Former basketballer and fan of piercings Dennis Rodman is back in North Korea, his arrival coinciding with the release of imprisoned US student Otto Warmbier.

Rodman has been pals with Kim Jong-un for a while now, but this isn’t just a trip to visit the world’s foremost sufferer of small man syndrome.

Dennis has had his trip sponsored by Potcoin, a digital currency for marijuana.

The guy you buy your street jut / turries from probably won’t accept it but, as CBS points out, they’re looking to the future over in the US:

Potcoin is an online currency developed to eliminate the necessity of cash between customers and marijuana dispensaries. It hasn’t exactly taken off yet, as weed isn’t legal under federal law (which invalidates a key part of the model), but the move to sponsor Rodman has certainly paid off. Since Rodman arrived in Pyongyang wearing a Potcoin t-shirt on Tuesday, Potcoin’s value saw an 84 percent increase to 17 cents.

This is 2017, and this is the man trusted with bringing “peace and dialogue between both nations”:

I guess part of the deal was travelling in the shirt, too:

It would be fair to say that the success of Potcoin’s value was rather short-lived, with BusinessInsider crunching the updated numbers:

PotCoin plummeted 23% on Wednesday, just a day after it soared 97% following the publicity it received from sponsoring Rodman’s trip.

The currency is valued at just over 13 US cents.

Marijuana is illegal under federal law, so the majority of banks won’t take cash or open lines of credit for marijuana businesses. PotCoin was developed to facilitate transactions between marijuana consumers and businesses, removing the need for cash.

You like graphs? We have a graph:

It appears Dennis Rodman isn’t a great poster boy for Potcoin, and the jury is out on his ability to bring peace and dialogue too.

[sources:cbs&businessinsider]