Buyback

[frail bridge]

GG @pearl quartz, you just advanced to level 9!

[swift plover]

Alright @pearl quartz , this seems to be your strongest evidence for your "misleading" case that have allegedly forced you to buy HBOT impulsively. So, let us briefly discuss about this in a logical manner.

See the picture below and comprehend the 2 statements. I think its clear enough and undebatable.

To be clear, its a matter of reposting the announcement since we consider that event as BIG announcement.

Now, for sure you know twitter or X and use it. If you retweet someone's message, does it legally make it as your own message? No need to argue as you have different views and opinion. And this is my view and opinion.

In addition, maybe you did not see the post in #miner-announcements and so missed the post by CoinAlpha, and have not read any posts at #dminer channel. If that is the case, I guess, then you have been unduly careless with your decision & actions.

[pearl quartz]

A buyback would be stupid as it would allow MIke to just continue his lies for longer. And it will never happen since he printed himself and his hedge fund the majority of the supply. I tried to delete this suggestion because I do not want anyone to have false expectations that anything like this will ever happen. The profits will just go to Mike and his hedge fund nobody should ever think anything like a buyback would ever happen.

Every one here will call me dumb for mentioning a buyback. Even though I do not care about it is worth mentioning that Mike was the first one who ever said he thought a buyback makes sense. He deleted it because he know I is liable. You can see the message though at the bottom as I screen shots of all the chats and video taped them as I knew he would be deleting them.

It is just funny how all these people who support Mike will call me an idiot below for mentioning a buyback when he is the one who was saying it makes sense.

[open olive]

This proposal is ridiculous and can be classified as a blackmail. Its asking everyone to pay for your selfish and immature trading decisions. Its an absolute NO for me and my friends who are strongly supportive of Hummingbot ecosystem, CoinAlpha and Foundation Teams.

Its been a month and no other victims of fraud and lies have chatted. Its ironic that this situation happened in a discord server full of smart traders, developers and quants. I'm really embarassed for you to say the least.

The real story is YOU messed up your financial situation and are now looking for someone and everyone to blame but yourself! All other alibis you presented are trivial and are literally made up.

I have rewritten replies for many weeks but did not post with hope that you regain mental clarity and emotional stability. But boy, I missed how twisted your mindset have become. You are beyond reasonable! My sympathy has been drained and can't stand for a stranger boy wailing endlessly for his spilled milk! Zzzzz...

[echo jackal]

As HBOT holder, this is my take on these issues. I vote **NO **for this proposal and for any other future compromise to rectify your mistakes at my and others' expense.

Disclaimer: I am an active user of miner, dminer, and have benefited in Community Incentives program to receive HBOT rewards on weekly and monthly basis. I am bias to protect my interests for Hummingbot to succeed long term. This long post is for benefit of new users to clarify confusing issues created by OP(Original Poster). All these info are not mine but as results of several private physical discussions and online chats with my friends in this community.

As TLDR: OP's main goal on this dramatic saga is simply to recover back the $75k he spent on buying HBOT for 12 months+. He is asking everyone to repay him since the price of HBOT has gone down. He is demanding HBOT price to be at $0.01 for six months so he can happily exit. The conspiracy issues he posted do not make sense at all and are clearly made up with his emotional problem brought about by his current financial needs. He is using dark, illegal practices like personal attacks and coercion to achieve his main goal.

Generally, whenever I see someone explain something in long, confusing, repeated ways, most probable reason is due to some basic knowledge gaps or negligence to DYOR and DYOD when first joining a project and/or worst is the ill intention to brain wash the community. And yet, that same person would insist to know-it-all or confident on their secret intel, at the same time. Seen it time and time again at different crypto projects. Nothing new, same problem - over investing with funds cannot afford to lose! And then come back to blame the team and community. That is why most projects would immediately ban people that FUD.

But not in here, the culture is of giving chances for community members to voice out problems/issues. There are no unreasonable censorship to relevant, wholesome issues. Many users have done it before, and some have eventually deleted their messages too, perhaps after something enlightened their mind or finding alternative solutions to the problems. But for OP case, he deleted some messages that are found to be not true, and then changed gear to another topics.

As far as I can see with all the Hummingbot youtube videos, blogs, documentations, github and website, there are nothing that looks fishy and scammy at all. In fact, these info publicly available are unbelievably overwhelming and transparent. Whenever there were changes of direction or plans, these are communicated diligently to community on monthly or weekly basis via blog post, youtube, live discord calls and announcements.

At issue of misleading due to word "our" dminer app in announcement, I cannot fathom how anyone in right mind to immediately jump up and spend $10k-$20k, to buy it at obviously insufficient liquidity that resulted in high slippage, also driving price up. I sense an impulsive gambler at work there. That is totally unacceptable for experienced trader to do such reckless actions. I would recommend for team to share trader101 series at least to prevent such unfortunate impulsive trading activities in future from any community member. On other hand, I see no big deal or misleading intention on the announcement since nowhere it mentioned about the need to buy HBOT to participate on it. Essentially, it relays an invitation to join another great opportunity for members to potentially engage in a win-win platform. Finally, if OP did not participate in miner & dminer platforms, it really does not matter who owns it. These platforms have no mechanism to increase HBOT demand. Rather, it is the opposite, supplying HBOT to partipants.

As for CoinAlpha and Hummingbot Foundation dynamics, these entities I consider as both working harmoniously to deliver their respective purposes. There was never confusion between these two but that is because I was diligent enough to read the blogs, watch videos, attend calls, and ask questions. The use of Hummingbot term is serving as a unified brand that benefits both teams effectively. Hummingbot is a trading tool that CoinAlpha originally developed, and Hummingbot Foundation continues to evolve it with better features and performances with help of community developers including CoinAlpha.

As for HBOT rewards in miner and dminer platforms, these are distributed as bonus rewards to incentivize miners to join campaign pairs that are quite volatile. Not all pairs have HBOT rewards. The HBOT has no indication of monetary value in these platforms. The main intention is to distribute HBOT to active users of Hummingbot so they in turn can help influence the direction of Hummingbot development if they choose to do so. Like most miners, I too have choosen to hold on and use my earned HBOT to vote at snapshot proposals, and in speculating that HBOT will be worth more especially when listed in CEXes in near future, preferably when bull run comes. That is the realistic and common expectations with consideration to market cycles. Between now and that time, HBOT price going down would not bother me at all. I just keep stacking HBOT rewards. Mind you, doing so has cost and time implication too, not totally "free".

In continuation, these HBOT that CoinAlpha is rewarding the miners are not actually given freely. It also undergone voting process in snapshot whereby members voted for it as they are the beneficiaries afterall. Some HBOT are also earned by CoinAlpha by creating new connectors, fixing issues and enhancement features in Hummingbot. It is easily verifiable in github issues and bounties board if one is diligent enough. With that case, CoinAlpha IMO has prerogative to whether include HBOT with price in their package deals with campaign issuers. Though I personally have no direct info on that. So, HBOT laundering conspiracy accusation is still basically far fetched. DYOD with this docs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UNAumPMnXfsghAAXrfKkPGRH9QlC8k7Cu1FGQVL1t0M/edit?pli=1#gid=285483484

As for CoinAlpha investors, it is no secret at all. Those are 3rd parties and can independently decide what to do with their HBOT. Neither CoinAlpha nor Hummingbot Foundation can control or stop them from selling as soon as they unlocked HBOT. Having external investors is common practice in any other crypto projects.

As for blog about CoinAlpha funding, it happened before Hummingbot Foundation was established. OP claimed that he was confused and did not know blah blah. But it is established earlier that he did clarify the issue with team and then know what that is all about.
#hbot-token message

As for USDC payouts, it was launched for benefits of all bounty recepients if anyone chooses USDC as bounty. The intention is unquestionably clear. Team has gone the extra mile on this case to essentially reduce the pain of selling HBOT that results its price going down everytime, that hurts oneself in the long run. Well, only devs and helpful members can appreciate and understand this so its understandable that OP can conjure up his creative imagination or hallucinations on this process.
https://hummingbot.org/blog/2023/07/23/hummingbot-launches-usdc-payouts-for-bounty-recipients/

Finally, as for pump and dump gibberish, nothing much to say as OP, IMO, is the one operating with that mentality by rushing to buy HBOT with clear goal of dumping whenever its price goes to the moon. (Un)Fortunately, depending on one's perspective, Pump-dump is not feasible yet due to inadequate liquidity in Uniswap. One just have to open HBOT chart to verify whether pump-dump or price manipulations occured on consistent patterns.

There are more petty issues but this is already insanely long post (or book). Maybe only OP can read thru all this and keyboard-ready to burn me as well. It doesn't matter, as long I have defended my long term interests on Hummingbot and this community. If you have read all thru this, please leave emojis. Hope this is time well spent on a Sunday that can help new members see a clearer picture of what's going on.

[pearl quartz]

Its blackmail to suggest the profits should buyback the token even though they are currently going to Mike as bonuses. Who cares about giving exit liquidity to any of the previous investors or developers who might need the money when we can just give it to Mike instead. You have no problem with that nor do you even question that he is giving himself a bonus with the profits after taking a salary from both foundation and CoinAlfa. What a great non profit for him. Who cares about any exit liquidity those invested in his pump and dump.

It does not matter what you vote anyways. I was dumb to think this voting system actually means anything. No one hase ever voted in opposition in any substantial way but if needed they have the voting power to override anything. He gave himself and his hedge fund the majority of the supply so the foundation will do what the foundation wants regardless of what me or you vote for. The foundation will give itself bonuses with the profits. Such a great non profit.

I do not have a fantasy or care about a buy back. I just think its funny when you do not care if all the profits go to Mikes bank account on top of his salary from both CoinAlfa and the Foudation but you give an absolute NO to a buyback with that very same profit to give any exit liquidity to the previous investors or developers.

That is how pump and dumps work though every one will rally behind the people lyiing to them and cashing out the usd. Any one who tries to question it will be attacked.

[pearl quartz]

The people who were supporting the developers like me all last year or the developers from last year do not deserve any exit liquidity if they need the money. However you have no problem or do not even question Mike taking a bonus with the very same profits even though he already takes a salary from CoinAlfa and the Foundation.

Just do be clear. I do not want or believe in a buyback. I agree it was dumb to even suggest a thing like that as it would never happen. That is not how pump and dumps work. The investors just lose and everyone will rally around the orchestrators who are putting the usd in thier bank accounts.

[foggy flame]

As HBOT holder I vote NO for this proposal and for any other future compromise to rectify your mistakes at my and others' expense. I wonder how have you supported any developers? There are over 3,700 PR's so I'm wondering if can you provide some examples of any of those with the code/documentation you've contributed, reviewed or assisted with? Have you helped in some other manner perhaps, helping with user/support queries, trading/strategy advice, exchange connector partnerships and so on? If you hadn't realised the code is (to quote from readme.md) This code is free and publicly available under the Apache 2.0 open source license! and as such I don't understand your decision to purchase HBOT on the open market as some sort of investment, at all.

[pearl quartz]

I do not want a buyback. I know the only place for the money to go is in Mike wallet but you dont vote on that. He currently gives himself the profits as a bonus and takes a salary from CoinAlfa and Hummingbot. You dont care if he just takes the profits as a bonus but you would hate for it to got to any of the previous investors. I do not hold any fantasy that there will be any exit liquidity to anybody who purchased the token. It is funny how you are saying I am so stupid for buying the token while Mike was thanking me for my investments when I was doing it in private. I have proof of him saying it. You will call me stupid for thinking of it as an investment but you want say a word to Mike. I know there will be no buyback I do not even want it.

You will believe anything Mike does as he puts the USD in his banks and other people waste their time in money. It is basically theft what he is doing.

I want to say this one more time. As I was purchasing all the tokens Mike was thanking me for my investments. Again, I actually do not expect any buyback nor am I requesting it. It would be a fantasy to think of such a thing.

[pearl quartz]

I have only one commit but I put a lot of money into the ecosystem.

@foggy flame @foggy flame @open olive You will call me dumb for even mentioning a buyback but here is Mike saying a buyback makes sense:

You would not say a word to him though. He obviously deleted the message though because that how he roles. But the fact is you all will call me dumb for mentioning it but if Mike would suggest it like he did a long time ago you all would be all for it. Its the hypocrisy of it all that is astounding.

I will point out that I do not expect it to ever happen nor do I care to ever get anything back from this foundation but when I joined he was talking about it. So I do not see how I am so stupid to think it would happen. I obviosly believed what he was saying at the time.

You think I am dumb for expecting any exit liquidity. Mike said that he believes it makes sense so when I was first joining. I was a fool for believing anything he said. Now the foundation is profitable he thanked me for my investments and all the liquidity is gone but he has the profits going into his account and a cult like following who believe he does no wrong.

[foggy flame]

no, I think you are dumb for putting 'a lot' of money into a governance token for open-source software, and then blaming others for your investment choices and ranting on various channels to try and justify your decision. the only thing you should've expected from that investment is voting rights, which you valued at the price you paid for those tokens.

[pearl quartz]

Even though Mike said a buyback makes sense at the time I was joining? I am not blaming anyone for making me buy anything. I was lied to on several occasions. You see Mike saying that a buyback makes sense. I promise you he was thanking me for my investments and calling them such. You do not care that he takes profit as bonuses but you would care if I was able to get even 1/10 of my money back. So strange. I promise you I paid a lot of developers bills.

[foggy flame]

what 'developer bills?' so other than repeating yourself, slandering and misquoting Mike and generally just being annoying, what exactly do you want and are expecting ?

[pearl quartz]

A lot of developers sold hbot for usdc that I provided all last year. that is why the whole usdc bounty system was created because they were selling hbot. There is nothing wrong with them doing that either.

[pearl quartz]

I saw Mike tell lies to the public when I was on the board of directors. It really upset me after I put all this money in. Over time I realized that all the things he told me along the way that I "misunderstood". Was actually intentionaly done like I was seeing him do when I was on the board of directors. All the things that I believed were untrue but I would just blame myself for not understanding. Then I saw him blatantly lieing to the public and I realized it was not all just a coincidence.

I was pretty much supporting a lot of the developers last year buying the tokens before the usdc payments thing was created. I was the only real buyer of the token on the exchange where they were dumping. I would of always been happy supporting the developers but I found out how corrupt the organization was so I could not do it anymore You will hate on me for not making commits but I was supporting the developers you are praising

[foggy flame]

so you were the buyer of hbot, well done <golfclap>. what is your point

[pearl quartz]

I provided liquidity to all the developers that needed to cash out. You were just praising all of them developers. I was just saying I was their main supporter by far financially last year.

[pearl quartz]

You wont ever question that maybe Mike did something wrong will you? I assure you he is doing all right. He is one of the only ones who made off well in the hbot token pump and dump. He has 3 streams of revenue based off Hummingbot. Everyone else pretty much just lost. You think I am just making this all up because I lost money. I can show you proof of blatant lies and you will not believe me. I have nothing to gain by hummingbot going down. I own like 10 million tokens. I can only lose. I say it only to try to stop a lot of fraud by the foundation so others will not get hurt.

[foggy flame]

Sure, I will question things, everyone makes mistakes or does the wrong thing. I just don't understand why for some reason you invested $ and kept buying hbot, you must've had some investment strategy or are you just some sort of philanthropist for developers?

[pearl quartz]

I just showed you he told said a buyback makes sense. Hummingbot is a non profit for eveyone but Mike. His hedge fund as well. You do not care if it is a profit for him though and you see he said a buyback made sense once the foundation is profitable. That is not what happened he just gave himself bonuses and on top of his salary and does not consult any of us about it. There is a hedge fund that is a for profit organization. It is the real reason hummingbot even exsists. Mike is on the board of that hedge fund and hummingbot. Hummingbot exsists to funnel people into his hedge funds platform. The old hummingbot website use to be dedicated to the miner platform. You could not even tell that the hedge fund was any different than the foundation. They took that website down though recently I suspect due to me calling them out like they deleted posts. however I do not know if this is true. You will all think that the token was just for voting but really they created it and pumped it to get publicity/ free development and to dump otc. I was one of their bigest suckers. They do not care less about the community having voting rights like you believe.

He would laugh in board meeting calls about lies he was telling the public. He said a lot of the usage data was fake that they posted on the website and they probably should remove it but dont. then laughed for example. I could give you example after example but I do not think you would believe it. I do not have this recorded but I assure you it happened. I have pretty much every thing else I say documented.

A lot of people do make mistakes and a lot of the things I say are minor but they all add up. His lies however are definitely intentional and always benefit him.

[foggy flame]

I know the history as I starting using/developing it in early 2020 and watched it evolve, so you aren't really telling me anything new about the history I didn't already know. Did you purchase because you thought there would be a buy-back, and there wasn't and this has upset you? I can't really comment about the lying, but it's getting tiresome if as you don't have any evidence it just sounds like ranting tbh.

[pearl quartz]

Can I show you a screenshot of a post he made to the public and then the one he made to the board chat? Would that help It shows a complete lie by him

that was in the board chat

the last one to the public. Do you really think at the time of writing this he believed that it was manipulation. Do you not think he had already thought through the exposure the foundation had to manipulation when he created the usdc proposal

It was clear to me at the time he wrote that that it could not be true you could not game the foundation by dumping hbot. Then I look in the board chat and he is saying the truth. It is not a coincidence that this is one of the oldest tactics in the books to tell the public it is manipulation while insiders are selling and he is doing it there.

He is a "quant" and all he knew this was not possible. He admitted you could not game the system by dumping in the board chat

[foggy flame]

those are 24 hours apart, and I have no idea what Mike was thinking about, nor do you. anyway it's sounds like you are not okay about something, so perhaps go for a walk, talk to a friend/family/mental health professional and then move on, close this chapter of your life as arguing on the internet never ends well. this is reminding me of an early xkcd https://xkcd.com/386/ so I'm going to stop commenting from now

xkcd: Duty Calls

What do you want me to do? LEAVE? Then they'll keep being wrong!

[pearl quartz]

Its not someone is wrong. It is more like someone committed fraud and his friend will never admit it

[vagrant nacelle]

Hey Mike @pearl quartz , as a fellow board of director member and someone who has worked with you on some occasions, please stop this series of being an unreasonable person whose narrative is only to make things much uglier and more convoluted.

I also observed what happened in the directors channel and the way you escalated things in there and in the public channels made me lose all good faith in you.

What happened in the chat in my view was:

• A sudden price drop of HBOT token happened in mid-August, we questioned how that happened.
• Mike Feng gave two responses, the first one was about someone trying to game the HBOT bounty, the second one was about an early investor who sold their stake.
• Mooneymike questioned the inconsistency with how Mike Fang responded in the director chat and in public.
• Mike Feng gave an answer to clarify the reason: at first he thought it had been manipulation since it was about the same time as the start of the updated bounty calculation, but then he checked and realized it was linked to an early investor.
• Mooneymike was not satisfied with the answer, Mike Feng offered to explain the history and current setup for CoinAlpha and Hummingbot (which is complex if you don’t follow them from the beginning) with hope that he could resolve Mooneymike’s concerns
• Mooneymike was not satisfied with the offer and everything went downhill from this point as Mooneymike started making convoluted accusations in public channels

I understand your concern that a founder should be more consistent with his statements on public and the board chat. I had hoped that you would use your position as a director more properly, like having a call between directors to resolve your concern in a civil way. Our role as director is to point out the inconsistency and inform the Foundation team so that they can improve, not accuse them of being frauds out in public.

Another thing that made me lose all my support for you is that you wanted to cancel Mike Fang so that the community developers could benefit from your action but in reality you just dumped your bag in the market which actually hurt other major HBOT holders, one of them is me in this case who has been accumulating HBOT for years by taking it as commission for making connectors and other contributions. You didn’t help anyone, you just made things worse.

Since I worked with you on some occasions, I intended to stay silent and hoped that you could blow off all your steam and stop this debacle and move on. But you just put too much convoluted and baseless accusations that really hurt the whole community which I really love and put the blame on the team who actually tried their best to push Hummingbot forward. It is really sad but I wish you were the better man that I knew, not unreasonable and selfish like this.

Just one last hope that I still have for you: please stop and reconsider everything, there are a lot of ways to contribute to this project and bring value back to your bag, don’t be destructive, be constructive.

[frail bridge]

GG @pearl quartz, you just advanced to level 10!

[pearl quartz]

Dont say i hurt you by dumping HBOT I have lost way more than probably you. Why dont you look at Mike and not me for the reason there is no liquidity. He is the one taking a salary from the foundation and the hedge fund and then giving himself bonuses with any left over profit. You know this is true. Do not accuse me for your wasted effotrs accumulating hbot. Mike is the one sitting on all the profits and is profitting from your effort I have done nothing but lose 80k. The reason you are upset about their being no liquidity is the same reason I am upset but you will blame me and I am blaming Mike I only sold like 2k of hbot that I paid like 15k for. Mike is bringing in more than that each month in bonuses from the foundations efforts.

The reason I will report them to the sec is to stop him from exploiting people like you and I in the future. You can blame me alll you want but try to open your eyes. I hired you for one week and paid you 75$ an hour. I payed you in usdc instantly as well no convoluted foundation/non profit/dao/mike/coin alfa/hbot/board/hedge fund/vcs in the middle. I made sure to pay you for every min of a meeting as well. We would have been better off If we just worked together and left Hummingbot out. The only reason I stopped is because I got upset about the Hummuningbot stuff. I am not greedy like mike is I payed you the same hourly rate that I make because I thought that was fair.

Mike on the board of a hedge fund and use to be vp a JPmorgan. He knows the effort you put in and the money I put in. He could easily provide some liquidity from the foundation or his pockets if he wanted. He choses not to though. All the tokens we worked for or paid for he just printed and he now he is taking all the profits. He said he was going to buy FTX to show support in one of his blogs but he aint buying hbot to show any support that is for sure.