This is going to be by far one of the hardest posts for me to write.
It has been almost two years of financial adventure with all of you who have participated in my beloved SEED project, but unfortunately, after giving the matter a lot of thought, I've decided that I'm going to have to close and dissolve the project.
Reason?
Mainly due to regulatory and fiscal uncertainty.
Tax legislation has been tightening for years in Spain (as it has across Europe, I assume) and with 99.9% certainty next year I will be required to make a wealth declaration for all the assets under my control. And yes, that includes assets under the umbrella of the SEED project. I've received 100% confirmation of this barely a month ago.
Cryptocurrency trading has been my main source of income since 2020, so at the time I had no choice but to do a full KYC to justify the origin of my funds. This includes all the exchanges I use and my DAO Maker account (without which pre-sales would not have been possible).
I have thought long and hard about continuing the project in the shadows. But this would completely cut off many future possibilities for growth outside of Hive (and maybe not even that). SEED was never conceived to simply keep HIVE and HBD in the portfolio. Not to mention my personal risk.
If I get caught with say $100-500K undeclared I could very well end up in prison and with a severe fine under the upcoming laws if it’s proven that I have been consciously avoiding my 'new' obligations (until now it just was a ‘grey area’ and as Spanish citizens, we weren’t forced to declare our crypto holdings).
And as I keep researching the subject I realize more and more that I am (we are) completely fenced off in this matter.
When setting up the initial structure of the project, I thought of doing it through a DAO, an idea that I discarded after a short time of research.
Given that the SEED model is "hybrid", a DAO as a governmental structure does not give me the flexibility to manage SEED as I wish. You're fully decentralized or not (SEED isn't).
In the last few weeks, I’ve also been exploring the possibility of setup a privately owned remote company in Estonia as a valid solution for SEED operations.
And at first glance, everything looked promising. But once you do a bit of digging you realize that you will need to go through audits, permits and of course assume a series of costs that I'm sorry to say I'm not prepared to take on (nor would you want to). Neither personally nor financially.
I guess this was one of the biggest risks of starting a project and solving problems as they arise. You just don't have room to maneuver for certain things. Perhaps I have been deluded from the start.
It would simply be better to relaunch SEED under new conditions rather than trying to fix something that is fundamentally flawed at its core.
Whatever the case, I am not prepared to make this decision at this time. At this point, I consider SEED as a failed venture.
And overall I'm very sorry.
I could very well take this decision a few months later. But I think that at a time of pre-bull market accumulation, I think it is more reasonable to take this tough decision now and allow as many participants as possible to position themselves as they wish to face the market. The shorter the delay, the better for everyone IMHO.
Let’s talk about Refunds.
All this talk is very well and nice, but let's get to the important issue. SEED reimbursements.
Let’s see
Currently, SEED is worth 123.852$ . But 108.890$ approx ( 87% of all the funds) are locked in long-term locks (from 3 months up to 2 years).
And this is how the SEED supply (100K) is distributed:
- As the ‘Founder’ of the project, I hold half of the supply or 50.000 tokens.
- What I consider ‘Private Investors’ hold 13.308 tokens.
- @seed-cold holds another 12.122 tokens.
- Remaining people (Public) hold an accumulative of ~24.570 tokens.
I have thought for many hours about what would be a fair return for everyone (both the general public, my private investors, and myself).
and the point is that right now, based on AUM, each SEED is worth between 1 - 1.4$ depending on whether you as an investor would be willing to wait up to two years for all the pre-sales to unwind.
However, as the manager, I cannot wait that long ( 2 years) to repay everyone for the reasons I mentioned above. It neither makes sense. So, after discussing it with my private investors, I have decided on the following.
I will use all liquid funds to buy back all tokens from public participants at a fixed price of $1.1/SEED.
The logic behind this is that the current supported price at which someone (individually) could redeem their tokens is very close to $1 (which is also ironic), but honestly pisses me off a lot not to be able to offer anything more after almost two years of operation, so it seems reasonable to me to offer a symbolic +10%, if only for the opportunity cost and for the trust placed in me.
Apart from SEED liquid funds, I will be using personal funds to honor this and repay everyone ASAP.
The main idea is to reimburse this first batch of 25000 SEED's in less than 1 month from the publication of this post (Hopefully +90% within 14 days). Once this lot is repaid, I will cease all activity related to SEED (no holdings reports, no transparency updates, etc). It will be run 100% privately with the remaining private investors.
Refunds aren't open yet for everyone while I start unstaking procedures, and these will be processed from smallest holders to largest (preferably).
As a general rule of thumb:
- If you hold less than 300 SEED, you can already claim.
- If you hold 300-2000 SEED, better wait for 3-4 days (since the publication of this post).
- If you hold +2000 SEED, better wait for 14 days (or contact me first).
SEED claim procedure:
- Refunds will be made in HBD and HIVE (preferably HBD).
- Refunds will only be made to the same account that hold/send the SEED’s.
- Although this is not ‘strictly’ a FCFS, please follow the order.
To claim your share, you can send your SEEDs directly to @seed-cold with the memo 'refund’.
I will process all these transfers manually, so please give me at least 12-24h to catch up. If after this time your refund is still pending, feel free to send me a message through Discord (#6408) or Telegram (@elempoderat). I WON’T CONTACT YOU FIRST. You can also let me know through the internal Hive chat or through a comment. As you prefer.
Final notes.
I think that everything I had to say has already been made quite clear and I also think that this is not the time to sugarcoat this content. Later we’ll see.
If you have any questions or just want to express yourself, go ahead and I'll read you.
EDIT // 22/04/23
Refunds have started to roll out smoothly.
There is some buffering already available so 300-2000 holders can start sending their SEEDs to @seed-cold with the memo 'refund'. tagging just in case someone misses it.
@donchate
@mammasitta
@trumpman
@netaterra
@spinvest
@taskmaster4450
@dera123
@erikah
@hykss
@claudio83
@cryptoandcoffee
@shawnlauzon
@bozz