Context
Starting Oct 2021, Rewilder Foundation has received 102.87 ETH in donations for our first rewilding campaign. Most donations (roughly 70%) were made in 2021, when ETH price was above $3500 USD per ETH. In February 2022 we had already decided to move forward with the land purchase in Uruguay, and started looking for options.
At that time, we made the decision not to convert ETH to USDC or other stablecoin until we had a good purchase option which we wanted to move forward with. Around March 2022 we had found a great option within our budget: a 178 hectare mostly virgin land in Teinta y Tres department, Uruguay, close to a protected area. After making an offer (220k USD), we negotiated with the land owner the possibility of making the payment in crypto. We had to convince the real estate agent first, then the owner. Eventually, they both agreed (took quite a bit of talks and convincing). However, this also brought us problems with notaries, most of which had never audited a real estate operation involving crypto.
When these problems started, and given ETH was at a many month low in March 2022 (roughly $2500 USD per ETH), we again decided to hold ETH until the operation was 100% confirmed and we were sure we would purchase the land. The rationale was: if we convert ETH to USDC now, the deal falls through, and then ETH price recovers, we have locked losses on all ETH donated. Remember, most donations were received when ETH price was ~$4000. This was a conscious and strategic decision we took, which with hindsight was a big mistake. We’re very sorry for this. We were honestly trying to make the best of Rewilder, and we fucked up.
The situation is: we now still have 102.87 ETH, but this is roughly 100k USD today. The original land we made an offer for is out of our budget now.
So… what are we doing next?
Two main options appeared to us:
(1) sell ETH now, secure 100k USD, and keep looking for a land for rewilding with that budget.
(2) hold ETH and wait for the price to recover to try to purchase the original 178 hectare land we had found.
After much deliberation in our team, we decided to move forward with (1), to sell ETH and look for a land within our current budget. Holding ETH and waiting for the price to recover would mean to halt the project for 1 maybe 2 years. By selling now, even though we lock losses on the original donations, we can move forward with rewilding a smaller land, and learn a lot from the process. Hopefully, these lessons will prove more valuable to the long term future of Rewilder than just holding the ETH and buying a bigger terrain in a couple of years.
Here’s the ETH sale transaction: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xb4328dd417d7a4964365f714d03c6b33e3fc3a7f6de03f14211a2284685bbdfc
You can also check our Gnosis Safe: Gnosis Safe
Again, we’re really sorry we didn’t manage this better, and hope you will understand we were trying to do what’s best for Rewilder. We still believe rewilding the earth is a cause worth fighting for, and don’t want this initial hiccup to stop the long term potential of Rewilder to be the best (and first!) crypto-native foundation for wildlife conservation.
Can’t wait to hear your reactions to this all.
Thanks for being here and for your support.
With the low price, everything we collect will make up for what we lost once the price goes back up.
