The US has offered to assign the status of cannabis exchange goods
The legal sale of cannabis has increased by 17.4% in 2015, to $ 5.4 billion, in 2016 the market will grow to $ 6.7 billion.
American Seed CX expects to be the first platform on which will be traded financial contracts for technical hemp. The corresponding application has been filed in the US supervisory authorities.
Cannabis cultivation and sale of which is banned in the United States at the federal level, but allowed in some states can be transformed from an illegal drug in the commodity standard. The Chicago company Seed Commodities Exchange (Seed CX) expects to become exchange swap tied to the market hemp financial instruments. To this end, the company has sent a preliminary application to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Seed CX developed the first derivative trading technical hemp, which can handle the market with a permit from the US supervisory authorities. "We aim to create a risk reduction tool for cannabisa industry, including crop insurance and hedging derivatives. An important step in this direction is the creation of an active market of cash transactions and to stimulate economic research ", - said in a press release. Contracts have been developed with the assistance of the staff at Harvard Law School and the International Business School Sloan at MIT.
Seed CX President Brian Liston hopes that the company will be able to help society to get rid of prejudice against cannabis. According to him, "We will succeed when this topic will become more common. Industry konoplevodstva beautiful from all sides. This is an untapped and difficult market, which feels the need for various services, and big business does not dare to come into this segment. "
Draft exchange swap Seed CX supports a consortium of agribusiness groups and the exchange of liquidity providers. But even if the US regulator will give Seed CX good exchange traders need. Trading in futures and other derivatives contracts is impossible without continuous cash flow, this problem Liston also intends to work. Michael Gorham, a finance professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology, skeptical about the Seed CX plans: "The vast majority of futures contracts dies within five years after the launch."
Seed CX expects to offer the market a three contracts, which will be tied to trade hemp seeds, hemp (of plants) and cannabis plant extract.
Comment of the Association "Ukrainian industrial hemp"
Seed CX was founded Liston and his fellow Massachusetts Institute of Technology Edward Woodford. Swap market involves trade forward contracts, swaps and options. This area excludes the services of intermediaries, that is, market participants are working directly with the exchange.
Industrial hemp cultivation in the country has been given a boost in 2014, when the US law concept of farming industrial hemp was introduced, under which refers to plants that contain less than 0.3% THC.
Currently, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the laws governing the use of industrial hemp, are at least 27 US states. According to Liston, most of the cannabis crop last year has fallen to the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Colorado. During the Second World War, when production of hemp was legal throughout the United States, its harvest was about 150 million pounds (68 thous. Tons).
In addition, in recent years a growing number of US states legalized and use of psychoactive hemp. Most Americans (86%) live in states where permitted medical or recreational cannabis consumption, according to the research and investment group ArcView Group, associated with the cannabis industry. The legal sale of cannabis has increased by 17.4% in 2015, to $ 5.4 billion, estimates ArcView. According to the company's forecast, in 2016 the market will grow to $ 6.7 billion.