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It’s officially the future, and that means you can buy legal cannabis in the metaverse and have it delivered directly to your door.
Last week, Higher Life CBD opened a functioning cannabis dispensary on Cryptovoxels, a virtual reality world based on the Ethereum blockchain. The company purchased a parcel (a plot of metaverse real estate) in this VR world in order to open a virtual dispensary where customers can listen to music, view digital art, and use cryptocurrency to buy legal CBD.
Like most metaverse shops, this store allows shoppers to purchase NFTs (non-fungible tokens), blockchain-based digital assets that represent the ownership of unique virtual items. But unlike NFTs and other online-only trends, the Higher Life store actually sells physical products as well. Customers can browse the company’s full range of legal CBD products, and any product purchased in the virtual world can be delivered to real-world homes via old-fashioned mail and delivery services.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has forced many companies to think about safe alternatives when it comes to communicating with employees and customers,” said Higher Life CEO Brandon Howard to Forbes. “For some, that means looking beyond the physical world and thinking outside of the box.”
“We see great potential in the virtual reality world,” Howard added. “VR and AR have changed the game on how we will go about buying things in the future. Shopping in the metaverse and then being able to receive your items on your door step is ground breaking and the next big thing. It’s a place where NFTs, cryptocurrency, and the cannabis world will coincide.”
Florida-based hemp company Kandy Girl is also opening its own dispensary on a parcel in the Decentraland Metaverse. This new startup has found a unique way to exploit the federal government’s hemp legalization law to sell legal delta-9-THC gummies anywhere in the US, with the exception of Washington state. Federal law limits hemp products to a maximum limit of 0.3 percent THC, but Kandy Girl did the math and figured out that a 3.5-gram hemp edible can legally include 10mg of THC.
Other cannabis entrepreneurs are also scrambling to find ways to use NFTs and the metaverse to monetize and publicize their products. Mila Kunis just sold over $8 million worth of NFTs granting exclusive access to an animated comedy series called Stoner Cats, and a South African business exec spent over $16k buying seeds of what is supposedly the first NFT-authenticated cannabis strain.
Three other excessively wealthy people also just coughed up over $1 million total to buy metaverse parcels bordering cannabis lover and entrepreneur Snoop Dogg’s virtual home. But since you can’t blow smoke through a laptop screen yet, getting a contact high from the Doggfather isn’t gonna happen, no matter how much you pay.
