The News

Nobody can say that Steem and Hive lack drama, especially since Justin Sun came along with his sack of money. This week we had the threat of a new hardfork that would reduce the power down to 4 weeks, but also confiscate the funds of over 60 accounts that had dared to defy Justin. Actually, some of the accounts did not appear to be guilty of anything.

Come the dreaded day the 23 million were siphoned off to a new account called community321. The funny part is that account promptly sent it on to Bittrex with a note saying it was stolen goods. Justin and one of his puppet witnesses got a note saying 'Stealing is wrong'. I think Justin himself claimed this when Steemit's stake was frozen.

It is not confirmed who controls that account. I believe it was claimed using Anonsteem. If the keys were not changed then somebody could have taken advantage. Steemit could have created an account themselves, but they have lost anyone who really knows how things work.

This caused great mirth in the Hive world. Of course it puts Bittrex in an awkward position as they may get legal threats. It was looking like they would return the Steem, but Steemit forced through another hardfork to lock the community321 account.

I do not know if people will get their Steem back, but this makes Steemit look incompetent. At least I can extract me Steem a little quicker now. I had another power down today anyway. The problem is that exchanges such as Blocktrades and Ionomy are not accepting Steem any more. They do not want to deal with a wallet where the source code is not public. @adetorrent made me aware of an alternative method documented by @libertycrypto27. This involves using a service that will move it to Hive Engine for a 1% fee. Then you can sell it for Hive. I am in the process of doing that. You may not get the best exchange rate by this route, but we have few alternatives.

I used some of my Steem to upgrade my @steemmonsters summoners. I moved them all up a level. The game is moving to Hive next month, so I am happy to keep playing.

The Doghouse

There is not a huge amount of abuse to downvote on Hive, but Kingscrown is still self-voting his posts. He has other accounts too. Most of this is being wiped out. Huaren News is also being wiped out. He does retaliate though. I flagged one of his Steem posts and he hit back on Hive. He has a mass of bot accounts that follow up, but they have no real impact. I did not lose much and a couple of dollars is no big deal anyway.

Good Hiveans

I will just say that I recommend people stop posting to Steem now. We do not want to add value to such a corrupt platform. People have been doing this to 'milk' rewards, but you will probably make less now that Steem Auto has shut down.

• @bozz has become a friend. He posts about food, music and life.
• @silviabeneforti is an artist posting her work most days. You can buy pieces from her. She may accept Hive payments.
• @scalextrix is another who got some retaliation for daring to flag the people above. He posts on a range of topics.
• @mstafford is the brains behind the @exhaust dapp that logs various kinds of exercise.
• @drwwatson are creating a horror comic that I have bought a copy of. I hope to have it fairly soon.

Please post your own recommendations in comments or a #FollowFriday post.

High five!