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.
I am sorry that all efforts in this projects turned short and that now all is stopped.
Hopefully in the futur, if the chain continue to run smoothly, there will be some lights to revive the project.
I liked the concept and vision.... hopefully not dead... the world needs that kind of project in a big way
