Limited release handcrafted bean-to-bar chocolate : Bitcoin only sale

[yabisikakaw]

Long story short (Previously posted at /r/btc)

About three years ago we started an agroforestry project in Puerto Rico with cacao trees at it’s core. The main goal was/is to regenerate abused soils, produce plenty of food, sequester carbon at a high rate and as a result, creating a “byproduct” in the means of extraordinary cacao and chocolate.

A “byproduct” that could insert Puerto Rico as one of the best origins of high quality fine flavor cacao in the planet.

Almost simultaneously, we were thrilled about the immense possibilities bitcoin could bring to a broad areas of commerce and person to person value exchanges, including fine flavor cacao trade. An area that lots of farmers around the world could benefit from. (No, sadly we did not mine in the early days.)

You can find more about the project at :

https://cacao.farm

Pictures from our visits to the Old San Juan farmer's market :

https://cacao.farm/gallery/old-san-juan-farmers-market/


Video of our visit to organic estate in Grenada :

https://vimeo.com/145121162
(free chocolate bar to the first person who finds a bitcoin related “easter egg” in the video CLAIMED)

We’ve been thru different stages already. From carefully grafting trees, searching for old heirloom trees around the island, preparing organic manure to create the best organic fertilizer possible, visited other farms in the Caribbean, and other stages of cacao processing, including chocolate making.

Currently we’re at a stage where we need to purchase some tools and equipment to improve our efficiency and maintain our quality standards.

Since our trees are just starting to produce pods, we’ve decided to create our first "fund raising" bar using a fine flavor cacao source with similar core values and at the neighboring island of Dominican Republic; [Öko Caribe](http://oko-caribe.com/) is committed to high quality standards and practice sustainable agriculture.

But why would you pay extra money for this small batch bean to bar chocolate?

1. Supporting farmers.
2. You know exactly where the cocoa beans come from.
4. No child labor.
5. Craft chocolate is a bit like the wine industry, different terroir, different flavor profiles.
6. Health benefits. You’re getting a great amount of minerals, good fats and unadulterated antioxidants and compounds not available in your average chocolate.

We already have the basic equipment to produce this initial bar. It will be hard work.

We need to carefully roast, crack, winnow, grind, refine, conch to create the cacao liquor. We then age it for a couple of weeks and then temper and mold into bars.

Finally, wrapping and shipping them to you.

To give you an idea, our friends from Manoa Chocolate in Hawaii went thru something similar using kickstarter :

https://vimeo.com/136695016

We want to use bitcoin instead.

We’ve tried setting up a Lighthouse project but the client it’s giving us a hard time. “Synchronising with the Bitcoin network”... for days. (I’ll keep trying and update any break thru)

(We think that it is a powerful tool but is not there yet.)

To make this bar possible we need to sell a minimum of 250 bars.

We’ve already set up an item on our bitcoin-only web store.

You can find it here : https://cacao.farm/product/oko-caribe-7 ... chocolate/

The shopping cart operates without any third party processing directly to an Electrum wallet.

Since we need to accomplish a certain level of sales for this bar to be a reality, we ask you to provide a return bitcoin address in the notes field during checkout.

So if the "campaign" is not funded (sell the 250 minimum bars) we’ll refund to those who contributed.

If this stage is a success, we'll consider staying a bitcoin-only craft chocolate maker and expand our product offerings to the crypto community. (No more asking/begging for craft chocolate makers to accept bitcoin). And many other possibilities in the future.

If you have any other ideas or if you only want to make a donation to the project, you can contact us at : info[at]cacao.farm

(Apologies for the long post.)

Thank you all for you support.

Update : Sold 7 as of this writing