What a pledge is
A pledge on tea.money is one of two things. Either you are pre-purchasing a physical harvest — a grower’s spring picking, pressed under your name once máo chá (毛茶) is weighed — or you are paying to reserve a shelf for tea you already own or are acquiring, in one of the storage houses listed under Properties. Both produce a physical object and a paper trail: a pledge receipt, a warehouse intake slip once the tea lands in storage, and this disclosure. There is no third kind of pledge. We do not offer a way to buy a share of a harvest without eventually taking delivery of it, and we do not offer a way to earn a return without holding tea.
What it is not
- Not a security. A pledge does not represent equity, debt, or a claim on future profit of tea.money or of any grower. It represents a specific quantity of a specific harvest, or a specific shelf reservation.
- Not a token or digital asset. Nothing on tea.money is minted, wrapped, or transferable on-chain. The wrapper and the nèi fēi (内飞) inside it are paper, not a certificate of investment.
- Not a deposit account. Money paid for a pledge or a storage reservation is not held by tea.money the way a bank holds a deposit, and it is not insured as a deposit would be.
- Not a fund. Pledges are not pooled, and there is no fund-level return to distribute. What a cake is worth later is a fact about that cake, not a yield we manufactured.
- Not investment advice. Nothing on this site, including the auction data on /vintages, should be read as a recommendation to buy, hold, or sell tea as an asset.
What we do not build yet
We would rather list these plainly than let the copy on this site imply they exist.
- No escrow. Payment for a pledge or a reservation happens by direct invoice and bank transfer between you and the producer or storage operator tea.money introduces you to — not through an escrow account tea.money holds and releases on milestones.
- No KYC step. A formal identity-verification flow is on our roadmap, gated on a jurisdiction decision we have not made. Until it exists, a pledge relies on the same paper trail described above, not a verified account tier.
- No milestone-based payouts. Producers are paid directly by backers or through the invoice process above, not released by tea.money against verified milestones.
- No resale marketplace. If you decide you no longer want to hold a reserved cake, there is no automated exchange on this site where another backer takes your slot. Write to us and we will try to introduce you to one by hand — that is a manual, best-effort service, not a live order book.
- No member portal, portfolio dashboard, or live climate feed. Storage updates travel by email, as a monthly or quarterly report with photographs, the same way they always have. If a property or campaign page implies otherwise, that copy is wrong and we want to hear about it at the address below.
Risks specific to aged tea
- Agricultural risk. A harvest’s size and quality vary by season — drought, an early frost, or a difficult picking window can all change what a grower is able to press, regardless of what a campaign page describes in advance.
- Storage risk. Monitored, insured storage reduces the chance of loss to fire, pests, or mishandling — it does not remove it. Read the amenities and insurance terms on the specific property page before you reserve a shelf there.
- Price risk. The realised prices on /vintages describe what specific, named lots sold for at public auction, on the dates given. They are historical fact about those lots, not a forecast for any cake reserved through tea.money. Most tea that is stored never reaches an auction house at all, and there is no guarantee that any given cake will be more sought-after in ten years than it is today.
- Liquidity risk. Outside the manual introduction described above, there is no quick way to convert a reservation back into cash. Treat a long-horizon storage reservation as illiquid for its full term.
- Counterparty risk. tea.money is a discovery-and-documentation layer, not a bank. Fees for storage, insurance, and handling are shown on the campaign or property page before you pledge — but tea.money does not guarantee the solvency of any individual grower or storage operator, only the accuracy of the paperwork it helps produce.
What you get in writing
Every pledge or reservation produces the same three documents regardless of size: a pledge or reservation receipt naming the harvest, quantity, or shelf; a warehouse intake slip once the tea physically arrives in storage; and this disclosure, referenced by link on every campaign and property page rather than buried in an invoice.
Who to read this before you talk to
Amgalan Chin, Chen Hui Yi, Mei Yang and Hinson Tse review campaigns for pressing quality, storage fit, and drinking window — not for financial suitability. None of them, and no one at tea.money, is positioned to tell you whether a pledge is a good use of your money. That decision, and the risks above, are yours to weigh.
Contact
Questions about a specific pledge, a specific property, or this disclosure itself: [email protected]. We read every message ourselves — there is no support queue or ticketing system standing between you and a person.