It's kinda funny how history's just come full circle. HempCoin has just released The White Paper and it shoots to be The Crypto for agriculture. And even if getting accepted both by cannabis and corn growers might take a bit, it already basks in the limelight (BUY IT NOW!) pointing to the intrinsic value of hemp, which had been enjoying a run as a commodity money in America for almost three centuries!
HempCoin's White Paper looks very promising. The idea is to hard fork the crypto, that was incepted in 2014 mainly for cannabis industry, make it anonymous and give it masternode capabilities. But what really drives up its potential is a genuine rebranding effort to make it acceptable by tobacco and corn farmers.
Leaving the technicalities aside – I'm not a crypto expert like some heavy hitters on Steemit, so don't even try to ask me – the whole idea stirred a thought in this stoned noggin of mine. Hemp was once a coin, and a respected one at that, in times when nobody trusted fiat, which was scarce back then anyway.
Obviously, we're talking about old English colonies, which later became the ovule of The United States of A, where in the beginning of 17th century hemp was a strategic resource planted by the order of Henry VIII, who had required its mandatory cultivation on one quarter acre for every sixty acres of land.
The thing was though, that colonists weren't really fond of this new crop that much, so king's decree had to be executed around mid 1600s by the local courts in Connecticut and Massachusetts, where every family had to plant at least one teaspoon of hemp seed.
After that hemp's career had really taken off, and it had quickly become the only commodity money to perform daily transactions... and also to pay taxes! Then, once the rig was in, hemp got wings, and by the end of 18th century grew into the most important crop in The New World.
And such was the success of hemp, that the colonies had slowly started becoming independent from English imported goods, as people were able to manufacture almost everything from it!
Even the first and second draft of Declaration of Independence were penned on hemp paper (so not an urban legend that one). However, the final version (signed by the delegates) was written on parchment made from animal skin... as hemp was already falling under short supply due to war efforts.
In fact, both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson strongly advocated the cultivation of hemp. The first one practically developed a hemp obsession, which led him to importing Indian hemp seed, which he believed was far superior from common English variety, that had been cultivated in America before.
Jefferson on the other hand really took liking to hemp as currency, and used it in times of money shortage during his tenure as Governor of Virginia. And there was a good reason for it as paper money hardly held any value. $1,000 worth of paper was worth only $1 in silver, which it was pegged to.
The truth is, that hemp's tremendous purchasing power went through the roof right after American Revolution, and anything could have been bought with it at that time.
Clothes, newspapers, food, even horses or guns! It was green gold indeed, that thrived till it was destroyed by the Federal Reserve and its fiduciary garbage! But HempCoin just might fix it!