software offerings. Give them a gander, and surprise your family with your nuanced understanding of supply chains and cannabis banking.
Holiday Token Swap
We are running a promotion until mid January, the Tokes holiday token swap!
New wallet downloads can double or triple their wallet balance by making an exchange with one of the 150+ tokens available on exchange.tokesplatform.org. This exchanged is powered by CoinSwitch and is one of the easiest methods to trade cryptocurrency. Four wallets randomly selected from anyone using our Coinswitch exchange link will double their balance, and one lucky winner will triple their balance!
1) Download the free TOKES WALLET app in the Apple App or Google Play stores
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tokes-wallet/id1402808821?mt=8
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.multichainventures.tokeswallet
2) Use EXCHANGE.TOKESPLATFORM.ORG to SWAP any of the 150+ coins for TKS tokens.
3) At the end of the promotional event, winners will be randomly chosen and identified from wallets using the exchange URL; 4 wallets will WIN DOUBLE their new TKS Balance (the amount equivalent to their initial swap) and 1 wallet will WIN TRIPLE their new TKS balance (an additional 2x the amount of their initial swap).
All new TOKES wallets with swaps into TKS up to the first 500 units will be eligible for the DOUBLE or TRIPLE wallet bonus offer. This event is limited to only the FIRST 200 wallet participants; offer can expire at ANY time.
More details can be found at t.me/tokesplatform
We wish you and your family a happy holidays and we will see you next year!
Here’s to something new. Here’s to the revolution.
