@ned Denies Request For Financial Transparency
Before going into this topic, I do want to point out that Steemit, Inc is a private company that is different from Steem. How many times has it been pointed out that Steemit is not Steem? Holding STEEM means ones has a stake in the Steem blockchain but give one zero holding in Steemit.
Thus, like any private company, @ned is fully within his rights to provide or deny anyone access to the financial status of Steemit, Inc.
@daan put up an article about an exchange that @paulag and Ned had in the comment section of one of the livestream posts. In it, she asked for financial transparency from Ned.
This was followed up by Ned's response.
I feel that both parties are within their rights here. It was a reasonable request that @paulag made and Ned is fully within his rights to say no.
So what is Ned hiding?
Many jumped to the idea that Steemit Inc is going bankrupt. There is no evidence of that and the recent moves actually could be counter to that. More often then not, when companies lay off staff and restructure, it makes them a stronger company. This is why stock prices jump when public companies announce large scale layoffs. It is an immediate savings.
Of course, without seeing the records, there is no way to know. Ned might not be hiding anything. Financial privacy is often something that companies maintain. It is one of their reasons for remaining private as opposed to going public.
This does bring up a much larger point that @fknmayhem covered. It is something that I discussed since the news about Steemit Inc came out. Almost a week ago I wrote a post stating that it is time for everyone to stop using Steemit.com.
https://busy.org/@taskmaster4450/it-is-time-to-stop-using-steemit-com
My reasoning for this article was simple. We need to make Steemit a smaller part of our lives. It is obvious they had too much control, something they could not handle. There are other front ends that do it better and are worthy of the support.
@fknmayhem goes one step further.
Decentralization is the key. The entire reason for blockchain is to avoid situations like this.
In the financial world, we see what is called 3rd party counter risk. This was most evident in the MBS situation a decade ago. These assets were "insured" by AIG who issued CDO. The problem was the CDOs were worthless since AIG was insolvent.
That is what 3rd party counter risk is. There is a risk associated in dealing with another entity. It means having to trust the solvency (sound familiar) of an entity.
Steemians are now forced to take on the risk posed by Steemit. Whether by plan or simply the fact that the community sat back, we see where the ecosystem is exposed.
As was posted, this is an opportunity. It is good that this came to light now. The community has the opportunity to address these issues and push for more decentralization. It is something we all should be doing at every level. While most of us are not developers, something as simple as switching the interface we use is a step in the right direction.
@smooth brought up valid points about the power Steemit wields.
The fact that Steemit has so much in the way of STEEM could be problematic. Could they dump and completely destroy the ecosystem? It is possible. although something I do not think likely. If they did dump, that would be a long term benefit to the ecosystem. While the price would most likely collapse, it would be a buying opportunity.
This, of course, is presuming the development side of things is spread out. As of now, we are the over the proverbial barrel. That said, if Steemit Inc did disappear, I know there are enough smart coders who would be able to take over the development of the blockchain. Again, as @fknmayhem pointed out, that is how open source usually works.
Therefore, I am not going to conclude Ned is hiding something because I do not know. The truth is that most reading these words would probably do the same thing if in his shoes. Most people are not publicly offering up information about their own or their company's financial status.
That said, I am not going to stop pushing the decentralization aspect of things. It is unhealthy for the ecosystem to be so dependent upon Steemit. It is time to take the next step and have other options within the platform. I hope this is something the Witnesses and developers on Utopian are discussing.
Steemit presenting a 3rd party counter risk to every Steemian is not how this should be.
It is time to reduce, if not eliminate, that.
To read @daan's full post:
The original post where @paulag's comments were.
If you found this article informative, please give an upvote and a resteem.
Two items for your consideration;
It seems to me the only reason that you would not even communicate with someone offering a project while in a crisis situation is that you are planning bad behavior.
You expect them to sell your 100k STEEM for 100k USD, putting STEEM at effectively 1 cent evaluation.
I expect them to set up a smart contract and put 400k tokens in a wallet that only I can buy from, for .40 USD for two years. Worst case they offer to sell me 400k tokens at a much higher than current price. Best case I deliver and help steem go back to $3.00 range.
I think it's very telling that ned said:
Doesn't this imply that they are several months away from bankruptcy? Just the amount of time you'd need to power down your account and bail?
I almost feel like a whale needs to preemptively dump on the market and squeeze ned out once and for all. I'd rather rip the bandaid off quickly rather than deal with this nonsense. Anyone who can't figure out how to play it safe in such a volatile market doesn't deserve to be here.
Guys like @fulltimegeek are trying to offer SMT solutions by developing products solo. If one person can do that, what the hell is the STINC team doing?
ned gets a criticized on a daily basis. I would never expect him to open his books and feed the endless trolls he has to deal with. However, nothing about this situation is trustworthy.
While I do believe that @fulltimegeek is working diligently on his project, he hasn't published anything yet (no whitepaper, no MVP) besides a small tweet. When @ned published the idea of SMTs, a full whitepaper was shared at the same time.
If you want to praise someone, do it once the person has actually delivered.
Fair enough. The point I'd actually like to make is that we need to learn how to scale up in a decentralized manner. We aren't going to make it very far if everyone works alone or in small groups.
hi @taskmaster4450, great to see such an engaging discussion on the topic. I read this post earlier today but I did not have the time to reply and really wanted to come back and leave some thoughts with you on it.
First of all I think @m-ssed-t hit the nail on the head, I did not ask for financial accounts, but a list of steem accounts that steemit inc and staff control. Only when reading this comment did it occur to me that maybe @neds response was because he felt that I was asking for financial accounts.
"Could they dump and completely destroy the ecosystem? It is possible. although something I do not think likely. If they did dump, that would be a long term benefit to the ecosystem. While the price would most likely collapse, it would be a buying opportunity."
Yes they could just dump, but I have to agree that would leave a buying opportunity. sure crypto is bleeding out anyway and it would move us to a much more decentralized control and that what we are all after anyway. I would rather they dumped now and let us get on with things than we spending ages fixing the problems, the price to rise and for them to crash it for us again.
STEEM is not steemit inc and we need to change the way people thing about that, steemit inc is a dev company. In the mean time, there is plenty we can do on the block as a community. There are a lot of discussions happening and a lot of people starting to take actions on certain things. The community needs to take control of what they can control and leave steemit inc to do what they want. we have a top 20 voted in witnesses, they do not have to accept what steemit inc are doing :-)
I also don't think that Ned has to disclose anything since we are all invested in Steem blockchain and not in this company. We all know that the amount of SP they hold is massive and if they dumped then the prices would plummet. But this would only be an excellent buying opportunity for those who believe in the future of this blockchain. And this is unlikely that they would dump. Otherwise they wouldn't need to lay off 70 percent of the team.
I started using Busy again when not on the phone. The interface is far friendlier than steemit's. And if in the future they would add a link to blocktrades for buying or selling steem, then there will be no reason to return to steemit. Oh, and having my browser remember the tags I'm using on Busy would save me something like 10 seconds... 😀
By the way, have you seen this announcement by Coinbase that they are looking into other digital assets to add to their exchange? Although Steem is not on the list, lots of people are voting and commenting for Steem. But this one response criticizes several things about it and asks Coinbase not to add Steem at this time. Would be interesting to see an intelligent counter-argument. Here is the link to the response: “Where’s Steem on this list?” by zyx https://link.medium.com/KNXVLX4yvS (Look for Frank Kemnath)
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Even if you dumb Steem down to the basics:
That should already be enough to add Steem to the list. Our API is just icing on the cake.
Oh... our bid-bots are a problem? They operate in a setting of social media. Where's the other social media alternative-coin?
steemit has lacked innovation all year and is only tolerable with steemplus. steemit issue is a drag on steem but hopefully positive changes are finally on the way, but who knows
This is a valid argument, but how does one justify picking other coins that don't do anything yet?
I would actually vote for Maker and Dai before Steem. Those picks would synergize better with Coinbase. We absolutely need a decentralized stable-coin option. Adding Dai to Coinbase would allow businesses to accept Dai directly to a source that could be cashed out to an American bank account.
However, many of these nominations are clearly worse than Steem. Also, none of these coins are trying to do what Steem is attempting. Social media is pretty important.
Your thoughts are not far away from mine, ever since I first read about this development some three days ago. For sure I know that Ned and Steemit Holds a very large part of the Steem we have now and their decision on how they use this stake will have a noticeable effect on the ecosystem. But I'm glad this did came to light and will make everyone who's interested in Steem for the long run to begin to take Steem out of the big picture.
It's time for everyone to ask themselves, how much do we need Steemit and what can we do without Steemit?
I believe in the future of Steem as well as blockchain social media and I'm sure we'll all pull through.
Decentralization is the key.
it is the key, sink or thrive time
We are probably stretching too much. Bear market is breaking everybody nerves. @ned is also human being. He too is scared as most of us. I am sure he won’t dump his stake as most of us won’t dump. Stay on and keep steaming is best way to keep it alive and bring it to the forefront when most other projects collapse dues to lack of real product being exposed in this downturn. Soon they will stand naked.
Normally I would say that private companies have every right to keep their financial information to themselves but we are in a unique possesion because of Steemit inc's huge stake. If they sell all or most of their steem, the price is crushed. If they remove delegation from the apps they are suppprting many of them may not survive. They can be replaced as developers but it could take awhile before they can be completely replaced.
If Steemit Inc are considering leaving they should at least make it gradual rather than unexpected or simply sell their company to someone else who is willing and able to fill the role. Considering the extent of influence Steemit Inc has, they need to be as transparent as possible as their actions directly affect other Steem investors.
Yeah, those were my first thoughts when I read the discussion. Now, I do think Steemit deserves a little bit of slack, they have not shown any indication that they would handle selling off their stake irresponsibly. Just the fact that it's possible for them to do so, is what worries me.
That's true. I believe they have sold some Steem but no major dumps.
They are in very difficult situation with the price drops. Then again, many of the problems they face now were going to come up at some point. The price drop might be the shakeup they needed to sort out their cost structures as well their revenue streams.
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Exactly. People are worried about Ned dumping his coins, but I think a far more likely scenario is that Steemit.com, along with all its accounts, is sold eventually to some VC. I'm quite certain Ned has been approached at least once by private investors during this bear market.
It probably isn't even possible for Steemit Inc to dump the whole lot as there wouldn't be enough buyers. Price would fall to a few cents and they would have to wait until they get enough bids.
Selling directly to someone or another company is a far more sensible option. Maybe even sell off part of the company which includes a particular amount of Steem. There are a few ways out without crashes the price further.
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That's what I had in mind. There is not enough liquidity on exchanges to absorb all the Steem in those accounts. Makes much more sense to sell in bulk to VCs who want to exposure to Steemit.
Am I reading the same original comment from @paulag as everyone else?
I think Ned read "accounts" and immediately jumped on the defensive, thinking he was requesting actual financial accounts of the business.
[I could be wrong here] But I think @paulag was asking for a list of user accounts (i.e. different users on Steem) which were controlled by Steemit Inc., and it's staff, past and present.
That's a very different question, and a very different conversation than the one which seems to be happening here.
Either interpretation brings no obligation to bear on Steemit.
I beg to differ, when stinc have hidden accounts it equals hidden agendas, and when those accounts were created before on boarding people, and when those accounts mined most if not all of the coins, as stated by dan, and when those accounts are cashing out, making the most profit from bidbots, have never made any positive impact on the whole system, then her question is more valid than your comment! Heads in sand never made the world any better.
Your point is well taken, @shepz1. Although good sources have assured me who it is, it has tantalized my curiousity to know who @freedom is definitively.
@themarkymark's recent work on exposing account ownerships had me overlooking his opinion on vote bots and giving him my renewed support for witness.
Yet we all knew, or could have found out, what the stakes were (excuse the pun) before our involvement in the steem blockchain. We all knew, or could have known, that even the minimal 1/19th going to miners was repealed and that even before it was it was a closed club or only extremely gifted software engineers that could figure out how to do it. That was not by chance in my estimation.
The world is not a fair place, but it is times like now that help to level the playing fields. If many more reward seekers jump ship we should be able to run our witness nodes on a 64 GB machine with a noip.com domain address, regardless if Steemit, Inc. gets around to the rocksDB implementation HF. If STEEM drops to one cent then we can become whales to challange even the likes of Steemit, Inc.
But hopefully it need not come to that and hopefully those with the biggest stake have the greatest motivation to see this project work and have success.
But do we have the right to demand anonymity be removed? Not by my way of thinking and it is exactly such governance that keeps me from investing in EOS.
Anyway, that's just how this one user sees things.
Thanks for a superb reply.
It is not demanding anonymity removed from all, more Ned and his alt egos coming clean.
It is clear by now either way that he is no longer needed here. Nothing happens with him hanging around, just excuses or silence.
The only part of this is that surprises me, is that he even bothered to answer paulag, as he does not even bother answering top witnesses.
SMT is mostly all anyone hears from ned.
I am hoping the same as you, that the whole thing gets simplified so it can be run on those 64gb machines, and a 1 cent buy in would be excellent for new people to balance this place out to where in my opinion it needs to be.
We all want this place to succeed or we would not be here, I hope it succeeds though without neds greed.
You certainly have made me hear "the sound of silence" with regards to this issue. Thanks for the discussion!
Most welcome, cheers my friend.
I'm surprised this post is so low on trending. It spawned a lot of great discussion with helpful debate.
I've re-steemed it to help give it greater reach.
Great post.
Glad the discussion is very proactive and we are planning to get it fixed in case Steemit inc is no longer the lead.
Welcome to decentralization.
Keep on postin
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I believe @ned does not hide anything... We just have problem what market - BTC .... we rely depend on this BTC coin too much ... This is the problem. And who manipulates BTC price, it can also manipulate the entire whole market. Just look at all market prices, they all move when BTC coin moves town or up. IS THIS HARD TO SAY ? AND SEE?
This Steemit platform does not have a lot of problems in here , this development in steemit is required too quickly and lot without looking at what happens around as, and the rest of the market.
And I am happy that @ned was send out 70% employees and we can take some Slow down and see what's happening around.