It’s been a crazy stretch of travelling hundreds of miles through the mountains visiting coffee farmers and roasting, packing and shipping beans for the CoffeeCoin project. I hope you have been enjoying our pictures and updates on Slack, Telegram and Twitter.

Of course, a big THANKS to all of you who have been supporting our CoffeeCoin “OriginX” projects and offers during our harvest visit at source in Thailand. Our local partners have shipped dozens of bags of roasted Thai & Laos coffee to customers around the world since we went live with our updated CoffeeCoin website and ecosytem in January.

All the latest orders have now been roasted and shipped. Emails have been sent with tracking numbers for all orders — if you ordered but did not receive a confirmation email and tracking number please let me know.

As of today, the CoffeeCoin.io shop is now temporarily “closed” — all items are out of stock as we prepare for our next step.

Please read on for details…

The Payment Test

As many of you know, these past two weeks we tested accepting other cryptocurrencies besides COF for payment for our project beans — Waves, BitcoinCash and Dash.

The idea was to see if we could introduce the COF project to other active crypto communities this way.

It was just a small test, but I am happy to say the Bitcoin Cash community was very responsive — almost 70% of the orders we received since the announcement were paid for with BCH. Since these came from announcements directly to the BCH community — these are all people who have now learned about COF that wouldn’t have otherwise.

Although it won’t be a major focus of our project, I am now convinced it is a good idea to continue to find ways to reach out to other larger and active cryptocurrency projects to introduce them to COF — especially since we are not just a growing cryptocurrency for the coffee industry, but also a COF token-powered blockchain traceability and trading platform for coffee.

We can target projects where the token is only/mainly used for payments, since COF offers additional industry-specific benefits and therefore compliments other cryptocurrency communities and does not compete with them. There are just SO many coffee drinkers who also use crypto — we should be taking advantage of this opportunity.

That said, now that the test has completed, we will NOT continue accepting other cryptocurrencies in our shop on the main CoffeeCoin.io project website. As before, only COF will be accepted there.

Instead, we will create other avenues and websites to continue targteting popular cryptocurrency users and introduce and funnel them into our CoffeeCoin project. For example, you might soon see a website or offer with a “Bitcoin Cash” blend coffee — available for BCH, but brought to you by the CoffeeCoin project — and so on.

Again, now that the test is over, our CoffeeCoin.io shop will return to and remain COF-only for payments.

To further encourage coffee lovers and coffee industry people to adopt and use CoffeeCoin, the roasted (and soon green) coffees we offer in our project’s website shop will ONLY be available for CoffeeCoin and we will continue focusing on unique, specialty and microlots — roasted in small, custom batches, — meainng people won’t be able to get them anywhere else — or for any other payment form. (More on this below.)

To ensure COF benefits from these strategies, those who discover our project via special coffee offers for other cryptocurrencies will be incentivized to use COF for future orders, since it will be the only way to purchase our unique / premium offers in our CoffeeCoin.io shop. Other incentives will be trialed and tested as well, for examples, discounts when paying with COF.

Keep in mind, the above strategies are for introducing COF to a broader market on the crypto side, but our main focus remains those people who are already actively engaged in the specialty coffee industry. We will keep coming from both angles though as we continue working to bridge the gap between the two.

With the above in mind, I am excited to announce the next steps for the project.

1. We are now in a position to set up a permanent micro-roastery for the project so we can begin sourcing, roasting and shipping specialty coffees for CoffeeCoin on a CONTINUAL basis. This is going to be the next major step for the project.

2. In parallel with this, we will also continue moving forward on developing and testing the next version of our COF-powered traceability and trading platform. We will be using our upcoming roasting and trading business as the testing and launching pad for our next generation of CoffeeCoin powered tools and services and offerings — and begin bringing them to market for the larger specialty coffee industry and coffee supply chain.

Get Ready:

Since we launched the project in late 2017, we have run successful proof-of-concept projects from Indonesia, Thailand, back to Indonesia and back in Thailand again — 4 harvest seasons in two different countries since the start of the project, with stops in Malaysia for project development time in between.

Looking back, it’s hard to believe it has been almost 2 years of non-stop travel, coffee hunting, CoffeeCoin project development, industry presentations, networking and community building across Southeast Asia for me since I started this project — all with the goal of bringing blockchain efficiency to the specialty coffee trade with COF.

This has been an amazing adventure so far, with great results. These efforts have proved our project and potential, gotten us plenty of interest and attention and allowed us to not only remain active, but continue growing too!

For those who need a reminder:

We are a top token on the Waves platform.

We are one of only 3 tokens out of literally tens of thousands that has received qualified status from BetterTokens.org with our project protected and preserved on the Waves platform, DEX and across all Waves apps.

The project has gotten plenty of coffee industry attention which has been directly responsible for us getting invited to give presentations and join in coffee meetings, conferences and tours as those who’ve followed along have seen.

COF trades with liquidity on the Waves DEX, Crex24.com, CryptoWolf.eu and is integrated with MyCryptoCheckout, allowing COF to be accepted on any WooCommerce site.

Most importantly, we put all of this into action and the project and supporters have been successully buying and selling coffee direct from farmers to customers around the world with COF for over one year now!

Next Steps:

We will now continue to capitalize upon our success and make our next move forward with a permanent “CoffeeCoin-focused” micro-roastery & green coffee trading business.

We are leaving Thailand in just a few days. The next part of our journey is the final groundwork for putting together the micro-roastery and specialty trading company who’s underlying purpose will be to support COF, the CoffeeCoin project and the CoffeeCoin mission and introduce or project, token and tools to the coffee industry.

Exciting Times Ahead

In a few day, I am leaving Thailand to take care of related business. While this is underway, it is important to make sure the CoffeeCoin site and shop is active. We will have the next offers in the CoffeeCoin shop — only for COF — within the next two weeks.

Meanwhile, I will continue updating you as this next phase progresses with more details to be revealed soon. Be sure to be in our project SLACK to ensure you receive the latest updates — I will also share on our community-powered Telegram channel.

Get ready for a exciting Q2!

Again and as always, thanks for supporting the CoffeeCoin project and our mission to bring blockchain efficiency to the specialty coffee trade.

Sincerely,
James Allen
Founder: CoffeeCoin.io

Blockchain Efficiency For The Specialty Coffee Trade

Nov. 7, 2018

Today the CoffeeCoin project is happy to announce a listing on the popular Crex24.com exchange. This is CoffeeCoin’s first listing on a centralized exchange with fiat funding options.

Crex24 is a Cyprus-based exchange that supports many altcoins and numerous fiat currencies. With an average of around USD $2,000,000 in daily trading volume, this listing offers COF an opportunity at increased liquidity and exposure. The COF/BTC trading pair now makes CoffeeCoin much more accessible to new users as well.

The CoffeeCoin / Bitcoin trading pair is now live at: https://crex24.com/exchange/COF-BTC

This listing will provide the CoffeeCoin project another option to onboard new users of our CoffeeChain platform, tools and services — helping us on our mission to bring blockchain efficiency to the specialty coffee trade.

Additional CoffeeCoin Project Resources:

CoffeeCoin.io Main CoffeeCoin Website

CoffeeChain.io CoffeeCoin-Powered Beta Platform For Transmitting And Preserving Coffee Trade Data For Traceability On The Blockhain

WavesPlatform.com — Waves blockchain platform which CoffeeCoin is issued on along with desktop and web client with built-in decentralized exchange.

CoffeeCoin Data — Verify CoffeeCoin Asset ID & Distribution On The Waves Blockchain

CoffeeCoinWallet.io — Customized Version Of Waves Web Client For CoffeeCoin Project

Turtlebeans.com — Turtlebeans Android & iOS App Allowing Coffee Roasters To Sell Their Coffee To Customers Around The World — CoffeeCoin Payments Accepted

CryptoBantam — CoffeeCoin Themed T-shirts, Hoodies, Coffee Mugs and Fresh-Coffee — COF Accepted For Payments

MyCryptoCheckout.com — CoffeeCoin is now integrated with the MyCryptoCheckout Plugin allowing any WooCommerce shop to automatically accept and confirm payments in CoffeeCoin

CoffeeCoin On CoinGecko — Live & Historical CoffeeCoin Market Data

CoffeeCoin Reddit — Curated News & Updates For The CoffeeCoin Project

Twitter — CoffeeCoin Founder James Allen aka ‘Java Nomad’

CoffeeCoin Telegram — Supporter-Run Discussion Channel For The CoffeeCoin Project

November 2nd, 2018:

More great news today for CoffeeCoin supporters. Popular crypto-clothing designer and retailer CryptoBantam.com is now accepting CoffeeCoin for payments in their online shop for any purchases.

CryptoBantam was excited to support our project — and not only agreed to accept COF for payments, they also created a new CoffeeCoin inspired design and are making it available on T-shirts, Hoodies and Mugs!

Starting today, you can visit their CoffeeCoin products page to order yours and show your support for our mission to bring blockchain efficiency to the specialty coffee trade.

CoffeeCoin t-shirts, hoodies and more from CryptoBantam

Rumour has it, CryptoBantam will also be offering fresh-roasted crypto-themed coffee for their European customers in the near future — meaning one more retailer selling Coffee For CoffeeCoin. Stay tuned…

Thank you CryptoBantam for supporting CoffeeCoin!

James Allen

Founder: CoffeeCoin.io

P.S. Be sure to follow CryptoBantam on Twitter:

CryptoBantam Clothing (@CryptoBantam) | Twitter

P.P.S. A special shout out to the team at MyCryptoCheckout who recently integrated CoffeeCoin into their plugin, allowing CryptoBantam and millions of other WooCommerce powered websites to accept CoffeeCoin for payments!

MyCryptoCheckout - Accept 70+ coins: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and more

Friday, October 26, 2018

I am very excited to announce that CoffeeCoin is now listed on the XBTS.io decentralized cryptocurrency exchange. This listing — our token’s first exchange listing outside of the Waves DEX — is thanks to the development of a custom gateway which also makes CoffeeCoin available across the entire Bitshares ecosystem.

The XBTS team has built a custom CoffeeCoin gateway which allows anyone to easily send CoffeeCoin from their Waves account to the XBTS.io exchange via a gateway address found within their XBTS or Bitshares account. CoffeeCoin will trade as CoffeeCoin / COF on the XBTS.io exchange and as CoffeeCoin / XBTSX.COF on other Bitshares exchanges. Each CoffeeCoin on the Bitshares platform is backed 1:1 with the real Waves CoffeeCoin.

When you send CoffeeCoin from your Waves wallet through the gateway, your XBTS.io account will be credited with the equivalent in the Bitshares-compatible CoffeeCoin. Your CoffeeCoin can then be traded on the XBTS.io exchange.Once through the gateway, CoffeeCoin can also be sent and received by any other Bitshares account.

Your CoffeeCoin can just as easily be sent back through the XBTS.io gateway from the Bitshares platform to your Waves wallet at any time — creating a quick and easy bridge between these two top decentralized blockchain platforms and massively expanding CoffeeCoin’s reach and potential.

CoffeeCoin’s mission to bring blockchain efficiency to the specialty coffee trade requires our COF token to be available as easily as possible to as many people as possible from one end of the coffee supply chain to the other. This development will help us towards that goal as there are over one million accounts on the Bitshares network and sixteen decentralized exchanges active across on the Bitshares ecosystem. Today’s Bitshares network integration will help make CoffeeCoin a truly global utility token.

As you can imagine, CoffeeCoin’s bridge with Bitshares via the XBTS.io gateway and exchange has the potential to increase liquidity, recognition and adoption of CoffeeCoin.

Furthermore, this development marks the very first Waves-issued token (outside of Waves itself) to become available on the Bitshares network. We are proud to be the first working example of interoperability between Waves platform tokens and the Bitshares platform. The gateway technology developed for us by the XBTS team now opens the doors to any liquid Waves token who also wants to expand their reach on the Bitshares network.

One of the main reasons we wanted this bridge is because the Bitshares network has a large and supportive team of developers who have already created global payment tools that work with Bitshares tokens. Now CoffeeCoin can take advantage of these tools to help with our projects for connecting coffee producers more directly with consumers and increasing value across the supply chain. We look forward to announcing CoffeeCoin’s integration with some of these powerful tools in the near future.

Meanwhile, for CoffeeCoin supporters who want to be first to use CoffeeCoin on Bitshares:

• You can create an account on the XBTS exchange at: https://XBTS.io
• You can familiarize yourself with the Bitshares platform at: https://Bitshares.org .

As always, thanks for your continued support of the CoffeeCoin project as we continue to bring blockchain efficiency to the specialty coffee trade.

Sincerely,

James Allen

Additional CoffeeCoin Project Resources:

CoffeeCoin.io Main CoffeeCoin Website

CoffeeChain.io CoffeeCoin-Powered Beta Platform For Transmitting And Preserving Coffee Trade Data For Traceability On The Blockhain

WavesPlatform.com — Waves blockchain platform which CoffeeCoin is issued on along with desktop and web client with built-in decentralized exchange.

CoffeeCoin Data — Verify CoffeeCoin Asset ID & Distribution On The Waves Blockchain

CoffeeCoinWallet.io — Customized Version Of Waves Web Client For CoffeeCoin Project

Turtlebeans.com — Turtlebeans Android & iOS App Allowing Coffee Roasters To Sell Their Coffee To Customers Around The World — CoffeeCoin Payments Accepted

MyCryptoCheckout.com — CoffeeCoin is now integrated with the MyCryptoCheckout Plugin allowing any WooCommerce shop to automatically accept and confirm payments in CoffeeCoin

CoffeeCoin On CoinGecko — Live & Historical CoffeeCoin Market Data

CoffeeCoin Reddit — Curated News & Updates For The CoffeeCoin Project

Twitter — CoffeeCoin Founder James Allen aka ‘Java Nomad’

CoffeeCoin Telegram — Supporter-Run Discussion Channel For The CoffeeCoin Project

CoffeeCoin utility token (COF on the Waves platform blockchain) has been created to help reduce inefficiencies and increase value across the specialty coffee supply chain. The new CoffeeCoin wallet allows the coffee industry to easily send and receive CoffeeCoin to and from other users anywhere in the world.

As a liquid cryptocurrency, CoffeeCoin is already being used to make near instant payments for specialty coffee — with transaction fees of just 1 COF — currently less than 3 cents USD.

Additionally, COF works as a utility token to transmit and preserve multiple types of coffee trade data on the blockchain including lot descriptions, green bean offers, tracking and more. This allows the coffee industry to improve traceability from origin to cup and increase efficiency in all aspects of the coffee trade. Tracking data from the first CoffeeCoin coffee sales and shipments are already being stored on the blockchain this way.

The combination of these features means the specialty coffee industry can now use a single industry-specific cryptocurrency — CoffeeCoin — to buy and sell green coffee from source, roasted coffee from roasters and even brewed coffee at Cafes — plus preserve related data on the blockchain.

CoffeeCoin also allows end consumers — coffee drinkers — to instantly send payments to the producers of the coffee they are drinking, completing the circle of consumption and allowing the return of additional value to source.

For those interest in adding blockchain efficiency to their coffee business, full details on the CoffeeCoin project, along with a coffee industry user guide for the new CoffeeCoin wallet are available at https://CoffeeCoin.io .

Thanks to all of you who have participated in our https://ThaiCoffee.io project. Over the past 5 weeks you have helped us show how CoffeeCoin (COF on the Waves DEX) is already being used as a utility token — working both as a cryptocurrency and a blockchain data token — for the specialty coffee trade.

At last count, we have shipped 44 sets of source-roasted Thai Arabica coffee in 37 orders to participants in 16 different countries around the world. (With more going out today!)

All orders were paid in COF thanks to the WooCommerce Waves token gateway developed by https://WavesNode.net (WNET token on Waves DEX).

Order data — including tracking of shipments — was transmitted and preserved on the blockchain using COF as well. This data is being read from the blockchain and published to https://CoffeeChain.io/beta thanks to tools provided by the team at http://Oceanlab.eu (OCL token on the Waves DEX).

For those of you interested in stats — here’s a breakdown of orders by country:

Country / Number Of Orders:
USA 10
Austria 5
France 4
Netherlands 4
Canada 2
Germany 2
United Kingdom 1
Vietnam 1
New Zealand 1
Australia 1
South Africa 1
Finland 1
Malaysia 1
Belgium 1
Russia 1
Lithuania 1

We will be ending the ThaiCoffee project shortly as we prepare to launch our next, larger projects with CoffeeCoin and introduce the new partnerships COF has made within the industry.

The publicity, feedback and information we received during this test project has been very helpful — allowing us to bring the CoffeeCoin Utility Token project to the next stage. Our latest developments will allow many more people around the world to use COF to buy and sell both green and roasted beans from many participants throughout the supply chain.

Stay tuned!

James — https://coffeecoin.io Blockchain Efficiency For The Specialty Coffee Trade.

CoffeeCoin Utility Token trades as COF on the Waves Platform Decentralized Exchange (DEX)

On Oct. 16, 2017, a new website went live allowing members of the specialty coffee trade to post green coffee buy, sell and service offers. Although there are other green coffee trading websites, CoffeeChain.io is the first to transmit and preserve this offer data via the blockchain.

How It Works

CoffeeChain is powered by the CoffeeCoin (COF) utility token — a crypto-currency released on the the Waves network.

By sending a single CoffeeCoin to CoffeeChain’s Waves Wallet with address alias “coffee”, users can post their offers as a text message via the attachment feature of the wallet direct to the blockchain. Offers are prefaced with either BUY, SELL or SERVICE in the attachment and can be up to 140 characters in length.

The CoffeeCoin token then transmits this data onto the blockchain — preserving the data on the network’s distributed ledger and protecting it from alteration or loss — overcoming threats common to data stored on centralized servers.

Once the CoffeeCoin with attached offer text is received and confirmed, the system searches the blockchain, finds the text and within minutes posts the offer under the relevant category on the CoffeeChain website’s BETA page.

Any urls included in the offer text are hyperlinked on the website, allowing users to generate visitors directly to their own websites from their offer listings.

All offers are preserved on the blockchain ledger while the CoffeeChain beta website currently showcases up to the most recent 100 offers in each category. Listings are searchable as well.

This is the first of many blockchain-based features planned for the platform.

Green coffee buyers, sellers and trade service providers are invited to request a free listing during beta at http://CoffeeChain.io/contact-us

CoffeeChain uses the CoffeeCoin utility token built on the Waves network to reduce and eliminate inefficiencies in the global specialty coffee trade thereby adding massive value across the entire supply chain.

As I sit down to write this article from my apartment on Penang Island Malaysia, I am sipping on a freshly brewed cup of washed-processed Catimor Arabica coffee from my friend Mr. Nui’s farm in Thepsadet Village, Chiang Mai Province, Thailand.

I visited his village earlier this year while this coffee was being harvested to see how he and his farmers took care to select only the ripest beans and then carefully process and dry them.

Later, when his coffee was ready for export, I purchased and had a small lot of the green beans sent to me. I roast them myself as needed — just enough to last me a week at a time. It is smooth, clean and delicious. It is beyond anything you’ll ever find at a chain coffee shop — anywhere. This is as near perfect and direct-source a cup of coffee as any human can drink. It may be hard to believe, but I am not alone in my passion for incredible coffee.

This type of high-grade single origin coffee is Specialty Coffee — and demand for high-scoring super quality coffee like this has grown to nearly 10% of the global coffee market. And as demand for specialty coffee has increased, so has the awareness of many of the inefficiencies in the global coffee trade.

Having spent much of my time over the past five years at source on coffee farms throughout Indonesia, Thailand and Costa Rica and meeting with farmers, coffee traders, roasters and retailers in at least ten different countries, I’ve gained an up-close understanding of the specialty coffee supply chain and many of its current issues.

Over this same period of time, I have also followed along and gotten involved as blockchain technology has developed by leaps and bounds. From the first time I read about Bitcoin in 2012 and learned how its immutable, decentralized ledger technology would change the world — I’ve worked towards introducing this technology to the coffee industry.

In 2013, I was the first person to sell source-roasted Bali Arabica coffee for Bitcoin to customers around the world with my Roast Station Project. Since then, I have worked towards realizing my hopes for this technology being applied to the coffee industry at fintech hackathons in Singapore, startup contests in Taiwan, and bitcoin and blockchain meetups in the USA, Thailand and Indonesia.

Now, just a few years later, this technology has reached the point where it can benefit the specialty coffee supply chain in much more substantial ways. Having a foot in both worlds, I can clearly see where and how blockchain technology can now be used to improve the lives of people involved in the specialty coffee supply chain.

Here are five ways this can be done…

1. Payments

Right now, the specialty coffee supply chain suffers from the interference of too many middlemen and centralized choke points. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the slow and ancient centralized bank system of international payments. By the time payments have been sent and received via the SWIFT system through multiple central banks in different countries — producers have already lost a large portion of their earnings from exchange rate commissions and transfer fees.

With blockchain technology though, tokens can be issued as vouchers that work as a decentralized digital currency. A currency that can be sent and received anywhere in the world in moments — with tiny transaction fees. These tokens can then be exchanged quickly and locally into the national fiat at market rates via crypto exchanges. There are many of these exchanges already up and running in coffee producing countries around the world.

No longer does the payment for green coffee have to go through the slow, inefficient and profit-destroying central bank system. A coffee roaster in the USA for instance can instantly send payment via a blockchain token to a coffee producer in Indonesia. It arrives within minutes. The Indonesian producer can then exchange the tokens for fiat on a local exchange and have cash in hand the same day.

2. Contracts

Believe it or not, the international coffee trade still relies on telex, fax machines and email attachments to send, receive and update coffee contracts around the world. This creates a slow and error-prone paper trail that can require weeks between the time a deal is made to purchase coffee until the coffee is on its way to the buyer.

Tokens issued on a blockchain can carry indestructible, verifiable data though. This means they can be used to instantly transmit, verify and secure coffee contracts for buyers and sellers. This can reduce or even eliminate the need for the multiple communications via telex, fax and email that are standard in the industry now. It can reduce the contract process from weeks to days.

3. Logistics

Specialty coffee still needs to travel from producing countries to consumer countries. This is mainly done via container ship — and to a lesser extent airfreight. (Mainly for smaller, high-value specialty coffee lots.) This requires logistics providers.

Currently importers, exporters and shipping companies suffer from the same inefficiencies in payments and paperwork as the producers and roasters do. Blockchain tokens used a both payment vouchers and data transmitters will massively reduce inefficiencies at this stage of the supply chain as well.

Payments will be cheaper and faster to make, paperwork will be processed and verified sooner — meaning specialty beans will get from origin to buyer much quicker, improving quality while decreasing costs.

4. Coffee Crowdfunding

Blockchain technology also offers producers the opportunity to crowdfund the production of higher quality beans.

Currently, producers must take out loans or rely on the promise of higher prices at the end of season from buyers before they can take on the extra expense and effort of producing specialty grade coffee. This is a massive risk that often does not work to the farmers’ advantage.

Using the crowdfunding opportunity available with blockchain tokens though producers can raise funds before the season begins directly from buyers around the world who are interested in receiving specialty coffee at the end of the season. This has the potential to help small-scale coffee producers break free of the loan-debt cycle many are currently trapped in.

5. Marketing

Using blockchain technology to create a more direct-source supply chain also creates a higher perceived value for the end consumer — the coffee drinker. For coffee roasters and retailers, being able to show how they are using a technology that improves the amount of money farmers receive for their beans and improves the lives of those living at source is a benefit that coffee drinkers will respond to positively.

Where We Go From Here

Right now, there is a lot of interest in new blockchain tech companies being launched and crowd-funded by Initial Coin Offerings — ICO’s. Millions of dollars are often raised in mere minutes as participants join these launches, hoping that the founders’ promises will result in new types of software and services that will add value and change the world for the better.

With our CoffeeCoin project though — we are doing something different. We are using blockchain technology to solve current, existing issues with a real-world supply chain. The specialty coffee supply chain already exists, it has problems that need solving, and as described above — blockchain tech can go a long ways towards solving those issues right now.

Using the Wavesplatform blockchain, we are currently developing a specialty coffee token and trading platform that takes advantage of this technology to solve these and other issues in the specialty coffee supply chain.

I look forward to launching one the first solutions to bring blockchain technology to a real-world supply chain, adding value and improving lives around the world. If you are interested in following along as we develop our project, please visit http://coffeecoin.io .