We haven’t heard from you for 8 months and all we get is a stupid joke. What gives!?

It’s an open secret: Project SEAPonyCon is strapped for cash.

The success of our event in August 2017 was the product of crowdfunding, some of the founders’ contributions and ticket sales. Unfortunately because we did not sell as many tickets as we hoped to, we had to take out a couple of loans to cover the difference and ensure that the event went ahead as planned. That was our number one priority - Bangkok or bust.

While we did have plans for a future event, we had to put them on hold until we’re financially sound enough to carry through with it. We may resort to crowdfunding again to fund a future event but as for now, we will focus on getting ourselves back on track and levelling our debts.

And WTF is this SEAPonyCoin?

SEAPonyCoin is an ERC20 token on the Ethereum blockchain. It is represented by the symbol “SEA” and is divisible by 18 decimals. It’s a cryptocurrency that’s somewhat like Bitcoin but works in a special way.

In English, please.

Let’s make it as simple as we can. The way Bitcoin works is by keeping a master ledger of every transaction ever made, thus everyone who uses the system can update the ledger with new transactions. It is almost impossible to change the contents of the past records of this ledger and only account holders can update it. We won’t get into the technical aspect on how that’s possible.

A few years ago, a new currency much like Bitcoin emerged, called Ethereum. One of the biggest differences between Bitcoin and Ethereum is that the creators of Ethereum said hey, if we are building a ledger, can’t we record other kinds of transactions on it?

Thus, Ethereum tokens were born. These are “mini-cryptocurrencies” that work on Ethereum’s ledger and have their transactions recorded there as well. Anyone can make tokens and put them on the ledger.

Wait, this thing is real?

Yes indeed. SEAPonyCoin is live on the Ethereum blockchain. You can see it at https://ethplorer.io/address/0x29cf2afcac8648ab3687e579684298650a66742c and/or https://etherscan.io/token/0x29cf2afcac8648ab3687e579684298650a66742c.

And what’s an ICO?

ICO stands for Initial Coin Offering. It might remind you of an Initial Public Offering or IPO, what companies do when they want to get their shares listed. The similarity between the two is how these things are delivered. Companies declare their shares for sale and people line up to buy them on their launch day. With an ICO, we declare the sale of tokens to be open for a set amount of time.

Then what’s ERC20?

It’s a protocol. We’ll spare you the technical details. If you’re really curious, google it. There are experts in the field who can explain it much better than we can.

Why are you doing this?

Money has always been an issue when hosting events. In our team’s years of experience in their individual communities, money has always been a central topic of discussion.

Here at Project SEAPonyCon, we faced the problem of having to deal with financial institutions and companies in order to transmit our funds across borders. This came with numerous charges, exchange fees and commissions that we had to pay. We lost almost 1,000 USD from this alone.

The blockchain was appealing to us because one of its fundamental applications, being cryptocurrency, was a way around all this. Leading cryptocurrency blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum were online around the clock and took minimal fees for transactions anywhere in the world. There was no need to cut short our lunch breaks to just wait in the bank to receive funds. There was no service charge, no need to get approvals from branch managers and no papers to sign.

We aren’t in the business of circumventing the law but we are looking to save where we can. Protocols involve paperwork and paperwork costs money - money that adds up when you have to do it over and over and over again.

If you’re so serious why did you choose to launch it on April Fools’ Day?

While our wishful thinking is for this coin to one day become a viable currency, we know and willingly accept that we may never achieve that given the red tape and protocols in not just one, but five countries.

So we decided to reimagine it through the lighter side of life and make it happen anyway, as a souvenir token that everyone can hold and joke about, and perhaps trade among friends. It’s meant to be a fun little thing. If it takes off and actually by some miracle starts to hold any value, then that would be a pleasant surprise. Otherwise, it’s just a little souvenir of the convention that you can carry around in any Ethereum wallet.

Ok, I’m in. Where do I get some?

At the time of writing, our ICO is still live, meaning that you can still purchase SEAPonyCoin directly from our ICO Smart Contract. Simply send any amount of Ether to the contract address and the smart contract will automatically send you exactly how much SEAPonyCoin you are entitled to. The ICO sale price is and has always been 1 ETH = 10,000 SEA.

Check out our website at https://ico.SEAPonyCon.com for the instructions and to get the smart contract address.

Most importantly is that you MUST send the Ether from a wallet where you control the private keys. These services are provided by apps that usually ask you to back up a string of words and tell you not to lose them. We recommend Trust Wallet as SEAPonyCoin is fully compatible with it. Trust Wallet is available on iOS and Android.

What if I my country’s laws prevent me from participating in an ICO?

Excellent question. Some countries such as China, USA and Singapore do not allow its citizens to participate in ICOs. If you still want to buy some SEAPonyCoin, you can do so via an exchange. SEAPonyCoin is available on Etherdelta and Token.Store (via address trading). Please double check the contract address on these sites and when possible, use the links on this post (click on the name of the exchange) to access the trading pairs on these exchanges.

Where can I get Ether?

You can try your local exchanges such as Coins.ph in The Philippines and NuMoney in Malaysia/Singapore. Alternatively, LocalEthereum can hook you up to a seller near you.

If you want to exchange Bitcoin or some other popular cryptocurrencies to Ethereum, or if you would like to use your credit card (mind the minimum purchase amount), try Changelly

Now what? What can I do with this SEAPonyCoin thing?

Think of it as a virtual keychain on your Ethereum wallet. We may do some fun stuff with it in the future, or not. It’s our own little toy and you’re invited to have a share in something that we cooked up.

What happens to the Ether I send or use to buy SEAPonyCoin?

That would be sold for fiat currency and used to help us offset our current debts.

Will this make me rich?

If it could we would have done this years ago.

In all seriousness, not likely. We aren't designing this coin to hold financial value, thus it may never appreciate in price. Try not to think about it as a currency (yes I know we call it that). It's really more of a souvenir.

Nothing is stopping you from selling it, though. Just saying.

Can I mine SEAPonyCoin instead of buying it?

No. SEAPonyCoin is an ERC20 token. In our case, only a finite amount of tokens will be in circulation starting May 2018 - no new coins will ever be created (or mined) following that. These tokens operate on their own economy and are not usually mineable by any common method.

That said, are you gonna have another convention?

We really hope so. Stay tuned to our social media outlets on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram to be the first to know.

If you have any questions, join our Discord server and ask away!

Cheers everypony and thanks for reading!

Daniel “St. Pinkie” Anthony
Chief, Project SEAPonyCon