Bitshares oligarchy rearing it's head

[Newmine]

The new Bitshares PR initiative/censorship of the Dev teams transparency and often candid posts is now in full effect. The initiative is at the order of a few "Chinese" stake holders that control large amounts of BTS. They have been angry at Bytemaster since the merger and are now threatening him with divesting and killing the BTS price if he doesn't hand over the reins to Bitshares. Since BItshares likes to call itself a company, this development is akin to a hostile corporate takeover, except that the raiding parties have the ability to kill the price in such an illiquid market. These hostiles are also contemplating a roll back or deletion of "unfairly" distributed shares, namely 30 million BTS that were given to 1 person for absolutely nothing. As I agree with the fact that the person deserves no shares that were given, this takeover and quasi black mail is a major red flag for something that is supposed to be decentralized/ distributed/democratic. This is not what a cryptocurrency is supposed to be.

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[barwizi]

Tell me more

[MisO69]

Who did they give 30 million to for doing nothing? What was their reasoning? Can you provide links please.

[matt608]

Utter nonsense, the OP is referring to a single forum post that was moderated rather rashly and open discussion has continued since. 

What is really "rearing it's head" in BitShares is a professional crowdfunding platform which received seed funding from a world famous VC: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=13428.msg175507#msg175507

[fundomatic]

The new Bitshares PR initiative/censorship of the Dev teams transparency and often candid posts is now in full effect. The initiative is at the order of a few "Chinese" stake holders that control large amounts of BTS. They have been angry at Bytemaster since the merger and are now threatening him with divesting and killing the BTS price if he doesn't hand over the reins to Bitshares. Since BItshares likes to call itself a company, this development is akin to a hostile corporate takeover, except that the raiding parties have the ability to kill the price in such an illiquid market. These hostiles are also contemplating a roll back or deletion of "unfairly" distributed shares, namely 30 million BTS that were given to 1 person for absolutely nothing. As I agree with the fact that the person deserves no shares that were given, this takeover and quasi black mail is a major red flag for something that is supposed to be decentralized/ distributed/democratic. This is not what a cryptocurrency is supposed to be.

This is why they had to change from PTS to BTS. Don't be fooled Bitshares is far more a scam then NxT could ever get.

Here is a good read on how BTS came about and PTS role in the process.
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=14019.0

[Pheonike]

The new Bitshares PR initiative/censorship of the Dev teams transparency and often candid posts is now in full effect. The initiative is at the order of a few "Chinese" stake holders that control large amounts of BTS. They have been angry at Bytemaster since the merger and are now threatening him with divesting and killing the BTS price if he doesn't hand over the reins to Bitshares. Since BItshares likes to call itself a company, this development is akin to a hostile corporate takeover, except that the raiding parties have the ability to kill the price in such an illiquid market. These hostiles are also contemplating a roll back or deletion of "unfairly" distributed shares, namely 30 million BTS that were given to 1 person for absolutely nothing. As I agree with the fact that the person deserves no shares that were given, this takeover and quasi black mail is a major red flag for something that is supposed to be decentralized/ distributed/democratic. This is not what a cryptocurrency is supposed to be.

NewFud(newmine) is just trying to spread FUD. Anyone who has followed BitShares for awhile understands why good PR is importing. Since BitShares has a large Eastern community it important that information is presented in a clear manner. It is very easy for something to be mis-interpreted.

[Newmine]

Who did they give 30 million to for doing nothing? What was their reasoning? Can you provide links please.

They dropped 30 million of the 500 million expanded cap to Adam of FollowMyVote. As part of the merger Bitshares bought the VOTE DAC out which was allocating a major percentage of its own shares to VOTES devs and founder(Adam). bytemaster convinced some of the koolaid drinkers that Adam's DAC was going to kill bitshares because Adam set aside that enormous allocation of VOTE shares to pay devs, mainly bytemaster. bytemaster under the guise of trying to satisfy AGS donors who donated after the Bitshares Exchange donor period ended said he had to D something for them and would thus walk away from the flagship DAC to go get paid by VOTE. This caused him to come up with the great scheme of merging the DACs and paying Adam that huge sum of BTS. It has now come to light that VOTE had no killer app that could "change everything" as bytemaster claimed in his sales pitch pre merger.

I'll get you links after work.

[DecentralizeEconomics]

[MisO69]

Who did they give 30 million to for doing nothing? What was their reasoning? Can you provide links please.

They dropped 30 million of the 500 million expanded cap to Adam of FollowMyVote. As part of the merger Bitshares bought the VOTE DAC out which was allocating a major percentage of its own shares to VOTES devs and founder(Adam). bytemaster convinced some of the koolaid drinkers that Adam's DAC was going to kill bitshares because Adam set aside that enormous allocation of VOTE shares to pay devs, mainly bytemaster. bytemaster under the guise of trying to satisfy AGS donors who donated after the Bitshares Exchange donor period ended said he had to D something for them and would thus walk away from the flagship DAC to go get paid by VOTE. This caused him to come up with the great scheme of merging the DACs and paying Adam that huge sum of BTS. It has now come to light that VOTE had no killer app that could "change everything" as bytemaster claimed in his sales pitch pre merger.

I'll get you links after work.

Thanks.

[Este Nuno]

One of the last threads I read here Stan spoke about how all the devs were getting alpha-geek Google style salaries until recently. That doesn't exactly make me picture "broke-ass" devs.

Also, I think the whole 'NXT millionaires' thing has probably done more harm than good and has given people a skewed perception of NXT. NXT's reputation as a poorly distributed currency doesn't really seem to connect with the reality in my experience thus far. And a lot of people seemingly dismiss NXT outright based on that skewed perception of a very poorly distributed currency.

[Newmine]

"what you have just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

[DecentralizeEconomics]

Can anyone provide the original forum post from Bitsharestalk before it was heavily moderated?

[achimsmile]

NXT is huge because its exclusive IPO made 8 people millionaires

The Nxt IPO was open for everyone for almost 2 months, here on btt. Yet, only 73 people invested.
Only 8 people had the balls to invest the huge amount of 1 BTC.
Arter the IPO, the price spiked and the 8 invetors made a large amount of money (many of them sold early)

I don't see any problem here, do you?
Since then people have this distorted perception of Nxt, because they didn't have the balls to invest or didn't know about Nxt then.

[achimsmile]

NXT's reputation as a poorly distributed currency doesn't really seem to connect with the reality in my experience thus far.

An example for peoples logic:

Community 1 has 20 users. Their currency is evenly distributed
Thus, each of them holds 5% of the total supply.
OMG look at the bad distribution! It must be a scam.

Community 2 has 1000 users, also evenly distributed
each one holds 0.1%
Wow, look at the good distributon!

Now if you look at the largest Bitcoin whale (1.25%), and compare it to the largest Nxt whale (5%), and compare the size of their userbase, the misconception becomes clear.

[DecentralizeEconomics]

NXT's reputation as a poorly distributed currency doesn't really seem to connect with the reality in my experience thus far.

An example for peoples logic:

Community 1 has 20 users. Their currency is evenly distributed
Thus, each of them holds 5% of the total supply.
OMG look at the bad distribution! It must be a scam.

Community 2 has 1000 users, also evenly distributed
each one holds 0.1%
Wow, look at the good distributon!

Now if you look at the largest Bitcoin whale (1.25%), and compare it to the largest Nxt whale (5%), and compare the size of their userbase, the misconception becomes clear.

Satoshi has 1 Million BTC or 4.76% of BTC's total eventual supply.

[ThomasVeil]

Is bitcoinjesus2.0 trolling or defending Bitshares? Can't tell.

Can anyone provide the original forum post from Bitsharestalk before it was heavily moderated?

Do you mean the original Blogpost the thread is linking to? That one is removed from bytemaster's site "for a general revision based on community input", but you can read it via google chache. Copied it here:

Bitshares now has a professional PR initiative
Posted by The Spokesman on February 24, 2015.

Bitshares has come a long way since its debut. We have many achievements on the development front in the past few months, and our market cap had reached several milestones during that time. Despite the current setback, we still strongly believe that we will prevail over all the challenges that we would face moving forward, because we have a solid technology, an amazing development team and the support from a community that has been enduring the challenges with us every step of the way. For that, we’re forever grateful.

The issues that we’re facing

In every journey, we would learn more about our strength and weakness along the way. We should embrace our strength and recognize our weakness. Either we evolve faster than the others to further the cause and avoid mistakes, or we would be defeated by those who could. It’s as simple as that.

Bitshares platform and market pegged assets like BitUSD are our greatest achievement so far, it’s working. And it could have the potential to change the world as we know. The accuracy of the peg matters, but the issue with low market depth and low liquidity have been hindering the progress of mass adoption. If we can’t improve the situation, it would be hard to convince big businesses and merchants to adopt BitAssets. Without the mass adoption of BitAssets, Bitshares can not go any further in the long run.

We need better PR to further our cause

Market depth and liquidity are two indicators of investors’ confidence. Without securing investors’ confidence in a large scale, everything that we’re trying to build would be based purely on a dream. After reviewing our past, we’ve come to the conclusion that we need better PR management to further our cause. Because apparently while we kept ignoring the need for perfect PR due to our limitations and our idealism, every major competitor in the Crypto 2.0 space are taking advantage of our mistakes, they have professional PR teams literally armed to their teeth and gaining more attention even from our long term supporters; they’re gaining more serious long term investors for their advantage in PR. We will have to be adapted to the situation, no matter how hard that changes could be. We must survive first and thrive on the trail of mistakes that we left behind, and move on from there.

The developers (namely Core Developers) are in a unique place in the eco-system at this early stage. This fact has made them impossible to propose any changes or make any remarks without affecting the market and investors’ confidence at some point. We need to do better than that, seeing how that has cost us deeply.

Our solution for PR issues

After careful consideration, the Core Developers would like to appoint DACx, a cornerstone business of the Bitshares ecosystem founded by Mr. James Gong (aka. Baozou) that could bring us to a place where we could only have dreamed of, as the official spokesman (the “Spokesman”) on behalf of the Core Developers to take over the PR initiative. Bytemaster and the other Core Developers will accordingly be cooperating with this PR initiative moving forward and defer to the Spokesman in any PR matters. Bytemaster believes that such a team with impressive PR management skills will significantly enhance both the intra-community communications and the investors’ confidence on the prospect of Bitshares, thus bringing us a greater step forward.

Rest assured, the Core Developers, as led by Bytemaster, will be working closely with the Spokesman on information disclosure, in a different manner from what the community members experienced, in order to prevent any further PR mistakes that could easily ruin the achievements that we work so hard for. Things have to change from now on because this exciting and difficult journey has taught us that we shouldn’t do whatever makes us comfortable, and that we should do whatever it takes to make us stronger and undefeatable.

The general principle of this PR appointment is to empower the Spokesman to exclusively represent the Core Developers in terms of publicity and to be the only outlet in terms of information disclosure. In this connection, the Spokesman will be publishing detailed PR guidelines from time to time for the parties involved to follow. Below sets out some of them and more will come:

•   The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should neither propose any drastic changes to Bitshares nor speak of their ideas thereof on the forum until extensive research has been done properly, a firm resolution among the Core Developers has been made and the Spokesman grants clearance to the release of that proposal.
     
• 
     The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should make no comment on any subject on the forum unless approved by and posted through the Spokesman. Bug reports and their discussion should take place on github.
  
         
• The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should not disclose sensitive information of potential partnerships, collaborations or arrangement with any other organization unless approved by and communicated through the Spokesman.
  
       
• The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should not air their internal discussions or debates on any open issue until all the underlying facts are ascertained, a well-founded conclusion has been drawn, and the Spokesman grants clearance to that disclosure.
  
       
• The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should never comment on any other crypto-currency or project on the forum unless approved by and posted through the Spokesman.
  
         
• The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should not answer any question regarding Bitshares’ development or prospect or heed any request to predict anything about Bitshares or give forward-looking comments unless the relevant questions or requests are directed by the Spokesman to the Core Developers and the answers of the Core Developers are approved by and communicated through the Spokesman.
  
     
• Always keep in mind that anything a Core Developer may say, no matter in the capacity of a Core Developer or a community member, will have potential impact on the market. It’s hard, if not impossible, to cure the damage that could caused.

Conclusion

Again, change is always hard, as every great achievement in the river of human history. We hope the community can understand our needs for change. We hope our supporters and investors can keep their trust in us. We hope that changes like this will make us stronger and move around all the obstacles that lies on our way forward. Bitshares will be unstoppable because we can always do better than what we’re doing right now.

[EvilDave]

Our solution for PR issues
*.....cut stuff*

The general principle of this PR appointment is to empower the Spokesman to exclusively represent the Core Developers in terms of publicity and to be the only outlet in terms of information disclosure. In this connection, the Spokesman will be publishing detailed PR guidelines from time to time for the parties involved to follow. Below sets out some of them and more will come:

      The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should neither propose any drastic changes to Bitshares nor speak of their ideas thereof on the forum until extensive research has been done properly, a firm resolution among the Core Developers has been made and the Spokesman grants clearance to the release of that proposal.
       

       The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should make no comment on any subject on the forum unless approved by and posted through the Spokesman. Bug reports and their discussion should take place on github.

           
    The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should not disclose sensitive information of potential partnerships, collaborations or arrangement with any other organization unless approved by and communicated through the Spokesman.

         
    The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should not air their internal discussions or debates on any open issue until all the underlying facts are ascertained, a well-founded conclusion has been drawn, and the Spokesman grants clearance to that disclosure.

         
    The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should never comment on any other crypto-currency or project on the forum unless approved by and posted through the Spokesman.

           
    The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should not answer any question regarding Bitshares’ development or prospect or heed any request to predict anything about Bitshares or give forward-looking comments unless the relevant questions or requests are directed by the Spokesman to the Core Developers and the answers of the Core Developers are approved by and communicated through the Spokesman.

       
    Always keep in mind that anything a Core Developer may say, no matter in the capacity of a Core Developer or a community member, will have potential impact on the market. It’s hard, if not impossible, to cure the damage that could caused.

I cannot f**king believe that someone has managed to come up with this BS, and I cannot believe that any crypto-community would accept this lying down (like good dogs...)

This is pure centralised corporatism.

[robrigo]

Our solution for PR issues
*.....cut stuff*

The general principle of this PR appointment is to empower the Spokesman to exclusively represent the Core Developers in terms of publicity and to be the only outlet in terms of information disclosure. In this connection, the Spokesman will be publishing detailed PR guidelines from time to time for the parties involved to follow. Below sets out some of them and more will come:

      The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should neither propose any drastic changes to Bitshares nor speak of their ideas thereof on the forum until extensive research has been done properly, a firm resolution among the Core Developers has been made and the Spokesman grants clearance to the release of that proposal.
      

       The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should make no comment on any subject on the forum unless approved by and posted through the Spokesman. Bug reports and their discussion should take place on github.

          
    The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should not disclose sensitive information of potential partnerships, collaborations or arrangement with any other organization unless approved by and communicated through the Spokesman.

        
    The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should not air their internal discussions or debates on any open issue until all the underlying facts are ascertained, a well-founded conclusion has been drawn, and the Spokesman grants clearance to that disclosure.

        
    The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should never comment on any other crypto-currency or project on the forum unless approved by and posted through the Spokesman.

          
    The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should not answer any question regarding Bitshares’ development or prospect or heed any request to predict anything about Bitshares or give forward-looking comments unless the relevant questions or requests are directed by the Spokesman to the Core Developers and the answers of the Core Developers are approved by and communicated through the Spokesman.

      
    Always keep in mind that anything a Core Developer may say, no matter in the capacity of a Core Developer or a community member, will have potential impact on the market. It’s hard, if not impossible, to cure the damage that could caused.

I cannot f**king believe that someone has managed to come up with this BS, and I cannot believe that any crypto-community would accept this lying down (like good dogs...)

This is pure centralised corporatism.

Do your research, this wasn't accepted lying down "like good dogs", in fact it met heavy criticism from the Western community because openness attracted most of us to the project in the first place. The draft they posted was just that, a draft. It shouldn't have been published without more peer review, as you can see the English has a lot of grammatical errors.

These issues were discussed on a Mumble hangout today with participants from both China and the West.

A big issue is communication breakdown, i.e. a dev posts their thoughts or a proposal and the message is lost in translation with Chinese investors thinking that the proposal is a fact.

I think what will help these things a lot is built in governance tools that will allow BTS holders to vote on proposals and gauge the support of new features or changes to the protocol.

Censorship will not be acceptable but tact must be taken when proposing drastic changes to the way things are being done. The biggest example of this was the merger of VOTE and DNS into BitSharesX to rebrand as BitShares. This major change was necessary to focus the development team and avoid competition between DACs, but shook investor confidence as a big proposal. It also introduced the crowdhiring paradigm to continue funding devs, marketers, and startups in the ecosystem. This is why we see the East trying to impose some PR control- they are concerned about the major minds behind BitShares making more PR blunders. We are all human and Dan might not realize the PR mistakes at the time he made him. That doesn't mean there is ill intent or "centralized corporatism". You are inferring one blog post speaks for an entire community.

This is a learning experience as a new form of human organizational structure takes form. You are right, BitShares IS a company. But one unlike the world has ever known. We are learning how efficiently organize in a decentralized manner and sync up everyones skills, resources, professional networks, and geographical locations to change the way money is used in society.

Remember it isn't NXT vs. Bitshares, it's fiat vs. crypto. It's centralized and corrupt power structures and invasive identity tracking (i.e. the current money system) vs. fair and trust minimized, more efficient money systems that bolster liberty and freedom.

[ThomasVeil]

This is pure centralised corporatism.

But they've never been hiding that. They've been proud of it - and see it as advantage. Which in some regards it certainly is.

Censorship will not be acceptable

I find the reason of intercultural-communication interesting - and understandable.
It's at tough problem to solve - but the solution here is pretty much the definition of censoring. It's a slippery slope.

Remember it isn't NXT vs. Bitshares, it's fiat vs. crypto.

+5%
Though critizising each other has good sides.
... and fighting fiat-trolls is too easy .

[DecentralizeEconomics]

Our solution for PR issues
*.....cut stuff*

The general principle of this PR appointment is to empower the Spokesman to exclusively represent the Core Developers in terms of publicity and to be the only outlet in terms of information disclosure. In this connection, the Spokesman will be publishing detailed PR guidelines from time to time for the parties involved to follow. Below sets out some of them and more will come:

      The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should neither propose any drastic changes to Bitshares nor speak of their ideas thereof on the forum until extensive research has been done properly, a firm resolution among the Core Developers has been made and the Spokesman grants clearance to the release of that proposal.
       

       The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should make no comment on any subject on the forum unless approved by and posted through the Spokesman. Bug reports and their discussion should take place on github.

           
    The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should not disclose sensitive information of potential partnerships, collaborations or arrangement with any other organization unless approved by and communicated through the Spokesman.

         
    The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should not air their internal discussions or debates on any open issue until all the underlying facts are ascertained, a well-founded conclusion has been drawn, and the Spokesman grants clearance to that disclosure.

         
    The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should never comment on any other crypto-currency or project on the forum unless approved by and posted through the Spokesman.

           
    The Core Developers (including any member thereof individually) should not answer any question regarding Bitshares’ development or prospect or heed any request to predict anything about Bitshares or give forward-looking comments unless the relevant questions or requests are directed by the Spokesman to the Core Developers and the answers of the Core Developers are approved by and communicated through the Spokesman.

       
    Always keep in mind that anything a Core Developer may say, no matter in the capacity of a Core Developer or a community member, will have potential impact on the market. It’s hard, if not impossible, to cure the damage that could caused.

I cannot f**king believe that someone has managed to come up with this BS, and I cannot believe that any crypto-community would accept this lying down (like good dogs...)

This is pure centralised corporatism.

So, now we have the Chinese Communists restricting the flow of information to the community with the Western Corporatists giving them the go ahead.  Talk about a perfect example of how there is ABSOLUTELY no difference between Communism and Corporatism.  This post got deleted because they're trying to cover their real agenda.

I like how Stan, Dan and the Bitshares' team attempts to portray themselves as Libertarians, but then the next thing you know, they're gagging everybody and hiring a PR firm to do all their talking for them.  Maybe I'm mistaken but I thought Libertarians believed in free speech.  What a complete joke.

I thought PR was Stan's job.  Does this mean Stan's getting fired?  Who decided to hire this PR firm?

This is a learning experience as a new form of human organizational structure takes form. You are right, BitShares IS a company. But one unlike the world has ever known.

You're wrong.  Bitshares is exactly like every other corporation.  Their name is legion.

Remember it isn't NXT vs. Bitshares

It is free, decentralized crypto vs corporatized crypto.