Hey, @practicalthought.

From what I've been able to gather, regardless of how you go, at least with the centralized exchanges that are headquartered somewhere, you will need to do KYC because of the laws of the land. Maybe folks like Blocktrades could circumvent that or put it off and wait for the Feds to catch up at some point, but it seems to me that they are erring on the side of caution when it comes to things like that. As far as I'm concerned, if dollars aren't involved, it's none of the federal government's business, and even then, it's very iffy because it's my money, not theirs.

However, they believe all money is theirs, even money that doesn't exist yet and won't for 100 years. That's why they're borrowing it now. :)

So, yeah, KYC and hoops. I keep thinking we're going to see the rise of more decentralized exchanges, but I haven't heard about any projects like that in a long time, and I'm not even sure what might exist. I'm sure people would flock to them as soon as they were set up.

re: STEEM

I've been there daily checking around, reading this and that like I do on HIVE. It started to feel lonely a long while ago for me, but now, it's getting to the point where the tumbleweeds are starting to roll in. There are still plenty of people there, though, I think, but the prominent ones seem to be coalescing around each other, and then there are those who are basically curating and not doing much else, so engagement is down.

I've had more engagement on posts here in a little over two weeks of HIVE than I had for about a month on STEEM before Justin Sun bought Steemit Inc, and it went down from there during the month-plus before the fork.

However, while HIVE is basically STEEM still with a new name and a different outlook (we'll see how long that lasts), I've put in two-plus years worth of work on STEEM, and I still have stake on STEEM, and I would still like to produce stuff on STEEM if I can figure out how to do that without duplication.

Fake volume ultimately will get STEEM nowhere, unless the masses somehow are fooled by it and show up, but for the interim, I don't mind the lift. It helped quite a bit on my STEEM to HIVE adventure this morning.

re: all well

We're plugging along. I'm also waiting on UI to kick in, though, because I was laid off the beginning of last week (so it's been two weeks off from work). But the owner has been touch with me a couple of times and he seems to still want me around, so it sounds like unless the floor totally falls out I have a job at whatever point this might be all over. Not look too promising right now because of all the extreme measures they're going to in most states when in reality they should be only doing it, if at all, in the higher urban areas where it's spreading like wild fire.

So, anyway, no need to douse machines with soap right now because no one, aside from maybe some employees providing take out, are using them. The last time I saw what few I did that last week, they were already powered off.