In case you have been living under a rock, there is a "revolution" coming to the Bitshares and Steemit community. Recently a video was produced by Stan Larimer, the father of Bitshares/Steemit creator Daniel Larimer, and Michael Taggart to show us the way of the HERO, however the video has since been taken down. The HERO is a new type of currency with a mathematically pegged price to the 1913 US dollar plus 5% every year. The existence of this currency relies on "Heros" who will be putting in Bitshares as leveraged collateral to create each unit of HERO.
This entire presentation was put on by http://consumerreality.services/ and it's CEO Matt Trainer, who plans to release his own "Game". Matt attempted an announcement on Steemit and was met with harsh skepticism by the community. Within hours of releasing his post he compiled a list of banned users and ultimately deleted all of his posts and left Steemit.
Who is Matt Trainer, Due Diligence
There are countless websites in a google search for Matt Trainer, the google auto search includes the term "Matt Trainer Scam" as the second most popular search phrase. Matt contends that this is due to only a few people trying to hurt his reputation. This may be true but people usually don't go through the trouble of lawsuits and posting negative information on people without at least some cause.
In order to gain more insight we should look at the man in his own words. Recently Matt posted his own blog post on Medium.com. I have highlighted a few excerpts that people will find useful in evaluating his offers.
Self destructive behavior
2 drug overdoses (one on purpose)
Banned from the OMNI Hotel for life for drunken stupidity
Number of cars I’ve jumped more than 20 feet = 5
Number of helicopters I’ve crashed = 1
Number of cars I’ve jumped off a cliff on purpose = 1
Number of cars I jumped off a cliff sorta on purpose = 2
Number of cars I’ve totaled = more than 20
Number of motorcycles I’ve totaled = more than 20
Legal run-ins
Number of overnight stays in jail = 2, if you leave out 2.5 years I stayed “overnight” in Federal prison
Number of times I’ve been sued for more than $5M = 3
Number of times I’ve been sued for libel = 1
Eight figure lawsuits
19 years ago I was in Federal prison after the biggest mistake of my life.
Almost 20 years ago my brother was convicted of a Federal crime and spent almost a year in Fort Leavenworth Federal prison. It was all my fault. He went to prison because he worked for me...
40 families lost their entire life savings when my hedge fund failed.
Hardcastle Hedge Fund
An investment manager from Wentzville who fled to Panama later admitted in an e-mail to squandering the fund on gambling and said his "moral compass ... was very skewed," according to a formal state order against him.
The securities division of the Missouri secretary of state's office on Thursday ordered Matthew J. Trainer and two associates to stop engaging in their alleged violations of state investment law. The state says Trainer lost more than $900,000 of his investors' money, including $750,000 g ambled away in Las Vegas.
The HERO
It is telling that Stan wants everyone to put money into his HERO and mogul schemes but is sitting on 20 million Bitshares and 0 HERO. I for one will find other opportunities to put my crypto. Very few people understand the HERO, even after watching the presentation. The only people who will be enriched by it are the people who, in the future, may take the fees, like the Bitshares committee members and Witnesses, and people who sit on large sums of Bitshares, like Stan. Eventually the HERO system cannot sustain itself indefinitely as price stagnation will occur and people holding the debt are forced to cover -5% growth per year. This has all the earmarks of a scheme that looks to fall flat on its face.
Conclusion
I have been very vocal in Steemit that Bitshares needs major help competing with the centralized exchanges and the numerous DEXs that want to unseat it. I believe that money schemes that appear like scams create negative marketing for the Graphene community, and is a wasted opportunity to create real value for Bitshares holders. These "millions" should go to implementing more coin markets and gateways, which would be actual sound business strategies.
Be sure to upvote because there is an enormous effort to silence skeptics and critical thinkers of these schemes by die hard whales in the Steemit and Bitshares communities, who also happen to benefit as fee takers and market makers.