OFFICIAL UPDATE FROM ADCOIN TEAM THAT WAS POSTED IN TELEGRAM GROUP
Dear reader of this message,
Today is a dark page in a project that tons of people have been working on for more than 2,5 years. No motivational quotes or dorky technical update... After 2,5 years the AdCoin company is closing its doors on December 31st. Before you pick up the torches, please take the time to read the story below that got us to this point. Also, this might not be the end... but you will read that further down the line.
The idea for AdCoin came in a time where cryptocurrency was still a niche and the future of Bitcoin was uncertain (March 2017). Sending Bitcoin was extremely expensive and unfit for fast transactions. In the advertising space, we felt that the need for lower conversion rates and transaction costs could significantly influence the results of advertisers and publishers. The additional transparency that blockchain would add would be a big plus too.
Ever since the blockchain and company were created the AdCoin team (which has always consisted of enthusiasts who mostly worked as volunteers) has been struggling with setbacks. This ranged from technical issues to getting death threats on our home addresses... AdCoin has always focused on building use-cases. Hedging the technological (open source) advancements into usable products. The institutions have, to say it lightly, not been very supportive. Our bank accounts got closed multiple times and any effort to improve the adoption of cryptocurrency as a regulated way of payment got shot down with a two-page rejection letter.
After the parabolic pump and dump of Bitcoin and Altcoins (early 2018), the companies that agreed to partner up and develop on top of the AdCoin blockchain pulled back from their commitments. The stigma on cryptocurrencies was too much to handle for the big mainstream companies. AdCoin decided to build the products itself: multiple payment gateways, advertising platforms, and CMS plugins were released.
At the end of 2018 things started to turn bad. The funding of AdCoin (business) development became a big struggle. The response of sales efforts on advertising using cryptocurrency became close to non-existent. Despite capital injections from the owners, there was not enough money left to pay the salaries of the employees and we had to let everyone go at the beginning of 2019. Costs were cut down to the bare minimum. Everyone who remained involved has done so out of commitment and faith in the project.
Since the summer of 2019, all efforts were put into finding a partnership or takeover to spark a new light into the development and tooling of AdCoin. Unfortunately, we didn't find anyone with the means or commitment to take over the entire operation. We never stopped looking, but unfortunately, new European regulation (specifically rolled out in the Netherlands) to prevent money laundering requires an insane amount of money, just for the supervision of the Dutch National Bank (estimated € 100.000 to € 200.000). After not being able to get bank accounts and being ignored by all official government institutions for 2 years you might understand how we feel with this "great step forward". Similarly to other projects in the Netherlands like Simplecoin and Chopcoin, this is our final setback and forces us to close down the doors...
As per December 31 2019, the web wallet will be taken offline. You HAVE to either send your AdCoin to Coinomi or the Desktop Wallets (go to getadcoin.com).
Is this the end of AdCoin? Simply said: no. First of all, as long as the blockchain remains, AdCoin will remain. The development and community of AdCoin are not affected by any regulation as they can both be considered "decentralized" and therefore not subject to any specific country regulation. There are already some people who volunteered to continue AdCoin in a different way and according to their views and thoughts. On December 31 the project will be officially 'handed down' to the community.