So this is the situation as it stands:

In 2017 Gabe called me up and said that the Rainforest Foundation had contacted him and wanted to do an ICO to raise funds. I was initially a little hesitant about it but wanted to help as long as it was a purely charitable event (i.e. no personal compensation for being involved).  We had previously had problems finding a decent developer to be a part of the project so it seemed to make sense to try swapping to an Ubiq token since they seemed to be looking for projects to take on for this.

We got in touch with them via the Ubiq Slack and everything initially seemed to be going well, with everyone on their team seeming to be receptive and interested. I was told the next step was to open a support ticket on Bittrex to get withdrawals turned back on for BitSeeds to prepare for a swap.  

I opened a ticket and then weeks and weeks passed before I got any kind of response. I finally spoke with a lower level support person who eventually escalated me to Raimi, and from there I ended up in a loop going back and forth over the same points  over and over and I never was able to convince him to turn withdrawals on. Meanwhile, we (Gabe, Suzanne from the RF, and I each trying independently) could no longer get any response from any of the Ubiq team on their Slack, or on their Discord after they switched to that. So all forward momentum stopped dead despite our efforts.

As we got closer to the end of the year, I started becoming concerned that the SEC and others were not satisfied with how tokens were being issued and ICOs were being handled, and became increasingly convinced they were going to start prosecution of participants and so began recommending a wait and see approach to everyone else involved until we could be certain how to proceed with something like this while fully complying with US law.

I have no way of knowing why Bittrex has chosen to fully remove these 80 or so cryptos at this time, or why they chose to disable withdrawals on some of the blockchains including BitSeeds. The blockchain/network is still moving and functioning; I just checked the two computers I have staking and the most recent staked transaction was less than 15 minutes ago with six confirmations already. So as far as I can tell, there's no reason for them to prevent withdrawals, but as I mentioned above they seemed to be unwilling to turn them back on when I asked them to months ago so I have no idea what their reasoning is.

And to address the idea that the Rainforest Foundation "scammed" people, to the best of my knowledge they have never made a single cent or satoshi from BitSeeds. The only BitSeeds project or Rainforest Foundation funds that have ever been on the market since I've became involved in the summer of 2015 was a small amount that was mined in 2016 after we reactivated POW. Gabe gave me some of his personal BTC which I used to rent a low power miner through MRR to mine on the pool, the small proceeds were sold at market price solely to buy BTC to re-rent the miner and keep a minimum hashrate for the function of the network.

In 2016 I did put a lot of my own personal BitSeeds (mined by me or bought with my own BTC months earlier) on the market and sold it - at a considerable loss - in an attempt to shore up the flagging volume on Bittrex to hopefully keep it sufficient to justify them continuing to list it. My efforts were in vain, but it was all I knew to do at the time to keep it going. I'm sorry that it hasn't worked out so far, but I'm still hopeful we'll find a way to make it happen in the future.  

Everyone, sorry for not getting in here sooner and updating the thread and I apologize to the people who have PMed me here as well. In brief, there will be a coin swap from our own blockchain to Ubiq tokens, the details of which will be forthcoming soon once we coordinate all the details with everyone involved in the process. 

The network is still running along pretty smoothly and you should be able to open your wallet and stake without problems - just make sure you're using the current (May 2016 update) version 2.0 which you can download from https://bitseeds.org/

If you have any problems connecting try adding the following two lines to your bitseeds.conf file:

addnode=104.131.118.19:3001
addnode=98.151.105.228

and that should get you connections. If anyone else has nodes to suggest, feel free to post them here.

There will also be an ICO happening with all proceeds going to the Rainforest Foundation.  The exact amount of BitSeeds we're offering hasn't been settled on, but it looks like it will be roughly 60% of the current circulating coins which should help improve distribution a lot.

All coins being sold are coming from staked funds from project wallets and not from the original (still untouched) premine.  The premine will be locked into a smart contract and most likely will be used to mint new coins at a low annual inflation rate -- much lower than the original 10% -- since staking and mining will no longer be an option as a Ubiq token.

The goal here is to fund the Rainforest Foundation without flooding the market with a vast ton of new coins, and to bring in as much money as possible for the RF while still looking out for the needs of all current BitSeeds holders. Once all the details have been worked out, I'll be posting more specifics, but we're *probably* looking at an August or September timeframe.  I'll keep you posted. Thanks for your patience!

Man, given what's going on in India with the currency right now, Saffroncoin would be pumping like mad if it was still on an exchange...

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-37933233

The best thing you can do to get the coin relisted is for you to talk to Bill directly - I've been dealing with this myself over the XSEED market and he wants to talk to an active developer who can articulate the plans for the project so he can evaluate whether it'll make sense for them to keep it going until the volume picks up. 

My understanding is that Bittrex is currently being vetted by either investors and/or regulators who are picking apart their business and are pushing them to dump any markets that are unprofitable. But they seem able to be at least a little flexible on this point IF they can talk to the developer and get a good sense of their plans.

Hope that helps.

So you may have noticed that the XSEED market is disabled but is still listed, unlike most/all of the other alts that they've removed recently. Bill has not made a final decision yet and I have just heard back from Gabe earlier today who has been away traveling, I think for his cannabis startup incubator. Gabe is going to get in touch with Bill and talk to him so we'll see how that goes and I'll post any updates here when I have them.

Thanks. Glad you like the wallet design - I need to tweak a couple aspects of it but I think it came out looking pretty good.

You should be getting connections, albeit not a huge number right now since there don't seem to be a lot of people staking right now and both our pools have gone down along with the other pools run by those two people. We just set up a new node which hasn't been hard coded into the wallet yet, so use

addnode=104.131.118.19:2332

and also try

addnode=72.130.92.25:2332

those should help.  

BTW, if you have any XSEED already be sure to fully sync it with an empty wallet or there's the potential for it to get stuck on it's own fork if the wallet decides to stake. I've had this happen with a number of staking coins in the past before I realized what was causing it.

Checking my wallet it looks like we're on block 67344 as I type this. Keep in mind a lot of QT or core-based alt wallets including BitSeeds will sometimes look like they're failing to sync if you happen to sync and catch up between blocks. So check the block number and if it's 67344 or higher then you're probably fully synced even if it looks like it's catching up.

But now that I think about it, I haven't seen this happen since we relaunched with our current codebase back at the end of April, so you probably just need to give it a little more time unless maybe your firewall is blocking it or something.

Let me know if any of that helps.

I'm talking it over with Bill right now and I emailed Gabe to see if he could talk to him as well. We'll see what he says, but it costs Bittrex a pretty fair amount of money to keep markets open and unfortunately BitSeeds just hasn't had a lot of volume and so they've been keeping it open for us while losing money for a long while now.  :/


Yes, they've been really aggressive cutting the smaller lower profile coins due to the cost issue I mentioned. I can understand their position but it's very frustrating for us to have the market killed, and sort of because we don't hype enough to get more people trading... I always saw the lack of hype as a good thing, but again I can understand them wanting to keep their costs under control. 

Hi Delong,
 Thanks for the heads up; as it happens I actually already spoke with Bill (Bittrex CEO) over the weekend and updated him on what was going on with the project. What I didn't mention specifically in my last post was that Alex of coin.co had actually spoken with Bill offering the turnkey crypto payment processing system to them, which would have allowed Bittrex to become our payment processor.  I asked Bill about it since we hadn't spoken since before then and he said that he liked Alex and coin.co but it wasn't a great fit for what Bittrex is working on right now.

 However, Bill said he had someone he could put me in touch with however who might be a better fit - I need to follow up with Bill about this since he only has given me the website so far, but if that worked out we'd end up with a company that could handle both the payment processing as well as the gift cards so that could end up working out really well!

 So while I have spoken with Bill, anyone who can help boost the trade volume in the market would be appreciated.

 I have been trying on my own to help improve the volume for some time now by gradually selling off my own BitSeeds (at a considerable loss since all the BitSeeds I've ever owned were ones I mined during the original launch or bought up out of pocket some time ago) but have almost entirely exhausted my own funds.  So to whomever has been buying when I've been selling them, you're welcome for the cheap coins.

Cool, guys. Good luck with everything - I'll be staking my JBS in the meantime. 

Think this is it: https://github.com/saffroncoin/wallet20

Yeah, I don't know if he contacted Bittrex or not, but I'm guessing he didn't or he would've posted about it here, unfortunately. It's possible he may not have signed in to read the thread or Twitter and may not know for all I know.  India is a great case for crypto adoption and I've always sort of assumed that he'd presumably planned to use Throughbit as a way to introduce SFR to the masses at some point.  

Anyway, I just sort of got into detective mode after noticing the network did seem to be (slowly) working looking at the explorer, yet my client wouldn't get even one connection. Seemed like it was an out of date client being rejected when trying to connect, so that led me to figure out how to download the Windows version and after I'd ended up doing all that, it seemed selfish not to post the links here given there are probably others who wanted to at least withdraw funds from Bittrex.



Edit:  is it just me, or did the "may be delisted by" message on Bittrex change from Friday the 23rd to Friday the 30th? Maybe they're giving it a little reprieve or did I misread it before?

I've followed Saffroncoin since around when it launched and have always liked the coin even if it seems to have been dead for a while.  I saw the delisting notice and did some checking and found my Mac wallet would not sync so I checked the website for a newer client but the site doesn't load and the download links in the OP don't work for the same reason.

However, I did a little digging on archive.org and found you can view the site here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20160505232007/http://saffroncoin.com/

and this led me to an archived download link for the current Windows wallet, which does sync and is working just fine.  This link should work for you if you want to download a working client:

http://web.archive.org/web/20160505232007/http://saffroncoin.com/saffroncoin-wallet-windows-2.6.2.zip
virus scan:
https://virustotal.com/en/url/ff2f9cc85f9851bbd469b6db054a3cfaaa62b57999ae651178086c8b7d7fad03/analysis/1474274139/


I also created a mirror download link you can use here:
http://saffroncoin.s3.amazonaws.com/saffroncoin-wallet-windows-2.6.2.zip

and the virus scan results of course:
https://virustotal.com/en/url/06abf4ed255b67e9f2be1fc5aff39c70230562540a2bf5807b13e65402ff226f/analysis/1474276905/

Hope that helps!

Just posting something here so I can see updates to the thread...

Hey Delong,
 Yeah, so here's the current state of things. Going all the way back to the original launch of BitSeeds back in April of 2015, the project had coin.co lined up to handle merchant services/payment processing and handling the small fee that gives merchants a tax deduction for a charitable donation.

 Since then the Bitlicense went into effect in New York (where coin.co is located) and between that and the other state-by-state regulatory requirements, the up-front cost for coin.co to be able to provide payment processing for crypto apparently shot up into the $2-3 million range(!) and so coin.co basically decided to largely stop operations. Back in June I was told about this, but also told that due to the charity status of the project this created a regulatory loophole and Bitseeds support was still on track and that we'd be ready to have merchants accepting orders in XSEED in about a month.

 Fast forward to late July, as I posted upthread, Alex from coin.co hadn't had a chance to start working on it due to a family illness, but was still planning on it. When I spoke with him I asked him to confirm the "loophole" (for lack of a better term) with his lawyers. Eventually we heard that his lawyers had decided that the charity status was not enough to allow them to avoid the massive regulatory cost so coin.co wouldn't be able to do it. 
 
 However, coin.co has a complete payment processing system set up that is basically turnkey and ready for a company to take over to implement payment processing for bitcoin, Bitseeds, or other alts.  Alex reached out to someone he thought might want to take over coin.co's assets, but they weren't apparently interested in providing payment processing along with their existing crypto business. 

 So we're at a point where we do have confirmed interested businesses who want to start accepting BitSeeds, but without coin.co there's no way for them to do so.  So we are not able to go forward in the planned sequence (payment processing -> merchants -> gift cards & Rainforest Foundation) so we're hoping to move forward on the gift cards in the mean time so the RF can begin giving BitSeeds in exchange for donations and pick up the payment processor later.

  I know some people who might be interested in working with us to implement the payment processing since they're already working on a multi-crypto project involving debit cards and merchant services, so I'm going to get in touch with them and see what they say. It's pretty likely they'll be happy to work with us so I'm going to get in touch with them and will get back with more info when I have it.
   
  Sorry for the delays and I really apologize for getting excited back in June and tweeting about the news before I should have. The way it was presented to me was that it was all on track and just a matter of a few weeks before merchants would be able to accept BitSeeds, so I figured I'd let everyone know since people (including myself!) had been waiting so long. We do have merchants lined up, but obviously without coin.co's help it's a bit of a setback.

 Anyway, that's the current state of things and I'll post more when I have something to report.

Already meaning since April of 2015? 
 
There's not much discussion going on, and getting the payment processing set up is unfortunately taking longer than I'd like, but no, it's not dead.

Hi, welcome aboard and thanks for checking in with your questions.  First off, I probably should have linked to an article explaining what Proof Of Burn is just in case people weren't familiar with the term. 

Here is a discussion about the concept since the main wiki article isn't as clear as it could be:
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/24187/what-is-proof-of-burn

but the basic idea is that we created extra coins that were not needed or part of the plan for BitSeeds.
We could have dumped them on the market, but instead we chose to destroy them to avoid devaluing everyone's existing coins in the process.  I posted the information publicly so anyone could verify this on the blockchain. Bottom line is, this is not a bad thing it's either neutral or positive news depending on your perspective since there are now fewer coins in existence on the network.

I hope that makes sense; feel free to ask if you need any further clarification.

As for whether you should download the wallet and start staking, absolutely! The relaunch went successfully back in early May and there are no hard forks/relaunches/etc. needed or planned at this point.  I've got a wallet staking as I type this in fact. 

Thanks for joining in!

Appreciate the long-time patience and support for the project, Delong!  I know Alex is juggling a lot right now but will update the thread once I have an update from him. Hopefully pretty soon.

Also, a small housekeeping update:

When we relaunched earlier this year, we of course had to create a premine to be able to restore everyone's funds on the new chain. We were not 100% sure of the timing when we planned it out and so we mined extra funds to make sure we had enough, with the plan of burning the excess once we knew everything had gone smoothly.

There were 376432.26089348 more XSEED created than were needed, and the wallet they were held in unavoidably staked three times, bringing the total to 381751.95130442 XSEED before burning. 

We recently burned the funds and here are links to the proof of burn:

Here is the temporary address they were held in - http://45.55.193.231:3001/address/bS8L2Sa3rvkH17a4DehvbUo6omKQyeEbSd 
and they were sent to the burn address BitseedsBurnAddressXXXXXXXXXYUDoxE

Here is a link to the TXID of the burn - http://45.55.193.231:3001/tx/e6ccbae792487601165cb5704887ae241c8d7f85e51408f8011c0ca247b1e5f9

Thanks.

The sudden movement in the market over the weekend caught me a little off guard and a little before we were ready to post full details, but I want to post an update on things and let you know what I can at this point.

Right now, we are working with Alex Waters of Coin.co and Coinapex.com (the about pages on those sites have a little info on him, but google him if you're not familiar with him) who is helping create the payment processing system we'll be using to allow merchants to accept BitSeeds and gain their charitable tax benefit. We had hoped to have this ready in July, but Alex was dealing with some personal/family issues that understandably put him behind schedule, but is working on it and I'll update you on his progress when I'm able to.

Speaking of charities, since the BitSeeds Foundation and the Rainforest Foundation are registered charities, it seems that this makes BitSeeds unusual (I believe unique) in that it involves fewer regulatory compliance burdens compared to other cryptocurrencies. To my understanding, the cost of state-by-state compliance now adds literally $2-3 million in costs to the hurdles for a startup trying to get into the cryptocurrency space, but the nonprofit/charity aspect of how this project is set up allows startups like coin.co to avoid most of that cost compared to Bitcoin. This should make XSEED a very attractive blockchain for startups to work with due to lower cost of compliance.

Alex has offered to get more specifics from his lawyers, but when confirmed it should make BitSeeds the world's only "regulatory resistant" cryptocurrency!  

We are in the process of lining up merchants with some confirmed already, including ones in the cannabis industry thanks to Gabe's connections there (see below). I'd like to share a partial list of merchants, but Gabe has asked me not to post anything yet. However, I think I can share the following - I'm just going to quote Gabe directly here:

"I own a cannabis incubator and we've incubated multiple cannabis companies ranging from delivery services to distribution platforms for dispensaries. Green Labs has been written up in numerous publications [including] Forbes and Business Insider…"
(also in the New York Times, High Times, and others linked on their site at http://greenlabsdenver.com/ )

"We have access to over 300 dispensaries between Colorado and California. A lot of them, I think the majority of them, have issues accepting credit cards and anything other than cash. A few companies have come out to try to help them and give them financing in a sense – being able to accept credit cards – but that really hasn't panned out. Most of them have to bounce the money all around like through Puerto Rico and stuff like that. Digital currency would obviously fix that and make it much easier. "

Anyway, I'll post more details when I'm able. Thanks for everyone's support and patience in the meantime!