Jeremy Gardner and Brock Pierce, managing partners at Mystic Ventures stopped by Benzinga Cannabis Insider where hosts Javier Hasse and Elliot Lane, asked them about their trajectory, from crypto to psychedelics, investment prospects in the sector, and the next key catalyzers for their legalization in the U.S.

Mystic Ventures precede to series a venture fund focused on the merging psychedelic medicine market and more broadly “the elevation of consciousness,” Brock, actor, economist, and entrepreneur said. “We have a pretty wide-ranging mandate from our investors to invest in a variety of different types of startups from drug development to software as a service and CPG brands.”

“We're seed and pre-seed and we've done 20 deals in the last 14 months. I think making us the most active investor in the psychedelic space,” added Brock, who is also the founder of the first Venture Capital Fund in the crypto space dedicated to psychedelics.

From Crypto To Psychedelics

When it comes to commonalities between crypto and psychedelics Gardner and Brock coincide in that are pioneering sectors, breaking down stigmas. Likewise, they argued both are highly regulated industries that require people that understand the regulatory frameworks they are betting on potentially new compounds.

Another commonality, according to Gardner, whose early investments in cryptocurrency made him a self-made millionaire, is passion.

“As a venture capitalist you have to be passionate you have to care about what you're investing in,” Gardner said. “Both of us have very you know we were passionate evangelists for blockchain technology in the earliest days and I think that transfers over really well to the sort of advocacy that's now needed in the Psychedelic landscape (…) I spend a lot of time dealing with legislation and governments.”

A Look At The Industry As An Investor

Pierce also noted that much of the debate around the use of psychedelics responds to the need for a solution to the mental health crisis.

"Legislatively you do need people that know how to articulate and communicate these sorts of messages because mental health is a very very real issue and the tools that we've used historically to solve the issues of mental health clearly have not been working and I think it's in the forefront of this field that we're finding potential solutions. Blockchain is solving call it the infrastructure layer of our future efficiency transparency but none of that really matters if we don't find inner peace and if we don't fix the humans," Pierce said.

“If you see where we are today when it comes to psychedelic medicine it's a very different time in the 50s or 70s. Look at when the War on Drugs began with Nixon. At that point we had two broad government policies that kind of shaped government policy uh and that was a war in Vietnam and effectively pro segregation anti-civil rights movement, while people were dropping LSD, realizing segregation was wrong and that we shouldn't be in Vietnam so it was an existential threat to government policy at the time. The narrative around them became very toxic. Now in our society, our issues are almost entirely mental health-related,” Gardner said.

Whether you're talking broadly about the divide in our political system, our inability to have healthy conversations with one another, anxiety, depression, suicide, or addictions…. the rates of all these mental health issues are rising exponentially and the pharmaceutical solutions on the market today are Band-Aids. They help repress these feelings but they don't help address these feelings,” Gardner continued.

Gardner explained the psychedelic spaces now count on many scientific studies while the FDA is green-lighting fast-tracking multiple companies.

“We're not seeing any level of meaningful public or government opposition to what these companies are doing so forget what's happening in the public markets because that's just a bloodbath generally biotech. We've just seen so many new bills getting passed… I mean everything is optimistic besides Market sentiment, and the market right now doesn't affect our thinking.” Gardner said.

The Next Catalyst

Pierce explained he is in conversations with the New Jersey State House Assembly.

“New Jersey is thankfully recognizing the opportunity. Rather than these entrepreneurs and businesses leaving New York to go to another country another part of the world or another part of the U.S. all they've got to do is cross the Hudson River,” Pierce said. “I'm very optimistic and excited to be helping the state of New Jersey to bring Economic Development.”

“Big part of it is evangelism. It's getting people comfortable with the conversation. It's human nature to fear that which we don't understand and the way that you conquer fear is with knowledge and to have a conversation in a safe space where someone is comfortable revealing their ignorance,“ Brock continued while Gardner highlighted the importance of coalition building.

“It's a very bipartisan issue. In Texas hardcore GOP Republicans, and AOC in New York, both introduced bills in the house to give veterans access to psychedelic medicine. The biggest Champion out there today might be Rick Perry the former hard-right Republican governor of Texas,” Gardner said.

Photo Credits: Sebastiaan ter Burg from Utrecht_The Netherlands_CC BY 2.0_via Wikimedia Commons.