One main topic dominating the news...
Steemit Inc powering down and 
Hive account@misterdelegation (ie Steemit Inc) withdrawing its delegations from 
Hive account@dsound, 
Hive account@musing and 
Hive account@sndbox.
Many posts, many opinions on all this. Read them and make your own decision.
And Ned appears...
Steemit Inc acts
After the surprise submission of 
Hive account@jnordberg's (aka 
Hive account@almost-digital) Hardfork 21 'Freedom' Pull Request that would nullify the stake of all the Steemit Inc accounts, Steemit Inc has acted swiftly.
The company has moved over one million liquid STEEM to the Bittrex exchange, and begun a power down of the rest of their undelegated Steem Power (34 million SP).
Alongside this Steemit Inc removed the Hive account@misterdelegation delegations to Hive account@dsound, Hive account@musing, Hive account@sndbox and a couple of smaller accounts.
The first reaction post came from witness #22 
Hive account@therealwolf...
Reaction posts followed from a number of other commentators including...
Read. Absorb. Decide.
Ned pops up on Discord
Ned Scott, Steemit Inc CEO, made an unscheduled appearance on 
Hive account@aggroed's show on MSP Waves last night.
After typing a number of responses in chat, he was then persuaded to come on air.
Witness and long-time Steemit investor 
Hive account@fyrstikken and host Hive account@aggroed had a lively discussion with Ned for an hour or so.
One of Ned's main points was his desire to complete the developments to enable Hivemind and Communities to become a reality.
While still in chat he spelt out his current vision...
My vision is for Steemit Inc is steemit.com is vibrant communities web app with tokens/cryptocurrencies incentivizing and supporting the activities of those communities.
When we can get communities finished and SMTs -- then being on Discord and prompting our community members to "Let's get a X community going" will be great. My belief is we need more accessible tools that drive direct value of Steem -- I believe communities and steemit.com and smts are critical to this vision. There is a hivemind post coming out tomorrow, to that end.
Ned also agreed to look into options for enhancing communication channels with the community at large.
One possibility mooted was a Steemit Inc Discord server. Alternatively Hive account@fyrstikken suggested a forum.steemit.com setup. This could be built using 
Hive account@buildteam's TokenBB forum system that is currently being developed.
Look out for more information coming from Steemit Inc very soon...
(change on previous day in brackets // n/c = no change)
| Steem price |
US$ 0.256 |
2019-01-14 04:27am UTC |
| SBD price |
US$ 0.720 |
2019-01-14 04:27am UTC |
| Market Cap |
US$ 79,168,128 |
2019-01-14 04:27am UTC |
| CoinMarketCap Ranking |
#51 (n/c) |
2019-01-14 04:27am UTC |
| No. of Whales |
36 (n/c) |
2019-01-12 |
| No. of Orcas |
315 (n/c) |
2019-01-12 |
| No. of Dolphins |
1971 (+4) |
2019-01-12 |
| No. of Minnows |
9098 (+3) |
2019-01-12 |
| Alexa rank (steemit.com) |
#4121 (-4) |
2019-01-14 04:27am UTC |
Follow 
Hive account@penguinpablo for more statistics.
NEWS FROM STEEMIT INC
Hive account@bryan-imhoff - Ned Lives! (Some May Consider That a B Horror Movie Title...)
Hive account@steemitblog - Testing Ads on Steemit.com
Hive account@steemitdev - New Year, New DevPortal Updates
Hive account@steemitdev - Additional Public API Change
NEWS FROM THE WITNESSES
#11 
Hive account@lukestokes - Exchange Transfer Report: 1/6/2018 to 1/12/2018
#22 Hive account@therealwolf - Dear Ned & Steemit Inc
#44 
Hive account@jackmiller - Approaching The End Of A Hands On Testing Of Some Things We Have Out There
#97 
Hive account@krnel - Steemit is Powering Down 34 Million SP, Transferring to Bittrex, and Pulling Delegations - Why It's Good News!
#97 Hive account@krnel - Steemit Inc. Powerdown Due to Fears of Having Accounts/Stake Stolen in Future HardFork
#97 Hive account@krnel - React(ing) Before Express(ing)
#113 
Hive account@pjau - Witness "pjau" Update Week 36
To keep up to date with more posts from witnesses follow 
Hive account@witnesspage ...
NEWS FROM KEY PLAYERS & INFLUENCERS
Hive account@ew-and-patterns - SBD update 13.01.19
Hive account@ew-and-patterns - Are steem wallets still safe? Likely YES!
Hive account@meno - Things I don't understand
Hive account@mindtrap - Just a few hours back @musing @dsound @sndbox got their delegations pulled away....and steemit account started a full power down...
Hive account@princessmewmew - We Want Steem Paired With USD On Bittrex. When Do We Want It? Now!
Hive account@socky - Campaign to get SBD listed on Binance Jan 13, 2019
Hive account@tarazkp - Thoughts on the most Steem, control and economic protection
Hive account@tarazkp - Another day another drama
Hive account@taskmaster4450 - First @ned And Now Steemit: The Powering Down Continues
Hive account@taskmaster4450 - Change In Steem Distribution Levels 1/13/19
Hive account@tcpolymath - Let us not use pull requests as political footballs
Hive account@whatsup - Nexit?
Hive account@whatsup - Regarding the Github Issue to Fork out SteemIt Inc.'s Stake
NEWS FROM COMMUNITIES
Hive account@steemchurch / 
Hive account@sirknight - SteemChurch Strategy Update: Smart Tokens on Telos - calling our smart contract engineers
NEWS FROM EVENTS & MEETUPS
JANUARY 2019
Hive account@redrica - First London Steem Meetup of 2019 | Friday 18th Jan 12pm onwards | High Street Kensington
MAY 2019
Hive account@dtube.forum - Time Schedule of the DTube Forum
DECEMBER 2019
Hive account@steemfiesta - SteemFIESTA 2019 - The First Five Days of DECEMBER - Summer in the South!
NEWS FROM DAPPS, APPS & DEVS
Hive account@inertia - Top Ranked steem-ua Delegators
Hive account@partiko - Partiko Weekly Report #14 - Be a Mentor
Hive account@spunkeemonkee / 
Hive account@dreemsteem - What else is in STORE for Spunkee Monkee??
Hive account@steemauto / 
Hive account@flauwy - How To Support Your Favorite Steemians And Earn More Curation Rewards With SteemAuto Fanbase
Hive account@stratos / 
Hive account@shredz7 - A Model For a Decentralized Open Company + Stratos Update
NEWS FROM GAMES
Hive account@magicdice / 
Hive account@niallon11 - Magic Dice dividends shares
If you want to check on progress of development on Steem, check out the GitHub here...
- https://github.com/steemit/steem/branches
If you want to check on the current list of full API Nodes witness 
Hive account@holger80 provides this via 
Hive account@fullnodeupdate...
- https://steemit.com/full-nodes/@fullnodeupdate/full-api-node-update---1312019
MEDIA COVERAGE OF STEEM & STEEMIT INC
Captainaltcoin.com - How about that for decentralization: Steemit censoring content on their platform
Heavy - The Dark Overlord Update: Hacker Group Banned on Steemit, Reddit & Twitter
This is #42 (13 Jan '19) of this daily news service.
Please let me know of any important posts or key data that should be included. Comment below or message me on Discord Pennsif#9921
[ graphics by 
Hive account@pennsif ]
]