Are we closing ccFound?
My dear,
It is clear from many reports that this business is not going well.
It does not earn for itself and is burning through money.
It is also wasting invaluable time - yours, the team's, and mine.
And time is the only thing in life that cannot be bought.
You have lost valuable money, I have lost 5 years of my life.
And not only me - programmers, employees... For Karol, this is a personal tragedy.
For me, it is the loss of your trust.
The idea was sound.
We had a mission based on good values.
The idea was the democratization of knowledge...
However, artificial intelligence was the first to realize this vision.
Do you remember the first responses from chatGPT, how "square" they were?
That changed in just a year.
Now forums are dying. Quora is a shadow of itself. StackOverflow makes no sense.
Despite my sincerest intentions, our idea simply did not work out.
That's all. We took the risk. And the risk won.
We also spent the last four years finalizing processes with tax offices.
Here we won.
We still have funds to recover.
That is why we cannot take hasty actions...
The office is watching and observing what we do.
The question is whether these funds are sufficient to make any moves.
Can the company still be put back on its feet?
Whatever we do will be risky to some extent.
Experts have asked us many questions and analyzed the situation of ccFound.
We have companies with an active relationship with the US, we have tokens, we have token holders.
This is a MEGA complicated situation.
No serious lawyer will speak on such a matter within a few days.
In the meantime, some of you have started to speculate and insinuate...
Some have developed a projection mechanism.
"Since he is not speaking, he probably ran away with the cash to the Seychelles."
"Or he is conducting experiments with our money."
Accusations have started.
Even threats have started.
As if it were my pleasure:
To dedicate 5 years of my life to building a business from which I earned nothing.
I invested hundreds of thousands of zlotys in ICO together with you.
Even before the ICO, I invested hundreds of thousands in the platform prototype.
I also later bought tokens on DEX with private funds.
Meanwhile, the analysis of the three authors of the most malicious emails showed that...
They invested five years ago between 1000 - 2000 zlotys.
I know, you also lost.
But for God's sake, I lost hundreds of thousands together with you.
Money can be lost, and then it can be earned back.
But there is something worse: to lose REPUTATION.
You will probably never trust or invest in me again.
And that was my dream: to build startups with trusted investors.
I buried that dream.
Those most malicious individuals may be a few, or maybe a dozen... out of 4000 investors.
The majority of people either understand the situation... or have accounted for the loss.
I thank those of you for your understanding.
However, this does not mean that I am justifying myself.
I still owe you an apology.
I sincerely apologize.
We dug deep in search of diamonds.
For five years we tried everything.
You know, we pivoted.
We were supposed to be a social portal. It did not go viral.
People acquired from ads were not active.
Paid questions attracted almost only those looking for easy money.
We ourselves were almost the only entity offering rewards for answers.
So you did not use this - and other - functionalities.
We were supposed to be about crypto, then about investments, then about everything.
We were supposed to be about questions and answers.
We were supposed to be about closed groups. Even Adrian's group was not profitable.
We were supposed to be SaaS. Experts were not interested.
In the end, we were supposed to be a publishing house... The health product campaign did not work out.
In the ICO, we were supposed to raise $100 million. We raised much less.
What we raised also went to the ICO campaign itself - it lasted many months.
We could have given up then.
I thought it was worth trying. That was a mistake.
The money went to programmers, marketing, complicated accounting, and legal processes.
And I remind you that I did NOT take a salary from ccFound.
I lived the last years from another company.
My partner patiently waited for me and earned for my living, as we had agreed.
It is known that such a situation cannot last indefinitely.
However, you see that I am here.
I did not run away with the cash.
On YouTube, viewers ask "what about ccFound," while they themselves do not use this platform.
People not involved in programming see only the tip of the iceberg.
No one is aware of how much work went into creating the engines that manage the existing systems here, e.g., translators, video management, clouds, accounting aspects, chat, or the judicial system.
I have been reporting regularly every quarter what we have in the account and what exactly we are doing.
I still work here and engage publicly.
I still represent the Cryptography Institute, which has survived all bear markets.
I still animate the Polish cryptocurrency scene - as an Institute since 2017.
Some of you learned about crypto from me in 2013.
Meanwhile, I have been on the Polish educational scene for 21 years.
I am not going anywhere. So stop writing any strange speculations.
I am wondering about this:
What next
There is a million zlotys left in the accounts and a second million is to be returned by the tax office (in simplified terms).
Closing the company would mean the necessity of token cancellation.
Cancellation of tokens means paying tax on the amount of 17 million zlotys.
17 million zlotys means a 19% CIT rate.
For tax settlements, we can take into account part of our costs incurred over the last years.
As a result, we have about a million in taxes to recover and about a million to pay.
Now notice a significant fact:
If we were to close the company right now - everything would go to taxes.
I hope you now understand that I could not make a hasty proposal in the group.
If you want to end ccFound - we first need to recover overpaid taxes.
This will take a few months.
Only then will there be approximately a million left. Plus or minus.
We still need to maintain the infrastructure in the company.
But costs have been absolutely minimized to about 20-30 thousand zlotys per month.
It is difficult for me to estimate what additional legal-tax costs will arise.
To summarize all of this...
I have one more idea. It has been accepted by the advisors.
Here is what we can do.
This is an expression of gratitude for your loyalty. We must understand it this way.
We are implementing an additional utility of the FOUND token in the form of its burning after sending it to the specified smart contract address.
For token holders who express a desire to participate in the program, the company will place funds in USDC at their disposal in the smart contract.
The amount of funds allocated for the implementation of this program will be known after the exact recovery, calculation, and payment of taxes.
It will work like this:
You send the token to the smart contract and automatically receive USDC back from the pool.
Everyone has the same USDC ratio on the FOUND coin.
Alternatively, it can also be an automatic distribution of USDC.
That is, we automatically distribute USDC to all token holders who withdrew it from the platform by day X (to be determined).
Remember: we must first recover the taxes.
We will have to pay for the creation of the smart contract.
The technical details of this process are currently being developed.
This is not yet a final concrete proposal.
This is just a preliminary direction.
Thank you all for your patience, heart, and understanding.
I look forward to your comments!
My dear,
It is clear from many reports that this business is not going well.
It does not earn for itself and is burning through money.
It is also wasting invaluable time - yours, the team's, and mine.
And time is the only thing in life that cannot be bought.
You have lost valuable money, I have lost 5 years of my life.
And not only me - programmers, employees... For Karol, this is a personal tragedy.
For me, it is the loss of your trust.
The idea was sound.
We had a mission based on good values.
The idea was the democratization of knowledge...
However, artificial intelligence was the first to realize this vision.
Do you remember the first responses from chatGPT, how "square" they were?
That changed in just a year.
Now forums are dying. Quora is a shadow of itself. StackOverflow makes no sense.
Despite my sincerest intentions, our idea simply did not work out.
That's all. We took the risk. And the risk won.
We also spent the last four years finalizing processes with tax offices.
Here we won.
We still have funds to recover.
That is why we cannot take hasty actions...
The office is watching and observing what we do.
The question is whether these funds are sufficient to make any moves.
Can the company still be put back on its feet?
Whatever we do will be risky to some extent.
Experts have asked us many questions and analyzed the situation of ccFound.
We have companies with an active relationship with the US, we have tokens, we have token holders.
This is a MEGA complicated situation.
No serious lawyer will speak on such a matter within a few days.
In the meantime, some of you have started to speculate and insinuate...
Some have developed a projection mechanism.
"Since he is not speaking, he probably ran away with the cash to the Seychelles."
"Or he is conducting experiments with our money."
Accusations have started.
Even threats have started.
As if it were my pleasure:
To dedicate 5 years of my life to building a business from which I earned nothing.
I invested hundreds of thousands of zlotys in ICO together with you.
Even before the ICO, I invested hundreds of thousands in the platform prototype.
I also later bought tokens on DEX with private funds.
Meanwhile, the analysis of the three authors of the most malicious emails showed that...
They invested five years ago between 1000 - 2000 zlotys.
I know, you also lost.
But for God's sake, I lost hundreds of thousands together with you.
Money can be lost, and then it can be earned back.
But there is something worse: to lose REPUTATION.
You will probably never trust or invest in me again.
And that was my dream: to build startups with trusted investors.
I buried that dream.
Those most malicious individuals may be a few, or maybe a dozen... out of 4000 investors.
The majority of people either understand the situation... or have accounted for the loss.
I thank those of you for your understanding.
However, this does not mean that I am justifying myself.
I still owe you an apology.
I sincerely apologize.
We dug deep in search of diamonds.
For five years we tried everything.
You know, we pivoted.
We were supposed to be a social portal. It did not go viral.
People acquired from ads were not active.
Paid questions attracted almost only those looking for easy money.
We ourselves were almost the only entity offering rewards for answers.
So you did not use this - and other - functionalities.
We were supposed to be about crypto, then about investments, then about everything.
We were supposed to be about questions and answers.
We were supposed to be about closed groups. Even Adrian's group was not profitable.
We were supposed to be SaaS. Experts were not interested.
In the end, we were supposed to be a publishing house... The health product campaign did not work out.
In the ICO, we were supposed to raise $100 million. We raised much less.
What we raised also went to the ICO campaign itself - it lasted many months.
We could have given up then.
I thought it was worth trying. That was a mistake.
The money went to programmers, marketing, complicated accounting, and legal processes.
And I remind you that I did NOT take a salary from ccFound.
I lived the last years from another company.
My partner patiently waited for me and earned for my living, as we had agreed.
It is known that such a situation cannot last indefinitely.
However, you see that I am here.
I did not run away with the cash.
On YouTube, viewers ask "what about ccFound," while they themselves do not use this platform.
People not involved in programming see only the tip of the iceberg.
No one is aware of how much work went into creating the engines that manage the existing systems here, e.g., translators, video management, clouds, accounting aspects, chat, or the judicial system.
I have been reporting regularly every quarter what we have in the account and what exactly we are doing.
I still work here and engage publicly.
I still represent the Cryptography Institute, which has survived all bear markets.
I still animate the Polish cryptocurrency scene - as an Institute since 2017.
Some of you learned about crypto from me in 2013.
Meanwhile, I have been on the Polish educational scene for 21 years.
I am not going anywhere. So stop writing any strange speculations.
I am wondering about this:
What next
There is a million zlotys left in the accounts and a second million is to be returned by the tax office (in simplified terms).
Closing the company would mean the necessity of token cancellation.
Cancellation of tokens means paying tax on the amount of 17 million zlotys.
17 million zlotys means a 19% CIT rate.
For tax settlements, we can take into account part of our costs incurred over the last years.
As a result, we have about a million in taxes to recover and about a million to pay.
Now notice a significant fact:
If we were to close the company right now - everything would go to taxes.
I hope you now understand that I could not make a hasty proposal in the group.
If you want to end ccFound - we first need to recover overpaid taxes.
This will take a few months.
Only then will there be approximately a million left. Plus or minus.
We still need to maintain the infrastructure in the company.
But costs have been absolutely minimized to about 20-30 thousand zlotys per month.
It is difficult for me to estimate what additional legal-tax costs will arise.
To summarize all of this...
I have one more idea. It has been accepted by the advisors.
Here is what we can do.
This is an expression of gratitude for your loyalty. We must understand it this way.
We are implementing an additional utility of the FOUND token in the form of its burning after sending it to the specified smart contract address.
For token holders who express a desire to participate in the program, the company will place funds in USDC at their disposal in the smart contract.
The amount of funds allocated for the implementation of this program will be known after the exact recovery, calculation, and payment of taxes.
It will work like this:
You send the token to the smart contract and automatically receive USDC back from the pool.
Everyone has the same USDC ratio on the FOUND coin.
Alternatively, it can also be an automatic distribution of USDC.
That is, we automatically distribute USDC to all token holders who withdrew it from the platform by day X (to be determined).
Remember: we must first recover the taxes.
We will have to pay for the creation of the smart contract.
The technical details of this process are currently being developed.
This is not yet a final concrete proposal.
This is just a preliminary direction.
Thank you all for your patience, heart, and understanding.
I look forward to your comments!
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31 answers