NOTE: This update will be written in a point-by-point format in order to make it a little easier to process (for my mind and yours) all the moving parts of this crazy minting saga.Chapter 1: Those 2021 Silver / Gold Coins and a Series of Unfortunate Events1. We announced a pre-order for our 2021 gold coins in early September 2021. (We were fronting the full cost of the silver coins ourselves.) Over the course of the next 7 months, every time that I inquired about the production status of our coins, our mint contact would explain about a new problem that had delayed the production schedule for several weeks more.
2. This contact was a new employee for the mint. She had been hired shortly before I placed the silver and gold coins orders, and due to the ongoing Covid pandemic, she was allowed to work remotely from her home, without direct daily supervision from other mint employees. Ultimately, this was a serious problem.
3. After 7 months of delays and excuses, I contacted her mint supervisor directly via email. (The supervisor and I have a very long history of minting coins together. In fact, the supervisor was my previous mint contact before she was promoted and the new employee was hired to replace her in her previous position as customer service contact in charge of custom minting projects.) The mint supervisor urged me to call her immediately, which I did.
4. On this call, the mint supervisor explained that it was recently discovered that the new employee was not processing orders for customers. Payments were made to the mint’s accounts by customers, but many orders were never formally processed, which means that the mint had no official record of these projects existing. Hence, many projects were never started. All of the problems and delays over the past 7 months were fabrications that the new employee was spinning in order to further delay any accountability or discovery that these orders were never processed to begin with. Until this point in mid-April 2022, all of the excuses and delays had been lies told by one new rogue employee who was merely collecting a paycheck without processing many customer orders. (Why? Who knows?)
5. By this point, the mint was no longer in contact with the rogue employee. (The mint had tried to reach her in order to hear her side of the story, but the rogue employee refused to speak with the mint at all, and the mint was only able to relay a few messages through the employee’s sister, as I understand it.)
6. The mint supervisor told me that unprocessed orders were not isolated to our company alone. There were many orders from many companies that went unfilled and unprocessed over the course of those previous 7 months.
7. Even today, 2 months since the discovery of all those unprocessed orders, the mint is still struggling to fill all those long overdue orders. (Personally, I would expect it to take a while longer. After all, 7 months is a very long production backlog.)
8. On June 5, I emailed the mint supervisor to ask about an estimated production and shipping date for our coins. I was told that our coins were scheduled to be minted in about 2 weeks “around the 17th.”
9. Naturally, after all the excuses and delays over the previous months, I was hesitant to post this new “around the 17th” production update on the public forum, so I chose to simply wait patiently and cross my fingers.
10. A few days ago, on June 15, I received an apologetic email from the mint supervisor. She explained that while the production manager was preparing to start the minting process on our coins, he noticed that the dies were damaged and unusable. This new problem would cause a new delay of up to a few more weeks.
11. And this is where we stand today.
Chapter 2: Deliberation / Disappointment1. While the long overdue 2021 silver and gold coins were still waiting to be minted and released, we decided to postpone the release of any new products designed for the new 2022 year. We didn’t feel it was right to ask for sales from any new products while we were still waiting to deliver some old products.
2. However, after being notified by the mint on June 15th about yet another delay in production, we have decided that we can no longer wait (indefinitely) to release our new and upcoming 2022 products. (After all, it’s already June.)
3. That said, after much deliberation and disappointment, we have decided to cancel the production of our 2021 silver and gold coins.
4. All funds that were previously paid to the mint for the 2021 coins will go toward minting the all new 2022 silver and gold coins. (The pre-paid blanks will simply sit on a shelf reserved under our name until they are ready to be minted with the new 2022 designs.) We plan to allow the mint a few more months to finish catching up on all their backlogged projects before staring production on the new 2022 silver and gold coins.
5. Once again, we plan to discontinue production of the 2021 silver and gold coins in order to start fresh with an all new order of 2022 silver and gold coins. The new gold coins are tentatively scheduled to start production by late summer for an autumn release.
Chapter 3: Refunds, Credits, and You1. Full refunds will be offered to all of those who participated in the 2021 gold coins pre-sale.
2. Pre-sale customers will have the choice of either (A) receiving a full refund of their pre-sale purchase, or (B) simply waiting a few months longer and receiving the all new 2022 gold coins instead of the discontinued 2021 gold coins.
3. Upon request, refunds will be issued in the same currency in which they were originally paid. (BTC payments will receive BTC refunds, PayPal/USD payments will receive PayPal/USD refunds, etc.)
4. Pre-sale customers will be contacted this weekend via PM to discuss which option they would prefer.
Chapter 4: What have we learned from all this madness?1. No more pre-sales.
2. Ever.
3. Someone, somewhere, is laughing maniacally and having an absolute ball with their bitcoin penny company voodoo doll. From what I can tell, that’s the only rational explanation for all of the many obstacles and setbacks to our various projects over the last year. It’s a voodoo curse. Plain and simple.
Chapter 5: Where do we go from here?1. Our company’s core beliefs are simple — have fun whenever possible, remain cheerful in the face of adversity, and never take anything in life too seriously.
2. As always, we will stay true to those core beliefs. We will hold our heads high, smile our most optimistic smile, and carry on in order to bring more and more fun and happiness to the bitcoin community for a very long time to come.
3. Besides, the 2021 silver and gold coins were just one of many, many projects. In the long run, while disappointing, this whole ordeal is just a small blip in a long timeline of delicious goodies that we’ve brought to you over the last 7 years, and an even smaller blip compared to all the exciting new projects waiting to be released!
3. Thank you for supporting bitcoin and The Bitcoin Penny Company. Our customers are the absolute best, and I’m so very proud to call many of you, “friends.”
4. In the meantime, and as a precaution, we’ve rented the 2005 film “Skeleton Key,” and we’re taking notes on how to properly counter the voodoo curse. We’ve already poured a jar of red brick dust all around our website as well as around our many upcoming projects, so I think we’re safe from bad luck for the rest of 2022 and beyond.
5.
Regards,
Chris@TBPCo.
