I don't think much of Bitcoin but even I tend to read this and think, "Well, screw the banks, we have Bitcoin."
Does using Bitcoin help assist someone who has a debit card purchase marijuana? Bear in mind that this person is likely non-technical. They're also physically present at a marijuana distributor, and sufficiently difficult processes will cost them a 30 minute car drive to another marijuana distributor, who transacts via cash and an ATM or using the ATm->distributor's account loophole.
Does using Bitcoin help Totally Not A Marijuana Dispensary LLC avoid the scrutiny of its bank's compliance department such that they can maintain a business bank account, write checks to employees and vendors, demonstrate a credible revenue/expense history and thereby secure credit, and otherwise plug into the mainstream financial system? For example, will large wire transfers coming in from an identifiable company in Tokyo, or their cutouts, raise less flags than dealing in equivalent amounts of cash, like every pizzeria, car wash, laundromat, video arcade, etc in America?
The last one might not be obvious, so as someone who has extensive experience with American and Japanese banks doing routine wire transfers between each other: this reads as Very Effing Exotic to risk/compliance officers and even if you're utterly aboveboard you'll be asked to explain yourself a lot. I get to have a quick chat with the manager of my bank branch for every single wire, and let's just say it is a very good thing that I have a US passport, an accountant on speed dial, a stack of invoices and contracts, sterling credit, and the interconnected stack of social privileges which let me convince skeptical people that I'm an "international professional" rather than "drug dealer" in five minutes of conversation.
Sometimes, not even then: "One dispensary owner told me about taking seven thousand dollars in cash to the Washington Department of Revenue, to pay his monthly tax bill. He was turned away, because the teller refused to deposit his “drug money.”"
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/11/18/131118fa_fact_...
To think that your curated list of issues that Bitcoin does not solve is in any way a reason that there aren't many other issues it does solve is fallacious.
If your response is that they should keep all their bitcoins in a safe place then maybe we can think about what sorts of safe places you can keep items worth tens of thousands of dollars and then I think you basically end up back at banks.
The other possibility is that this solution is obvious, but lobbying for bank accounts is part of making Mary-Jane a more acceptable trade.
Unlike with physical cash, you can easily put any arbitrary amount of physical separation between the place the transaction occurs and the place the money is "stored".
I think you're failing a bit in criminal imagination, which is probably not a bad thing altogether.
If you are going into the marijuana business get good legal advice and have a competent defense lawyer on retainer.
There could quite easily be a crackdown if the next president wants to revert things or is too heavily beholden to the parts of federal law enforcement that benefit from the drug war.
Someone really just needs to set up a BTC ATM in these places, see what happens. Maybe convince the owners to take bitcoin, off chance it creates a thriving use case for both, and demonstrates the ability/limits of BTC as a banking substitute.
They can also start a separate company, say, an investment company, to take the gold and store it, or convert it to dollars or stocks.
There are lots of solutions made possible by Bitcoin, none of which are impacted in the slightest by the investment volatility of Bitcoin.