I came across the following statement while searching out the perspectives of more established Steemit users:
fitinfun (64) 7 days ago
I do not know one thing about this ned guy except that he recently pulled his large delegation from. This has been a widespread tragedy over the last weeks as
Anyone can pull a delegation at any time and - thanks ned for the time you had it there. I hope you have a better place for this money, but I cannot imagine what it would be if you want minnows to succeed here.
I was late to this party and do not know the ned story at all beyond that issue. I have never seen any post or comment from ned in the 1.5 years I have been here. I am not saying he hasn't posted, but I have not seen it if he has.
Why do I post on a headless platform and watch people jump ship day after day? I have no idea...
https://steempeak.com/hegaveup/@berniesanders/why-doesn-t-ned-use-the-network-he-created
My impression is that the new, but undeclared, objective is to STOP FEEDING THE MINNOWS. I think management aims to clear out the bottom tier and reclaim rewards that have been spread too thinly and broadly. This is the 'dust' that I think they are going to start sweeping up. The plagiarism bots have been sweeping up a lot before rewards reach payout, but I think they've just dialed up the program with HF20. The work-in option for joining, as explained in the White Paper, is effectively abandoned. Joiners either buy-in or they are sponsored by existing member delegations. I presume they met their membership goals and now it's time to shut the door. It's an 'Exclusive Freemium' now. Those are my conclusions after examining the evidence, spread around the platform.
Still, I don't see the means for achieving an ROI, with or without small accounts. Investors put their USD into STEEM, which is converted to SP and the currency circulates in a closed system. It doesn't earn real value. Profit is made through the pump and dump game. Anyone who bought at $4 or more has lost $3 USD, given the current price of STEEM. They can hold out for a return to higher prices, but the trend line doesn't look promising. The company wins if it fails, because they are holding your $4 USD.
There's something funky with the latest pumps that even the article authors find bizarre...They don't look organic. Rather they seem to be orchestrated, or the act of a single huge investor. I suspect existing investors are recirculating their cashed-out funds.
"Only Steem is defying the dump with an 18% pump at the time of writing. A strange occurrence since their blockchain has been suffering with technical difficulties lately."
https://www.newsbtc.com/2018/09/18/another-10-billion-lost-why-have-crypto-markets-dumped-again/
STEEM Price Surges 31% Ahead of Steemit Velocity Hardfork
"On Monday afternoon the coin price surged 31%, climbing from a price of $0.852111. The majority of those gains came in less than an hour, between 16:00 and 16:30 UTC. The highest single concentration of trades comes in the form of STEEM/USDT on Huobi, while the rest of the market is shared predominantly between STEEM/BTC and STEEM/KRW."
https://hacked.com/steem-price-surges-31-ahead-of-steemit-velocity-hardfork/
What are your thoughts on this?
RE: HF20 - Celebrate The Upgrade What’s to Come....