Farewell
Hi everyone
It’s with a heavy heart I announce I will be leaving the MoonPirate community. It’s been approximately 5 months (yes, 5 months!) since MoonPirate started and I’m pretty proud that we have made it this far. Most projects on the Binance Smart Chain are lucky to last 5 hours or 5 days, let alone 5 months. There has been thousands upon thousands of projects created in BSC in the last 5 months and most of those no longer exist. Most of the ones that do exist, are struggling price wise just like us. It’s pretty cut-throat and of course so many of those projects are scams as well, it’s a complete minefield. So the fact that MoonPirate has reached 5 months of age is a pretty special achievement and one that not too many BSC projects can claim.
Firstly, MoonPirate lives on. Me leaving could actually be good news as clearly the price has been struggling for a while and it’s time for some fresh leadership. Remember, there is no owner in MoonPirate. Ownership was renounced 30 seconds after the project went live 5 months ago. Everyone is equal and it was always setup to be that way. It’s very important that people know that. Anyone who has been helping along the way have been volunteers from the community (me included). However, I am handing leadership over to someone who believes in MoonPirate a lot. Someone who is very well known in the community. I will announce who this is at the bottom of this article. I will be handing over tokens I own to him, including the donation wallet and energy drinks profits and he can use those tokens however he deems fit (I think he will do some recruiting with it to really try and create a strong MoonPirate community again…he will have around 30 bnb worth of MoonPirate tokens which I’m giving to him). Now, I keep saying “him” but I’ll announce who this is at the end of this article. Please continue reading.
Most BSC projects these days also struggle to get to a one million marketcap. I mean there is so many projects and the entire BSC landscape is over-saturated if you ask me. It means money is being spread thinner as there is more projects for people to invest in. MoonPirate went from a starting marketcap of around $1000 up to around $60 million (something which hardly any projects on BSC achieve), so we really over-achieved from that standpoint, even though we were unable to really sustain that high marketcap for a long period of time. When we reached our All Time High (ATH), that’s exactly when the market crashed…it was extremely bad luck and bad timing for us and out of our control. And once that price dips, it’s very difficult to get it back to that again (something I’ve learnt which I’ll discuss below). However, I am hopeful that fresh eyes can lead this back onto the right path.
I’ve actually learnt quite a lot over these 5 months. In some ways, I don’t think MoonPirate and BSC were the best fit, despite us achieving a lot. BSC, for the most part, is flooded with meme coins and doge coins and projects that do, well, literally nothing. Most projects use case is they offer rewards (which comes with a VERY high tax), or they offer tokens as reflections (something we also do). And that’s it! With MoonPirate we tried to create something unique and truly different to what had been achieved before. The easy option would have been to NOT do this and just offer reflections and nothing else like a lot of other projects. It would have been A LOT less stressful, trust me! But I wanted to challenge myself, the community and see if we could come up with a new use case for crypto, something fun and exciting. Did we hit our target? Well, yes and no, which I’ll continue to discuss below. Again, the good news is that MoonPirate lives on, and fresh eyes could give this the reinvigoration it deserves.
One of the biggest things I’ve learnt is that in BSC, as projects age, it’s more difficult to attract buyers. People love the hype of a new project in BSC. In fact, I’ve been in many TG groups and a lot of people these days refuse to buy anything on BSC which is greater than a few hours old! It’s just crazy. Look at all the projects that have listed around the same time as us…most no longer exist and have completely died. The ones that have survived, 99% are really struggling price wise just like us. New projects that start in BSC may pump for a few hours/days and then they crash and people refuse to buy and they eventually die. In a way I think a project like MoonPirate needs full time staff and a bigger budget to make things work and then be listed on the biggest exchanges in the world. That’s not something I can achieve…I work a 9–5 job and that’s something bigger than pretty much ANY project on BSC. So whilst that may not be achievable, there is still lots MoonPirate can achieve and whilst I’m stepping away from the community, I’ll be checking the progress with keen eyes hoping it does well. I will say the leader will need support and with the MP tokens I’m giving him, he may be able to put together a very decent team.
So many people will look at MoonPirate as a failure, despite us lasting longer and achieving more than 99% of projects in BSC. Some people will look at MoonPirate and say it achieved great things…it just depends on who you talk to and when they bought/sold. Crypto is a completely emotional space. Given our marketcap did a ridiculous amount of X’s, a lot of people made money on MoonPirate and I was literally bombarded with thank you messages. Some sold quite early for small gains and some held longer for bigger gains. And then a lot of people bought at a high marketcap and sold for a loss. I TRULY wish everyone made money here but that’s NOT how crypto works…people buy the high marketcap in literally every single cryptocoin on the market…all of them! Including the big boys like Bitcoin. It’s about making an educated guess at the time of buying and if you think the price will keep going up. I guess I’m a bit different to most founders in the BSC space because I know a lot say “buy our token, it’s going to pump! blah blah blah”…I’ve NEVER EVER said anything close to that. I’ve always said do your own research, make an educated guess and make sure you don’t spend more than you’re willing to lose. Crypto is volatile, everyone knows that and BSC is probably as volatile as it gets. I’m a firm believer that all crypto investments should be with money you are prepared to lose if things don’t work out. That’s why we put this on the MoonPirate website from day one. Crypto in some way, is an entire gamble. People say they know when Bitcoin will go up and down, but at the end of the day they are guessing just like you. With MoonPirate I had no idea if the price would go up or down. I didn’t know if we would last 24 hours! Anyone who says they can analyse charts, I’ve learnt, is still guessing. No one knows.
MoonPirate has achieved a lot though. It has been a crazy ride that’s for sure. We had billboards all across the US, including one in Times Square and we did this before it become “common”. We launched two amazing rap songs (check them out if you haven’t already), a sea-shanty and an anthem. We had countless YouTube videos, TikTok videos and more. We launched PirateSwap and had merch. We launched an Android and Apple augmented reality app! We released a MoonPirate Tropical IPA beer on tap at Catchment Brewing Co. As far as I know, we are the first in the world to achieve this in the crypto space. This wasn’t a run of the mill beer or something which was just whitelabelled…this was a TOP QUALITY craft beer that was made specifically for this project. It was great and I wish more of you got to try it. We released not one, but two energy drink flavours and did fully fledged can designs as voted by the community. The rum (Get Nok) isn’t out yet and it’s a very long process for this to happen….I wish we could have made this occur faster but it is what it is. I will say I will 100% be buying a few bottles of rum as soon as they become available. That’s a crazy amount to achieve in 5 months, I don’t care what anyone says. Just to deliver a beer and nothing else in that timeframe would have been an accomplishment, but to achieve all of that I’m very proud and the community should be proud too. Yes, unfortunately the release of these products didn’t drive up the price like everyone would have hoped and I touched on this in some of the things I learnt above. But you cannot fault MoonPirate for “having a go” and trying to “stand out from the crowd” and as I’ve said on multiple occasions, we have achieved more than most projects on BSC ever achieve. And with a new leader on board, hopefully MoonPirate can find it’s pirate mojo and kick on to greater heights.
Has MoonPirate made me rich? Nope! It was never all about the money for me and was about trying to achieve something different. But yes, it’s about making money as well and that’s why 99.9% of people purchase crypto. I sold quite a lot of tokens here and there, but I never EVER created a big red candle on the charts and I barely even sold anything at ATH. I have been open and honest since day one, and I pride myself on that.
When I made MoonPirate I made it ultimately clear to everyone that I had 5% stake in the project, which wasn’t a lot. That’s what I was allocated as founder. I could have given myself 99% if I had wanted to…but then no one would have bought. When tokens are created, the founder or teams are allowed to give themselves whatever they think is reasonable and I thought 5% was a very, very reasonable number. After that, people need to make a decision if they wish to buy in. If the 5% scares them, then don’t buy. Simple. This goes for every single crypto project in existence!
A lot of projects have huge team wallets (10–20%) and then on top of that they also take 20% of BNB profits (or more) through the presale and then on top of that, tokenomics continue to feed the devs wallet as well. MoonPirate had none of that! No tokenomics rewarding devs, no LP tokens, no presale, no ownership, nothing! It was and still is, the safest project you can ask for in regards to not being scammed. That doesn’t mean people won’t sell and our current price reflects that.
To take this further, my 5% actually wasn’t 5%….far from it! For those who were present on day 1 will know I gave away half of my tokens to prize winners. We had a series of competitions to try and get people to promote MoonPirate on social media. And those people were rewarded. So I gave away half of my tokens to prize winners in the first 12 hours after we went live. That’s a pure fact. And I did not buy ANY MoonPirate after launch as I already had tokens, although that would have been a smart move and I wish I did. So my 5% holdings became 2.5%. Everyone knows I burnt 0.4% as well which only left me with 2.1%. And the 0.4% I burnt was worth over 1300 bnb at ATH!!!
I’ve lost count how many team members I’ve paid, we also got scammed by CoinOne and I lost a lot of tokens there (still keeps me up at night lol) and there was even more competition winners as the token grew older. So I reckon my 2.1% was actually closer to 1.5% and I didn’t even sell at ATH. So many people have personally attacked me during this project, questioned my authenticity and it’s one of the reasons why I’m leaving today. Absolute load of bullcrap which I never, ever deserved. Remember guys, founders deserve to sell! In all crypto projects! There’s a difference between being open and selling and devs scamming. There’s no rule saying others can sell but founders can’t…do you actually think that founders put in more work than anyone for absolutely no reason? It literally makes zero sense. For the first month I was basically working 18 hours day in MoonPirate, which I found out was not sustainable. I spent money OUT OF MY OWN WALLET on exchanges, marketing, energy drinks, Apple/Android apps, beer tabs and food and much more. I actually had to sell some tokens at some point to make sure I at least broke even. People said Catchment Brewery didn’t exist (like seriously!?), people said I was making the rum myself (I can barely make a cordial!) and the list goes on.
I’ve pretty much been the most honest person I could possibly be and I leave MoonPirate with my head held high, knowing that I’ve been a respectable and a decent person. I’m not going to lie, the hate got to me. I hated it. It kept me up at night. I fought back on many occasions on TG and in Twitter and it seemed to just fuel people and so I stopped doing that. And then my poor wife had to listen to me whinge at home. It wasn’t fair. There was reddit posts saying that Get Nok wasn’t real etc. and I would just read them shaking my head. The thing is, other people would read this and then comment like it was true…the internet is a crazy world but I don’t think I have to tell you that. I was close to quitting on multiple occasions due to a lot of this. Why didn’t I? Well for every bad message, there was three good ones. I’ve had so much support on TG and Twitter and that kept me pushing on. I’ve had people message me and say “I’m the best founder they have seen in BSC”, which I know is not true but is very nice feedback to receive. I guess that’s another thing I’ve learnt, in crypto, where this is money involved, people will do and say anything. And they will believe anything. I found that the toughest thing of all. I also learnt I wasn’t alone though and that all well known, legitimate founders in the BSC space cop this. It goes with the territory (not that it should). I could list another 5 projects who are all very decent projects (and big projects) who are trying their best and the founders cop the same crap.
MoonPirate, trying to be unique and actually have some kind of utility (which as I’m mentioned is extremely rare in BSC), simply opened us for more attacks. A lot of investors want “instant” gratification and that just doesn’t happen with things like beer and rum. When a token basically does nothing and only has reflections, well there is not much for people to whinge about. When you try to achieve a lot like we did, people can whing about a lot. Would I recommend to people to create a crypto token…to be honest, no I would not!!!! The stress that goes with it and the amount of inaccurate fud is just too much. I said it from the start and I’ll say it again, MoonPirate is the last crypto project I’ll ever work on.
MoonPirate was also the safest project (in regards to not being “rugged”). I reckon at least 80% of projects in BSC these days end up with devs running away with presale money (MoonPirate didn’t have a presale so I had to put my own BNB into liquidity to start it), devs creating honeypot contracts so people can’t sell, devs taking liquidity out with LP tokens…it’s ridiculous. Crypto is decentralized which makes it special, but I’m starting to wonder if this is a good thing and if changes need to occur. MoonPirate burnt our LP tokens (most just lock…we burnt so we could NEVER touch liquidity), and ownership was renounced so no sinister changes could occur. Being so safety conscious probably did backfire a little because I had no idea that PancakeSwap would launch a V2 and that certainly had an impact as well. Ownership was also renounced because I wanted to make this a 100% community run token. I could simply not do this on my own. It was impossible. I didn’t have the time or the complete skills. This had to be community run to work. At the end of the day, I’m not the owner. I’m just a man who started it and put in a lot of work alongside a lot of other people. I’m no different to any other holder, even though I played a big role. MoonPirate was always the people’s coin and that came with a lot of challenges as well. People in the community come and go. Some go without even saying anything, when they may have been working on something. It was a big challenge and the team was forever changing as a result. I met some incredible people though and that, to me, has been the most rewarding thing by far. I’m not going to list all their names, but there is some truly wonderful people in that community who I wish all the best for in their lives. Me leaving will allow the new leader and a fresh team to review MoonPirate, see the rum through and hopefully have more great ideas on how it can evolve.
At the time of writing this, I still have a lot of tokens in MoonPirate…around 643 trillion, which is currently worth around 38 BNB worth. At ATH this was worth around 2000 BNB worth…which I never sold as I didn’t want to dump the chart (even though I had every right to have sold if I wanted to). I have spoken with the new leader about what I do with this and we have come up with the following plan:
30 BNB worth of MP will be sent to the new leader. He can then use this to recruit new members and to help reinvigorate the project.
8 BNB I will keep as a moonbag and keenly follow the progression of the project in the hopes that fresh eyes can take it to new heights.
The Donation wallet currently has 5.6 BNB and 636 BUSD. This will also be handed over to the new leader. I have also just transferred another 2 BNB into this donation wallet for energy drink profits. So this now has 7.6 BNB and 636 BUSD.
So two final points….and I have left these to last as they are probably the most important and the one that everyone will be asking. Why am I leaving and who is the new leader?
So why am I moving on? Well, firstly, 5 months in the crypto space is a long time. It’s like dog years haha so 5 months feels like around 4 years. Plus with my full time job getting very busy I’m really struggling to find as much time. Plus I have some family health issues that I’d rather not discuss. Plus, the continued fud (especially what happened whilst I was sleeping) does get old and does wear you down A LOT. I would be lying if I said that didn’t play a big reason. I feel pretty honoured that I got to work on such a unique project with so many fabulous people. It wasn’t all smooth sailing (far from it) but I’m proud that we tried to do something different and created tangible products as well which is extremely rare. Plus I have full faith in the new leader to help resurrect this and take it on to greater heights.
So, who is the new leader….drum roll…..please everyone give full support to the new captain, Chris!!!!! Also known as @Moonpirate_Coins on TG. Chris, as I mentioned above, has full faith in MoonPirate and has a lot of good ideas up his sleeve. He was instrumental in organising the “doubloons” (which have been receiving a lot of praise) and he wants to try and steady the ship and steer it to calmer waters. I urge everyone to give Chris their full support and he truly wants MoonPirate to do well. Remember, I have given Chris 30 BNB worth of MoonPirate tokens as mentiond above and he will use these to rebuild the team, so feel free to reach out to Chris if you have good ideas or want to join the team. I will also share the transaction has of this on TG and will update this article as well once done.
I wish everyone the best of luck with whatever they strive for in life. I truly mean it. I feel blessed to have met some very nice people along the way. To those who made money on MoonPirate, well done. To those who didn’t, I wish you did and just remember that in crypto anything can happen (good and bad) and be careful out there.
Signing off for the last time.
Captain MoonPirate.
UPDATE — the 30 BNB worth of MP tokens have now been transferred to Chris in these two transactions:
https://bscscan.com/tx/0xb01435c1545cba1321ae6db08eae381789e9c7fa5c9e896f97a98ca13c8641cf
https://bscscan.com/tx/0xf73380d64e004ad56bece6f43362c21508171ab8b745fc3757d0939dcbdf4230
UPDATE 2 — Hi all, just letting everyone know the donation wallet (as mentioned in this article) has been fully handed across to the new admin team. As per @Moonpirate_Coins instructions, he has asked me to hand this over to @TG_0xCrypto
(the above are both Telegram usernames).
The donation wallet is:
0xc67DD3b66E7A886a52443DC00DaC841AfBE26486
This has now been completed and admin confirmed they have it. This current had 5.6 BNB + 2 BNB for energy drink profits (7.6 BNB) and also 636 BUSD.