On VIVA and TradeQwik - A Heart to Heart from Dawn - August 5, 2018
Did you know that according to a Bitcoinist article, 92% of blockchain projects have already failed; their average lifespan just over 1 year?
What VIVA and TradeQwik went through was terrible and inconvenient. What made it worse was that the majority of our supporters came from a small and tight-knit group of people on Steemit from which some of those relationships may never recover.
We were building a new paradigm; so many facets were possible within it. In our excitement, we took on too much at one time and failed in every way possible. It was a dreadful blow to everyone involved.
“Failure” allowed us to see all the mistakes that were possible and we did that spectacularly! Not to make light of anything, it's been a battle not to be in the 92 percentile. While going through the audit process, we've been recuperating, operating, developing and testing our vision on barely a shoestring budget. We've also learned from every single one of those mistakes.
Complete audit results are still pending. All 1227 customer accounts have been addressed, yet a few still require attention. Employee and partner accounts are currently being worked on, and are also winding to a close. There are still many people that have not responded to our final email, settlement is imminent, so please check your email.
Our legal counsel is addressing the special circumstances surrounding VIVA and TradeQwik, which formed around the time of the unfortunate arrest of Steve Morrey. While we cannot discuss pending litigation, we can address some of the critical changes in our infrastructure: the name change from VIVA to AVIV, as well as items which are ready to be deployed.
Today's letter is to inform you that the VIVA/AVIV project is far from dead! In the coming letters, we will be addressing the reasons behind our new name, our move to the Ethereum Network, the ERC-20 bridge tokens, AML/KYC, team leaders, new website, and a road map leading up to and beyond the Serenity fork.
As we re-emerge with true deliverables, our hope is to re-build confidence and support, and surpass expectations.
Thank you,
Dawn Parker-Waites
VIVA Holdings LLC
vivaholdingsllc@gmail.com
Email Issue
In an attempt to email our list of vivos and Crown Holders, our email campaign was not approved because they felt this content was against their updated Acceptable Use Policy, regardless of the fact that it was a pre-existing mail list. Several crypto-based projects are receiving the same problem with reaching their whitelist via email through common distribution services. We are actively searching for alternatives to this problem. Our temporary solution is to post our public messages on Steemit, Medium and LinkedIn
Uhmmm... I thought Viva coin is dead. Longtime I don't visit tradequwik
Posted using Partiko Android
Not dead, not sleeping. Just busy and down to a tiny handful of people who have been working tirelessly to sort out the problems.
What a load of rubbish. You forgot to mention the scam aspect of it all.
Drawing people into using an exchange which then just stole their money.
The creation of new and more useless tokens on said exchange designed to fleece people out of their money.
I dread to think how many TQS I purchased.
And no I didn't get an email.
This wasn't just an unfortunate failure. It was an orchestrated scam by Steve and sometimes it is hard to believe that those close to him. I.e you were neither complicit or dangerously negligent
Remember this, there was never even a Blockchain despite what people were told. Built on lies
Downvoted so as to not allow other people to be sucked into it
TQS are now officially part of @tqnext I'll be giving details on it soon so to stay in the loop on that, you should follow @tqnext. Current status is that the backend is ready for launch, I need to find some good front end talent to make it usable. TQS will be a requirement to setup a worker node for tqnext. Worker nodes earn the trading fees because @tqnext is 100% decentralized with no funds kept in wallets nor in databases. We learned some hard lessons about that from this collapse.
If you're really interested in the value of your TQS, I invite you to participate in the testnet burn in period before we move to main. I'll give details shortly, I just need to finish up the official announcement and run it by the others so they aren't caught out in left field.
That's categorically untrue. You believe this because you got erroneous information early on from "insiders", who did their best to divert your attention from the facts and in most cases simply invented stories to suit their fancy. I was an easy scapegoat, but keep in mind that financially I remain personally liable. I've never shirked that, never denied it and never even attempted to cast it away. But I and others remained silent in order to allow the process to work instead of throwing around baseless allegations and so called "tell all insider stories". Do you really think I would be here now if this had ever been a scam? It was a project, there was a failure. It was systemic and critical and because we did not fully understand all the details of what was going wrong, efforts to fix it, made things worse. The failure was MUCH worse than initially thought and I own that failure. But we're going to recover from it and we'll be much stronger for it.
We are at the point now that we know the "what happened", and it's a matter of bring everyone back to the table to sort out "why did this happen" and "how do we move forward from this". I'm not even going to ask for apologies as long as each fiduciary does the minimum work required of them to return your funds to you. If they fail to do so, then I'll take care of you myself, as I always have. Later I'll see what options I have with them.
As I mentioned in my reply to the person posing as @tradeqwik, there were fiduciaries put into place once we recognized that funds were leaving that shouldn't be. Each fiduciary was given a wallet for a specific currency. Some have done well and not touched funds, others have used them for personal gain. Many of the people who spoke the loudest against us are the same people who originally stepped forward as fiduciaries to protect customer funds while we went over the process of determining what exactly happened. We are now examining their activities and determining what the best course forward is with them. I'll leave off finger pointing, because it doesn't matter it only detracts from the matter at hand. At the end of the day I'm the one liable for your funds and I'm the one who will get them back for you.
Yes there was, but any blockchain is only as good as its ability to keep consensus. Please see my reply to the person posing as @tradeqwik on the subject.
You should reach out to Meredith and Sherry.
I'm replying to your comment about TQS in a seperate reply since @tqnext and the issues you bring up here are separate things.
When will my funds be returned to me. I have verified my account balance several months ago yet I have seen nothing since. I have a not so insignificant amount in there...
@meesterboom If you want to be able to recover your funds, you need to stop downvoting every reply to you, merely because it's contradicting your pre-conceived notions, no matter where you got them from.
We are trying to communicate the path forward to you and to all customers. This path forward includes returning customer funds and making you whole again.
If you downvote and actively interfere with the efforts then this is an indication to me that you'd like to be put at the back of the line.
Notice that I am not retaliating with downvotes of my own. This is because I recognize that you feel hurt, scared and angry. It is not my place to apologize here for what you've been through. But I'm going to anyways. It's been a scary year, I accept fault for my part in it, but you've never really heard what my part is, only rumors and accusations that literally run the gamut.
But we are now where we need the community to have the information we've learned and if you prevent dissemination of this information, then you are preventing others from recovering their funds and that means we need to expend even more effort to track them down and get them set to rights.
As was mentioned above, mass emailing doesn't work anymore. So steemit is what we've got.
We aren't asking ANYONE to put more money in. We're explaining how we're going to get you what's owed to you.
So please stop with the pointless retaliatory flags.
@meesterboom If you want to be able to recover your funds, you need to stop downvoting every reply to you, merely because it's contradicting your pre-conceived notions, no matter where you got them from.
No Steve, I don't need to do anything you say.
If you downvote and actively interfere with the efforts then this is an indication to me that you'd like to be put at the back of the line.
Oh goodness, is that almost like... a threat?
Notice that I am not retaliating with downvotes of my own. I recognize that you feel hurt, scared and angry.*
Retaliate all you like, I think you will find I am none of these things. I am astonished that you have come back to the well to see what else you can get from it.
but you've never really heard what my part is, only rumors and accusations that literally run the gamut.
I don't see any post declaring your part in it? Go on, tell us. You don't put out the fire by smoking a cigarette and chatting with your chums.
But we are now where we need the community to have the information we've learned and if you prevent dissemination of this information, then you are preventing others from recovering their funds and that means we need to expend even more effort to track them down and get them set to rights.
By flagging your post/comments I am not preventing anyone from viewing anything. All I am doing is greying them out, meaning just one more click to be made visible. I think after all the money that has been lost by people that they might be willing to take this one step.
So please stop with the pointless retaliatory flags.
They are not pointless, they are not retaliatory either. They are downvotes because I disagree with your content and worry for my poor fellow steemians that you are back with a new scam.
If you really spent 8 months getting to the bottom of it all and claiming you are solely responsible for peoples money then you would just have gotten them their money back.
You would have built up trust far better that way. Not by coming back and announcing a new scheme.
If you don't then it only serves to delay returning your funds to you.
No it's just a fact. We only have so many resources available to expend on making customers whole.
We have email addresses, but email lists are now banned for mass mailings by all mass mail services, therefore we have to try and reach out one by one. This was done, it's been crickets since then. We have to assume the email is not being received or it's being filtered.
The other mechanism is Steemit. If we find our efforts frustrated here, then we have to expend resources to track them down.
At no point are we asking ANYONE to give us more money unless they walked off with money that wasn't theirs. If we have money that belongs to you however, then you've been subjected to an audit and for all but a few complex accounts such a partners, the audit work is now complete and you need to come see the results and discuss them.
That's what I and the rest of us are here trying to do. It's not like we can do a mass send of crypto to random addresses and poof AVIV assets to a wallet you probably don't have yet. So if you'd like to get your money back, help us to make this effort visible, or at least stop making it invisible, so we can get the others theirs as well.
The alternative is to wait until we have expended all reasonable efforts to reach out to customers and are required to return remaining funds over to the Wyoming Department of the Treasury as lost and found funds, at which point you'd have to deal with them.
I never got an email.
There werent that many Viva customers, at least on steemit. Mail them individually. I could mail a thousand people in a day if I wanted to.
See, I dont give a hoot about any money I lost. Because thats it. It's lost
This is why Dawn is asking everyone, you included to send an email to vivaholdingsllc@gmail.com
The steem deposit history for @tradeqwik says otherwise
We did and that didn't work. Now we are returning to where we found most of them and letting them know what's up.
You might not, but others probably do and when we've finished expending all reasonable efforts to return these funds and reconcile accounts, we don't get to keep the money, we have to turn over the money and ALL information we have to The Wyoming State Treasurers Office and they will try to contact you too.
If that were true we wouldn't be here asking you to contact us so we can get it back to you. You money was never LOST. You turned your back on it after the exchange collapsed, because most exchanges that collapse never recover and never return funds.
But that doesn't mean we took it and kept it or blew it on wild parties or whatever.
I'm well aware that many people, former insiders included have told some really wild tales. I can't speak to their motives, but considering the projects they've since moved onto, it's an easy guess. I've been ever present, but silent because their stories don't matter to me, only delivering what was promised and when it was just me alone writing every line of code, I wasn't 100% certain I could thus I just stopped making announcement and let the others talk, but I kept trying anyways.
So your choices here amount to remain stubborn, do not accept the return of your funds and continue to believe whatever it is you've decided is your own personal truth. Or participate in the process, get your funds back and do whatever you want with that money.
There are assets here such a Crowns, VIVA and VIP in their new non-trademark infringing form, that will need overall control turned over to a governing body after funds have been disbursed. That control structure will be a board selected by the community. They can take the project anywhere they want after that. Dawn and myself will be stepping away from that. I've built the VIVA/AVIV governance model around the concept of this board, which is pretty much identical to the way it's described in the white paper.
There are assets such as Steem, SBD, BTC, BCH, ETH & LTC that were placed with fiduciaries as we came to realize the scope of the problem. These fiduciaries were all people selected from within the community to hold these assets specifically because we realized that tradeqwik.com was on the verge of collapsing and we did not want customer funds to be in danger. We felt the fiduciaries to be reputable people who had some skin in the game. It is now time to bring those fiduciaries back to the table and have them turn over funds to customers such as yourself who are owed money.
Then there are assets like TQS and RUM. This experience has taught me a lot about what can go wrong inside of an exchange. It has also taught me how to build something stronger. I've spent the last 8 months being hands off with the auditors and making myself available for questioning, but that isn't the only thing I've been doing the last 8 months. Most of that time has been spent analyzing the failure modes inside tradeqwik itself and also those inherent in all centralized exchanges. From there, I went to work developing and testing solutions to those problems. The end result of this is @tqnext. A completely decentralized exchange that exists across multiple blockchains. TQS holders are the ones who will own this. TQS holders are the ones who will profit from it. So your TQS is not lost, it is now more powerful than it has ever been. Whether you choose to participate actively or passively, you will receive a profit from it, which you can claim at any time and spend anyway you want. And because it's a DAPP, living on the blockchain itself, it's uncensorable and unstoppable, which is a feature that will be sorely needed as the world comes to regulate crypto-exchanges out of existance.
TQS used to be a profit sharing instrument only. Within TQNext, your TQS gives you the ability to control what coins will trade, what fees are charged and a host of other parameters. It also allows you to run a shard, this shard will allow you to further profit by being part of the distributed order match engine.
But I'm not asking anyone to buy any. I'm telling those who did buy, that they're leaving money on the table if they don't complete the audit process. Dawn is telling you to complete the audit process by reaching out to her.
RUM holders, I have something else for you, it's completed but needs a UI to really make it work. That token was always intended to become something a little different even by VIVA standards. I've worked on something that I hope you'll have fun with, once the UI work is complete and it's launch ready I'll make an announcement. Remember that there were only 42 of these tokens.
As for me...
My role here ends when the last person either gets their money back, or we are required by law to turn it over to the state. At that point I'm stepping away completely from AVIV, from crypto, even from @tqnext. I've worked on this project in its various incarnations for 5 years and frankly I'm exhausted and burnt out. But I made a promise that I would personally ensure each person was at least given the opportunity to get what belongs to them, and I always keep my promises. Even if it takes longer than I thought.
You might want to take Dawn up on her offer and compare where we are to the other 92% of blockchain projects that simply failed. The founders fought (doesn't matter, so did ours), and broke up (again so did ours) and walked away delivering nothing (not us).
We are barely 1 year post ICO. Despite enormous, catastrophic issues, we have developed and continue to develop everything promised, perhaps scaled back a little. But at no point have we thrown up our hands and walked away. We've learned a lot of lessons along the way, so it's time to explain the new design, so people can understand what they've already bought and let them make an educated decision as to the appropriate path forward for themselves.
I never got any mail too
Were you in the Viva debacle as well? I didn't know!
I converted some SBD and steem. OK, some is maybe understatement. I got crown and TQS. Enough said.
Ah, that is similar to me!
Hey William as far as the emails go couldn't you just use some sort of app or something to send mass emails?
You could simply sign up for another email account with another provider and then send the emails out in segmented quantities...maybe 5-10.
Maybe you could reach out to the audit team or some of us on steemit to help send these emails out to people.
Just some suggestions
Do you plan to transfer crowns and viva coins from the former tradeqwik accounts to the next new aviv exchange ?
Yes and no. The new exchange is @tqnext on here and you can follow it for details. You will be given your VIVA assets as the new AVIV assets. We had to change the name because during development a company in Saudi Arabia managed to secure a global trademark on the name VIVA and specifically viva cash in relation to financial services and money transfers. Other than the name, nothing else has changed.
You'll get a wallet, your Tokens will be deposited there. They are constructed in a manner to make it easy for any exchange to permit trading of the tokens. @tqnext will be able to trade them directly at launch, you don't transfer to the exchange per se, you merely grant the exchange permission to access. @tqnext is completely decentralized and the back end is ready for launch which is why I'm even bothering to be on steemit today at all. I'll setup a github and get the code up as quickly as possible.
I'm going to need a new whitepaper to discuss this design change, but from your POV they will be much easier to use.
Nice to hear from you !
Thank you! I really appreciate that. Kind words seem so rare now days. I'm glad to hear some.
You have to start with publishing amount of funds deposited on Tradeqwik exchange vs amount of funds available and specify actions you've made in order to track the missing funds.
There's no way around.
If @vivacoin were really trying to help and be honest, as with any other blockchain project, there would be transparency. That is something that was never shared nor it ever will for obvious reasons. The blockchain is all about honesty and even though Steven claimed to have one, there wasn't. Dawn Parker-Waites was the most unprofessional person to work with. Lashing out at her partners, unable to control her emotions, and unwilling to admit that she could not fill the role. On top of that, her claim that "it's not about the money, it's about helping people" was a load of BS as we all now know. We as a community have no choice but to question every single one of her actions alongside Steven Morrey's. All we want are transparency reports being uploaded. We want evidence of the audit. I think we deserve it. Doing otherwise only shows that there is something to be hidden, and well, we all know what that is. But let us remember that karma will take care of itself, and there are at least 11 hells to end up in.
The site steemit.com is ranked quite good by search engines, so for everyone who wants to check background of Glenna Dawn Parker this information will be available easily.
But I bet there's a bit more than just reputation at stake for her here.
I can see in the records that Viva Holdings LLC have submitted its annual tax report on
May 1 2018
I would be very much surprised if VHL did report all the money it got from the ICO as "profits".
It wouldn't need to. The state of Wyoming only taxes profits generated from in state activities, this is the reason WHY we chose Wyoming. You need to examine the federal income tax report. If you'd like we can probably post that in the next few days.
Yes, please do that. I think I'm not the only one interested to look into.
Since I'm not familiar with US laws, could you also enlighten me why VHL did not formally reported the insolvency issue (bankruptcy) to the authorities ?
I'll see what can be done about that. I'm not certain that has been filed yet due to the ongoing audit. But I'll find out for sure and get back to you on it.
Keep in mind that you were neither shareholders nor investors in VHL. If you held VIVA assets purchased from TQ, you bought a product from VHL with TQ functioning as the middleman. This means there was and is a huge debt that TQ (meaning me) owes to VHL (me, Dawn, a few others) and sussing out the size of that debt is another part of the audits. This is half of the problem I described as an insolvency.
TradeQwik wasn't ever a professional exchange. It was experimental software in beta test mode intended to power an economic engine of my own devising.
You have to start somewhere and we based TQ on what appeared to be a very solid opensource software solution. That software had a bug; the bug ate > 100% of reserves and thus also ate VHL's share of ICO funds in as much as said funds were on deposit with TQ.
TradeQwik was run as a sole proprietorship because there was no formal operating agreement between anyone, not even Dawn and myself. While there were negotiations to transfer to a partnership structure, with Joe and Rick being full partners, those negotiations never bore fruit and once the bug was uncovered I did not feel comfortable passing the buck. I still don't. We will get through this and turn lemons to lemonade.
There is a HUGE difference in between insolvency and bankruptcy.
Insolvency is any condition where you do not have immediate resources to pay current obligations such as operating expenses and salaries. For example, if you have to pay your electric bill and you don't have funds to cover it in your checking account, you are insolvent. You'll remain insolvent until you have enough in your checking account to pay the bill and get it paid.
This is an important distinction, because you can be partially or totally insolvent. TQ was partially insolvent. We could not pay operating expenses. The server hosting alone was $1,000s per month. We managed to reduce this to $500 per month and that helped. But it didn't solve the problem entirely.
Bankruptcy is a legal remedy for insolvency. It is not the only remedy, nor is it the only legal remedy. A loan, a share sale, a bond etc, are all equally valid remedies as is obtaining a legal claim against a debtor such as a court order directing those who owe you money to pay up or be jailed for contempt.
Bankruptcy should only be considered as a last resort.
Our insolvency was triggered by a bug in the code that ate all our reserves and gave it to our customers as free money.
Fortunately, most of the people who took advantage of the bug indicated a willingness to return funds if we could demonstrate they were found to have been a culprit.
Partial insolvency was exacerbated by the fact that I ceased accepting new deposits in order to prevent a full insolvency that would have impinged on customer funds. In otherwords, had we kept going with the withdrawal bug, this would have turned into a ponzi quickly. I stopped it before it came to that.
While we had no reserves left and thus were insolvent; a quick examination of the relevant blockchains showed we had just barely enough to cover customer balances if you summed deposits, subtracted withdrawals and factored in trades.
Independent proof of this was needed though and hiring a CPA to try and untangle who held what was not a viable option.
As for the rest of your question. Here in the USA, bankruptcy is a legal remedy against insolvency intended to protect the debtor not the creditors per se. It specifically exists to put a stop to individual creditor claims against a debtor, such as the aforementioned "Pay or be held in contempt" order I mentioned earlier.
Under US Law an individual may declare bankruptcy once every seven years under one of two chapters. Chapter 7 is liquidation.
Under liquidation all assets of the debtor are declared property of the court and seized; from there, these assets are divided amongst creditors proportional to their share of what is owed in aggregate and then the remaining balance is dismissed.
I have no assets to speak of, thus there is nothing to seize. But I did transfer assets to fiduciaries partly as a way to ensure that no customer funds would end up in the hands of debt collectors nor spurned people who felt they might have a valid claim as a debtor, employee, partner or other insider and try to assert it over the customers. I appear to have made a mistake clarifying that point with Rick, but I'm certain we'll get that resolved.
This was intended to be a very short term remedy to something that looked like a small bug, but turned out to be structural.
Chapter 13 is a restructuring. Under Chapter 13 no assets are seized, but they are frozen and the court orders that you undergo the same process we have here. A full audit of the books, and a negotiated repayment plan to all creditors. This repayment plan continues usually for 3 to 5 years at which time the bankruptcy is declared to be over and all remaining claims are dismissed.
Under bankruptcy law you would be considered a creditor, not an investor. You purchased cryptographic tokens and misc assets designed to track those tokens in terms of purchasing power parity by scaling the quantity of another asset contained therein. You did this for the purpose of speculating on a change in their price; you did not invest money nor deposit in the sense that you might with a professional broker dealer or a bank. It is a crucial distinction that seems to have been lost in all of the commotion.
It works in your favor in the event of a bankruptcy whether voluntary or forced, because investors, partners, insiders etc are always last to get anything while a creditor would be waiting in line with the remaining creditors, but stands a chance of at least getting something.
In my opinion a bankruptcy is an expensive and time consuming operation and having been on the wrong side of a bankruptcy where I was owed tens of thousands of dollars; I can tell you it is rare to see all creditors repaid let alone investors. The average is a $0.01 on the dollar. Furthermore those who owed money to the entity whether fiduciaries or beneficiaries of an accounting error could have their assets seized globally by a US Federal Bankruptcy Court and said assets sold to repay their debt to the entity that filed for bankruptcy. I'm trying hard to avoid that situation.
We avoid that by using an equally valid, arbitration process that presents a lot of very good alternatives.
In the whitepaper I designed VIVA to have a failure mode which functions in many ways like a Chapter 13 without the need to involve a court. According to the white paper, under the VIVA model; should a mint fail, the customer balances are carried over to remaining mints and the mints work with the insolvent mint owner to establish a repayment plan. This repayment plan can include freezing and intercepting all funds that would have normally gone to the mint owner and preventing transfer of his/her crowns. With TRs being sunk or sold until repayment is completed. This method works better than a bankruptcy because the failed mint owner's, Crowns, TRs, liquid VIVA and VIP are all used to repay the other mints who had to carry the customers. This Crown freeze would release after 5 years whether the Crown Holder actively participated or not, due to TR sinking and the fact our blockchain doesn't hold debt for more than 5 years.
The only mints in existence at the time were mine and they were not working correctly. Therefore that option didn't become an option I would not use that anyways.
Yet there have been lessons learned and I designed AVIV to be even more resilient against exchange collapse and TQNext itself is designed to be impossible to collapse.
So to answer your partially unasked question. Why didn't we just file for bankruptcy (notify the authorities of our insolvency)
The only thing a court would do in the case of tradeqwik whether Chapter 7 or 13 is stop further litigation against the person seeking protection and the court would order either a liquidation or a restructuring. We're already going beyond what those remedies would necessitate and thus we haven't bothered the court with it.
More importantly, I made a promise to take full responsibility for the state of things and make every customer whole, I'm doing this because I always keep my promises, even if I'm a bit slow about it.
Let alone liquid assets, I've bought software licence to operate a mint on viva blockchain, which was never delivered. In my country it would be very easy for me to claim back money and force bankruptcy afterwards if necessary.
In many cases the voluntary bankruptcy would be more benefitial for the debitor.
In my country the court would do more then that, it would also give me access to the audits full financial data - the information you keep on hiding away from me.
Having been on both sides of bankruptcy process I can tell you that it very much depends either the bankruptcy was premeditated or organic.
I've invited you to testing, you've replied and said you weren't interested. There really isn't much else I can offer at this point. We're barely a year post-ICO. We've not asked anyone for a dime more. It's being delivered, testers would speed that up.
That doesn't hold here. If you forced a bankruptcy, it would start as a Chapter 13 against TQ as a sole prop and then convert to a Chapter 7 against me personally because TQ is not a going concern at the moment. I don't have a house, car, bank account, retirement plan nor do I have a regular income. I've held off on going Chapter 7 because it wouldn't work out for anyone and it would just make my life harder in the future as I struggle to rebuild credit. It would dismiss the debt though and I'd rather not be forced into breaking a promise like that.
Which would do what exactly?
Here as a creditor in a disputed bankruptcy you would be entitled to something similar, but unless you were a registered shareholder in a corporation the complete books would be off limits.
What you would see is a list of assets and liabilities, in as much as it relates to debts owed.
It would not show you the daily expenses except as required to demonstrate a need to reduce the share of income owed to the creditors in order to continue operations.
You would also be limited to the court's interpretation of this data and the record would be sealed and given to you only under said seal. If you disseminated even that data you'd go to jail for contempt of court until you found a way to unleak it.
There's nothing being hidden. Even now, everyone is acknowledging that you're entitled to all records as they directly relate to you. That was the point of the whole audit and reaching out thing. Other people's records are their own private financial data under the law and we owe a duty of care to each customer to protect that information. It's a legal obligation, you don't get to see another person's records unless he or she willingly shares them with you.
That's not the case here. Here both sides are required to demonstrate they have attempted every reasonable resolution including binding arbitration before you can even start a bankruptcy. Furtheremore, the debtor or rather his lawyer is allowed to tap any and all assets to pay legal fees for this. That tends to reduce the money available to the creditors. If resolution cannot be made outside of the court, the court will prioritize those who have the largest debts owed, in our case, those who had the most in real dollar value as of the date of bankruptcy. This means that if you had 1 BTC in TQ and we were forced to go through bankruptcy today, you would see a dollar amount of about $6,000 as a line item liability with your name next to it and a long list of others above and below. The next step would be liquidating all assets and then making folks whole proportional to the dollar value owed.
Your country has some very strange bankruptcy laws. It's good that VHL was incorporated as a Wyoming entity and TQ remained a sole prop.
In the meantime, it feels to me like you're upset and you want to see some heads roll. You've said elsewhere that founders should reduce their stake by 90% and you claim that other people's private financial information is being hidden from you.
This effort isn't about that all that. We aren't here to see heads roll or for vengeance or even to lay blame. If you want to lay blame, lay it at my feet. I'll take responsibility. Because once we make it right with customers, it's still my head that rolls here. I lead the charge, I approved the code and the changes to the code. I hired the people and I take responsibility for the whole mess.
Now that's out of the way, I'd like you to understand that we're here to do right by the customers and give each customer their own assets back while showing the path forward for the product you purchased. If we can get some people helping to test, then that whole "delivering to you what you bought" thing goes a lot quicker if not it might be a little bit longer, but it's still coming.
Ok I've spent an inordinate amount of time here in this thread. I've monopolized it and most likely people who feel angry with me will come through and start flagging everything I said again. I'm going to take a break from posting, answering questions and basically being here on steemit so I can focus on the tasks at hand in the real world. I will be back in a few days to give the results of testing.
I know it's been said before, but thank you for your patience.
I guess in any country"Bancruptcy Laws" is a huge volume, so of course I do oversimplify things here.
But at the end of the day that would be just common sense.
The Creditor have right to look into the books of the Debitors before he desises, whether the Debitor will be liquidated or the second chance will be given.
Let's start with you Rick. Why did you transfer the funds from @tradeqwik to @tqn and then delegate it all to your personal account? That action was NEVER authorized by me but in my absence I've been assuming good faith on your part.
Nevertheless, you're in personal possession of tens of thousands of dollars in customer funds. I expect you to return those funds. Either directly to the customers as the audits complete, or turn them over to @tqnext. Refusal to comply will result in you being one of the pending litigation subjects Dawn mentioned.
There's going to be HUGE legal issues especially in regards to legal liabilities as we shake off the collapse and rise from the ashes. For instance, do we value assets in dollar terms or crypto terms when it comes to assess the total liabilities? It's questions like this that keep things like the audit held up. BTC was $20k when this happened it's now just shy of $7k and most of the other cryptos have fared worse.
I've kept my silence thus far because I'm doing my very best to assume that Joe's management of the ETH and Ricks management of the Steem deposits after things fell apart were done with the best of intentions
Currently Rick, you're abusing your role and your privilege as a fiduciary for personal financial gain and now you're using it to make some sort of contrarywise personal statement and while Dawn can't comment on litigation, I can tell you that every person given fiduciary roles during the crisis will be required to account for every penny since the day they assumed that role.
@instructor2121 and anyone else who had access to wallets, I'm officially requesting you cooperate with Dawn, Sherry, Meredith and Dan to get things reconciled and returned to customers during the bridging period.
However the account @tradeqwik was created by me and while you have been managing it in my absence, because you did not fulfill your obligation to earn your partnership, and now appear to be abusing privileges; I'm informing you that continued posting as @tradeqwik will constitute a violation of Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. I don't want personal control, you changed keys in my absence and that action means that your actions are provably your own.
Turn the @tradeqwik account over to @wiser her role as officially spokesperson for @tradeqwik was never changed. I can understand if she does not want that role especially now as we transition and thus if she does not want the role it can go to Meridith or Sherry while we sort things out.
For anyone interested...
@tradeqwik and tradeqwik.com constituted what amounts to a sole prop. This means I have and continue to have full liability for customer funds. I've never backed away from that position.
Prior to everything falling apart I was in the process of converting to a partnership in conjunction with Joe and Rick.
Once I discovered the duplicate withdrawal bug, I no longer felt comfortable turning it over in that condition. Since I've been back, I've focused on keeping quiet and just delivering what was promised while doing my best to cooperate with the auditors who have been going over every penny. Yet at the end of the day I remain liable for the customer funds that were deposited during my watch. I've never shunned nor shyed away from that liability.
But to protect customer funds I asked several separate people to assume a fiduciary role, meaning they were asked to hold funds until audits could be completed. Joe has done a good job, all ETH is still there, it's never moved.
Going over the Steem withdrawal records it appears Enrique enriched himself with dozens of transfers to @paul.allen which he will need to account for. My assumption thus far has been the creation of @tqn and transfer of all funds from @tradeqwik to @tqn was done to protect from further unauthorized activity and I'm willing to roll with that assuming Rick here returns the funds...
https://steemd.com/@tqn
Legally this could get messy if we don't all work together to get the customers taken care of.
We have a plan to come out of this soon, and the good news is that assuming @instructor2121 and Joe and Craig and Michael Garcia all acted in good faith during my absence, everyone's money is protected. If not then it's going to be my job to make you guys whole again. This is why I've been completely hands off the last 8 months.
I've got things I've been working on. I'm excited to show them to you but let's clear the air here...
This statement is untrue. In fact there were thousands of lines of code. As well as a handful of servers. The "no blockchain" came from the person brought in to "forensically search" my laptop. He did a great job of logging in as me with the password I gave him and then copying the wallet files for the crypto currencies, but he didn't even open the Projects folder like I instructed him to. I'll be having a serious discussion with him eventually when I have the time to.
The chain data itself was not present on the laptop because seriously, who even does that? The raw chain data IS the postgres log from db.tradeqwik.com. I saw dozens of people downloaded the entire DB in my absence, but the idea with using a log feed mechanism was to allow companies to directly connect their existing systems to the VIVA Blockchain. The reason things didn't work out is because the node at viva.cash could NEVER reconcile customer balances (which it was checking vs the native blockchain of the currency being reported), with what it was getting from db.tradeqwik. They remained forked and in hindsight we can see that this is because tradeqwik was reporting incorrect balances.
If you'd like, I'm more than willing to post complete address dumps and balance reports to show you the divergence, but suffice it to say the divergence is substantial.
This is why our new plan is to bootstrap using an existing blockchain and iterate towards everything that VIVA was supposed to be. This work is under way and has been since I came back and assessed the mess left over after collapse. We've avoided making announcements specifically because we didn't want to say anything until we knew we could deliver. But that time is drawing to a close.
VIVA is and always has been about recognizing that businesses fail for a myriad of reasons, but that it is possible to recover. No one has EVER done what we are doing here. However the intention is to address each account individually, show you the results of your personal audit, give you back your funds, or collect funds if you're one of the hundreds of people who received a net benefit from the bug.
I'll be back in a few days with a demonstration of the new stuff and some hard data to show you why the changes are necessary.
Thank you for your patience
See our next post for that @svamiva. I think for any individual account, they will be glad to make your account history including all deposits, all withdrawals, all trades and also the final audit data public if you ask for it to be released for transparency purposes.
edited because I heard back from an auditor that I'm rolling on old info, @svamiva your account is evidently good and you don't owe. My bad, not joking when I say I'm hands off and was quoting an earlier report.
For transparency purposes I would like to see published the data of every VHL employee and partner accounts, including yours. You are free to publish my acc data as well if you think it would make any point.
You're from Europe right? You have stronger legal privacy protections than here in the USA.
Since you've agreed to release yours, I'll ask the auditors to publish it with a walk through so folks can see what's involved.
Weak though they may be, there are still laws in the USA governing confidentiality of employee records. Partners are considered employees for all intents and purposes.
If you can convince any of them to agree to sign a release for it, then that can be done, otherwise it would be subject to employer privacy protections and your desire to know who did what and when, doesn't factor into our legal obligation to protect privacy, sorry.
I'll agree to release mine when it's done.
That's a poor excuse for anyone having Steemit experience. The whole point of a project which wants to call itself a "blockchain project" is to make these things transparent.
Like of course Steemit inc CEO Ned Scott for example might be too shy to admit he is behind the account @ned, but the information on https://steemit.com/@ned/transfers would remain visible for everyone in any case.
I'm not asking for names and adresses, what I want to see is just the whole list of accounts, that used to get their daily 24 viva and their records
That's why I've mentioned bankruptcy in the first instance. As a creditor I might get pennies for $, but at least I would know then where the rest of the money went.
Your desire to keep information "who did what and when" private only indicates there is something to hide.
@svamiva not trying to be insulting, but did you actually read the whitepaper?
Individual VIVA transactions have always been default private. That was one of the primary defining characteristics.
Blockchain is about distributed consensus in the aggregate and cryptographic guarantees in regards to ordering of messages and data integrity, that's it.
It has nothing to with making everyone's private business public, frankly the fact you can see another person's balance here on steemit and tie it to a real identity is one of the reasons I started the viva project in the first place. That's just creepy to me to look in and see someone's wallet uninvited. It's not anybody's business, who you transact with, what you purchase, nor how much you personally have liquid at the moment. Making that information public makes you a target for robbery, kidnapping, extortion, you name it.
Furthermore, the VIVA blockchain has always been about occluding all but the minimum amount of information required to come to consenus. The two items we agree on that is the quantity of coin in circulation, i.e. with which mints is it stored and the price per unit of coin. That's it, the consensus model requires nothing else.
This is because it was originally designed to handle medical records and only later was the concept expanded to more generalized things such as financial information. But the same tech that prevents you from seeing who has colon cancer, also prevents you from seeing who got paid, but it does not preclude them from seeing that they got paid. It also allows you to see the aggregate of who got what votes, but prevents you from honing on any specific voter, while still allowing the individual voter to verify that their vote counted.
We are neither unique nor alone in this. You can't see the private details of a monero transaction nor a zcash transaction and there are hundreds of other privacy focused coins too.
So I'm sorry, but your premise is just wrong.
Here you wouldn't get that and for exactly the reason you just mentioned. With that information you could try to retaliate against other creditors and the bankruptcy process here is about settling the debt, not anything else.
So if it were to go to bankruptcy, you'd get a list showing what assets are held, what assets are owed to us by others and what the liquidated value of those assets would be. You would also see where you stand in a rather lengthy line of creditors, 1225 last I counted.
If you'd like to press it you're more than welcome to try, there's a federal bankruptcy court in Cheyenne Wyoming. But to my mind it's just a distraction.
You're entitled to your own information, you're not entitled to anyone else's. I'm sorry you've been mislead by less advanced tech, but this was all laid out rather explicitly in the whitepaper.
No it means I have a legal obligation to keep customer information confidential unless they explicitly opt in. Therefore if someone else's information were disclosed to you it would be breaking the law.
Steemit can be very well private if you keep one account for social interaction, another(or many) for other purposes and do not tie both together.
When Steemit Inc CEO have desided to do it otherways it was his own private choice, but the market is definetly evaluating this choice.
In the current situation I do expect the VHL team to make the same choice. You want to keep "private" where the funds credited to VHL by CH is gone, keep "private", where the funds deposited on TQ is gone, but at the same time expect to
Thats not how things are working. To hand over new shiny williamcoins is not enough to
Anyway, quoting from a @vivacoin post from a few month ago
What was the purpose of
these questions ?
Wasn't it
Oh well done, I forgot about the questions!
Well this looks like another nice dose of drama. I wouldn't really expect you Steve to come back, but it is what it is. The whole situation is very unfortunate, but I still think @instructor2121 is one of the biggest scumbags here as he is using recovered STEEM assets from tradeqwik to only help himself and his crew. For more information about it check this post - https://steemit.com/instructor2121/@eirik/instructor2121-was-and-still-is-a-scumbag
@eirik - Thanks for that link. I've been out of communication with all the fiduciaries in order to let the audit process work independently.
I was aware of transfers on all sides and in many cases it was clearly managed for personal gain. The only person with fiduciary access who left everything parked was @anotherjoe and frankly I think he deserves some serious kudos for that. But you shined a light on the motives on the steem account activity and @tqn that were heretofore unknown to me.
I had made it a point to always assume good faith on the part of everyone, regardless of what they were saying. I never get into business with people I don't explicitly trust and I still trust that Rick and the other fiduciaries will participate willingly in the repatriation and disbursement efforts. So calling Rick or anyone a scumbag isn't warranted; Not that I agree with him, there are in fact some serious issues with his claims of ownership of those funds, not the least of which being that during insolvency, partners (real or imagined) bear the losses, they do not receive account protection. But if that is his reality then VHL will need to set the record straight for him.
In truth, I believe once he sees where things stand, he will turn it over. I wouldn't have ever brought him in if I didn't believe in that quality about him. I hope I'm not wrong.
It is understandable for everyone to be scared and hurt; telling themselves the absolute worst and swapping war / horror stories. I have thick skin and didn't put any stock in it as long as funds stayed reasonably put.
I never left. I was just being quiet and avoiding contact while I work to make things right. That said, I'm only here to deliver what has been promised, then I'm done. The community can take it and drive it forward. I've been described as a lot of things, but the reality is the word that describes me best right now is "completely burned out". I'm looking forward to handing each and every customer their assets back and then stepping away to watch what the community makes of it.
We're hardly the first to collapse, but we will be the first to bounce back from total collapse like that.
Maybe I should have stepped in sooner, but after so many deliverables were unmet, I promised myself I'd say nothing and make no promises until we had something literally ready to roll.
Thinking about it from the perspective of our customers, it probably made the whole thing look like an exit scam for me to remain quiet like that. At some level I guess I always knew that, but it made more sense to me to sit tight, keep my head down, my mouth shut and code, than to try to rush to a pointless defense or try to fix something so terribly broken as my initial design. Everything needed a careful rethink and I needed peace and quiet to do that thinking.
As for the drama, all anyone really wants is what they paid for. I had to focus on making that happen.
I'm not going to get into a mud slinging contest with anyone, regardless of who they were or what they said or did. I documented the root cause bugs that caused the tradeqwik train to derail, taking VIVA with it. As for the rest of the details, it makes more sense to stick to facts and take conversations like repatriation offline. I promise you that all customer funds & assets will be recovered and returned; now we just have to make that happen for you.
I'm seeing light as some of the fiduciaries have begun to reach out to see how to make things right. Yet if I cannot get any particular fiduciaries to return funds willingly, I have other options available to me, but I won't stop until every penny is back, just like I didn't stop working on VIVA/AVIV until it was ready for delivery.
Apologies for the drama. People rightly have anger and hurt pent up and they need to vent it, so I expect the drama to continue but you're not going to see me get into it. Chin up, we'll make it right. For now, thanks for the heads up on what really happened to the community's steem funds, I really appreciate it!
If you're interested in helping us test some of this stuff out instead of being a passive observer, we're at a point now where we could use some help making sure this stuff works as expected in all cases. Just drop a line to vivaholdingsllc@gmail.com and request to be a tester. If you haven't done so already you should also finish the audit process.
Thanks!
This will be my last comment for awhile. If you're interested in audit stuff watch @vivacoin. If you're interested in TQS and TQNext, follow @tqnext. If you're interested in AVIV and where it goes from here, follow @aviv.world if you're interested in a break down of what went wrong, I plan to do an indepth code dive on my own blog, but not until AVIV goes to live net and Crowns, VIVA and VIP have made it into your hands.
Reserve comment until a possible in person full review of these matters or just better proven results.
Leaving a comment to show I have read something here
Think mistakes may still being made. Shall see what is proven...
Which reminds me we need to talk about vgx and the other VIAs. Those are in the works, wondering if you'd like to be fiduciary on that since it was literally your own token. Saw your email this morning regarding testing, I'm preparing a generalized memo, but vgx is kind of unique. You're going to need some tools.
I have to admit that I was not expecting this. I really hope that things go better this time. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.
When are my investment dollars going to be returned to me? I verified my holdings/account balance several months ago yet everything seems to have stopped afterwards. I am owed not an insignificant amount...
The truth is not in what's said, but in what's delivered.
After all is said and done, only @anotherjoe continues to hold funds with integrity, in spite of Viva having embezzled 55 BTC, BCH and BTG of his funds from TQ earmarked for development.