TORONTO, Jan. 03, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BELGRAVIA CAPITAL INTERNATIONAL INC. (CSE:BLGV) (OTCQB:BLGVF) (“Belgravia Capital”, “Belgravia”, or the “Company”) is pleased to announce the commencement of research, development and marketing of its planned distributed and decentralized blockchain-based medicinal cannabis quality attestation and provenance public database. The database will be constructed so retail consumers and institutional distributors will be able to freely search a publicly-validated and distributed blockchain dataset for relevant product characteristics such as proof of cannabinoid, terpenoid and flavonoid content, as well as proof of strain heritage including source of genotype and phenotype. Other attested characteristics include increased safety features such as freedom from heavy metals (including arsenic, mercury, iron, copper, and zinc), and freedom from biological contamination metabolites such as endotoxin lipopolysaccharides, solvents and pesticide residuals. Recordation of product genesis will allow consumers to identify where specific strains can be purchased and it is intended that our platform may provide linkage for actionable purchases which may enable the company to participate in a revenue sharing model.



The Company intends to establish on a paced basis an industry consortium to provide independently verified input data. In that regard Belgravia has executed a letter of intent on January 2, 2018 with an internationally based vertically integrated private medicinal cannabis company with license applications in place, which has access to world recognized strains and whose business model will include international distribution consistent with all domestic and international laws. Belgravia is further negotiating such letters of intent and definitive agreements with other licensed producers in Canada, and also in other jurisdictions where medicinal cannabis has been fully legalized and is fully regulated. Belgravia will only operate in conjunction with industry players operating fully consistently with all levels of relevant legal requirements.

Mehdi Azodi, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Belgravia stated: “We are pleased to be advancing carefully thought out plans for the development of Blockchain distributed databases as a service to retail consumers, and as a value-added technology for the industry. Bootstrapping such specific blockchain applications will require our integrating cannabis agronomic and medical researchers, software developers, distributed and centralized blockchain experts, business-to-business participants, and governments, merchants, and customers. We are developing a team with specialization in these areas.”

Mr. Azodi continued: “The blockchain development will involve a permissioned network of input nodes representing licensed producers, analytical laboratories, and government regulators, as well as an open distributed network of nodes for consumers and other interested parties. While consumers will be fully pseudonymous, inputters will be trusted and auditable industry or government service providers. We believe that consumers will appreciate the protection of their identities, which will be provided by using private address keys. For inputters, the identities will be public for two reasons: first, all input data will be traceable backwards to a cloud-based database of hash-indexed and hash-provable and therefore immutable documents; further, reputation is important and in a pseudonymous environment, where identities can be switched effortlessly, reputation systems are not workable if identities can be switched effortlessly. Inputter identification and off chain databases also provide protection to inputters from spurious assertions. The Blockchains are append-only and immutable ledgers and this will provide greater confidence to consumers than is presently possible. As blockchain utilization develops, we also intend to integrate the power of cloud computing, which will be attractive to the international community of medicinal cannabis consumers. Cloud computing provides a retail oriented attractive alternative model for enabling ubiquitous convenient and on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. In principle, a P2P storage system will allow for the international retail community to provide their storage resources as dedicated and supportive to medicinal cannabis consumers. They could provide such resources for reasons of personal satisfaction of supporting greater visibility and confidence in the industry, or in exchange for industry specific digital coins. Such coins or tokens are becoming recognized as affiliation instruments in addition to providing exchangeable monetary value.”

Equity Funding

Funding of blockchain developments and other initiatives will be from working capital including a note receivable, expected warrant exercises, and an additional equity funding. As previously announced on October 17, 2017 the Company, in addition to USD $1.4 million already received, has a receivable promissory note of USD $1.4 Million (approximately CAD $1.75 million) from Cartesian Capital Group-controlled Intercontinental Potash Corp (USA). This amount is due January 8, 2018. In addition to working capital, there are outstanding 20,236,666 warrants exercisable at CAD $0.08 maturing on March 1, 2018. If fully exercised, these in-the-money warrants will provide an additional CAD $1,618,933.

Further, the Company intends to raise additional funds and has price protection for equity securities by way of a unit offering at CAD $0.05 a unit, which was obtained on December 1, 2017. The Company intends to raise up to CAD $4,000,000 by issuing units at a price of CAD $0.05 per unit, each unit consisting of one common share and one common share purchase warrant, each warrant entitling the holder to purchase an additional common share at CAD $0.18 per warrant for a period of one year from the date of issue. The Company expects such financing to be completed no later than January 10, 2018. It is also expected that additional funds up to USD $12.2M will be received from Cartesian Capital Group controlled Intercontinental Potash Corp. (USA) from New Mexico water sales. Those anticipated revenues are in connection with the Water Royalty, as more particularly described in the Company’s press release of October 17, 2017.

About Belgravia Capital

Belgravia Capital International is focused on the provision of clearly value-added services to the international legal Cannabis industry. This includes the production of specialized organic fertilizers for Cannabis Sativa plants, and the organization and development of blockchain technology software for seed to sale tracking and quality attestation of intermediate and consumer products. The wholly-owned subsidiary of Belgravia, ICP Organics, is a research and development company incorporating agronomic and health perspectives in the Cannabis space. Belgravia is also developing a royalty-streaming subsidiary.

Belgravia Capital intends to establish joint research and development partnerships with Licensed Producers operating under ACMPR regulations in Canada and in other jurisdictions where medicinal cannabis is fully legal. Belgravia Capital may invest in various private and public companies in diversified sectors on an opportunistic basis. For more information, please visit www.belgraviacapital.ca.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking statements that involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include statements that use forward-looking terminology such as “may”, “will”, “expect”, “anticipate”, “believe”, “continue”, “potential” or the negative thereof or other variations thereof or comparable terminology. Such forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements regarding planned investment activities & related returns, trends in the markets for fertilizers and medicinal or recreational use of cannabis, the timing or assurance of the legalization of recreational cannabis, the timing for completion of research and development activities, the potential value of royalties from water and other resources, and other statements that are not historical facts. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of the Company, including, but not limited to, changes in market trends, the completion, results and timing of research undertaken by the Company, risks associated with resource assets, the impact of general economic conditions, commodity prices, industry conditions, dependence upon regulatory, environmental, and governmental approvals, the uncertainty of obtaining additional financing, and risks associated with cannabis use for medicinal or recreational purposes. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements.

For More Information, Please Contact:

Mehdi Azodi, President & CEO

Belgravia Capital

(416) 779-3268

mazodi@blgv.ca