Crypto and cannabis have a lot in common, including rapid growth and interesting etymology. Etymology is the study of words. Cannabis is a can-do word. Look at it, right there in the beginning, “can.”

Cryptocurrency can’t do a lot of things, including make sense to me. Many think the word is derived from the French “cryptographie” meaning, “the art of writing in secret characters.” But any crypto-bro who has seen their favorite coin drop 90% knows different. When they see that coin drop another 90%, they are quick to notice the beginning of cryptocurrency is “cry.”

Silk Road was a famous website where you could buy cannabis with crypto. You didn’t even have to know they were both made of hash. Cannabis has hash oil. Crypto has hash functions that power Merkle trees — digital shrubbery that keeps the internet secure.

Merkle trees make Bitcoin and the blockchain possible. The first time I heard about Merkle trees I misheard it as “Merkin trees.” I am haunted by that visual to this day. If you don’t know what a merkin is, be careful searching for it on the internet.

A nine page white paper launched Bitcoin in 2008. After all this time nothing has dethroned it. Maybe that will change if cancel culture discovers it all started with a “white” paper.

Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto is pseudonymous, which means nobody knows who he is. That must be why early Bitcoin adopters flocked to the technology. It reminded them of high school, a time and place where nobody knew who they were.

Many of these early adopters have achieved generational wealth. If only they had prospects for creating a next generation. Step one for many of them: move out of mom’s basement.

Bitcoin is famous for crashing, even more than Pete Holmes is famous for Crashing. Bitcoin crashing is funny because every time it crashes the price is higher than the last time it “crashed.” The next time you doom scroll through its demise check to see if the price has an extra digit.

Bitcoin has crashed to $1,000 dollars and to $20,000. Someday soon you may see a headline that Bitcoin has crashed to $500,000. Thanks, inflation.

There is no need to reverse engineer Bitcoin. It is open source, which sounds like a description of an active STD. I thought reverse engineering was what I did in high school physics. I would go to class and afterward I was somehow less smart about science. I was prodigious at reverse engineering.

Cryptocurrency and cannabis have had a heck of a run. Both have grown like crazy and regulation has legitimized them. Grandma can get pre-rolls at the corner store. Your second cousin can spend his allowance on a cartoon JPEG of a cat. We’re all excited to spend our altcoins on the next hot pixelated NFT, just don’t ask me to explain how they work.

This article was first published in Volume 4 Issue 2 of Cannabis & Tech Today. Read the full issue here.