It’s an opinion
And that’s a stretch and pretty unfair. I suspect Harmen is like me I feel in many ways and wants to help. It’s hard to partly feed a piranha fish though and honestly, this feels way beyond that. I know folk who would do anything and say anything for money and it’s no a pretty thing, it really isn’t.
Also an opinion, but seriously if Harmen has buggered off never to be heard of again, I won’t blame him. This level of stress is not a good thing and pandering to greed is harmful.
And why exactly it is greed for the investors who put money into a wallet that hasn’t moved in 5 years, for a project that hasn’t been able to be delivered to ask for ‘some’ portion of it back now that is has gone 40x, but its understandable to keep all the investors money and “bugger off never to be heard of again”?
What level of stress is there apart from the one you’re apparently intent on bringing to the table David? Harmen said he agrees. I just suggested he find out how many coins want to be involved in a buy back so he can make a more qualified and informed decision about price.
This is speculation. The money has been moved from the address to which we sent it. As far as you and I know, this may be the address of another person who did not move them. We may never know.
I feel sad to see myself being painted with being greedy. I have given away to charity many many times and probably over 100k total, I have given voluntary service many times full days totalling more than a year of my life without getting anything or expecting anything in return, I have helped many people in need and supported people to bring positive change into the world which has not always worked out but my heart was always at the right place. One day I have dreamed to give away most if not all of my wealth. I know you are not seeing me when you say I am greedy but seeing what you want to see.
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I have sent my PDC coins back to the MAID crowdfunding address (I see I mixed up my safeFS and PDC which were 90k and 45k coins respectively). I do not want to take any money from this any more after reading all these responses that I found were all but supportive. Please moderators delete my account. I won’t come back to read any responses.
Don’t worry dude, the accusations ‘greed’ are unfounded. There’s a difference between greed and desperation. There are countless people on this forum who I gave Maid, PDC and other coins to for free totally hundreds of thousands of dollars in value. I can laugh off being called greedy easily enough, I’ve given away for free 10-100x what I’d hope to get back here.
I have no problem with greed. I have a problem with you pretending that you want “your” money. Seneca doesn’t hold “your” money. You and I and everyone else have prepaid hours of his life. The money we gave him he may have kept in Bitcoin and now he may be a millionaire. I am happy for him. What disgusts me is that you want some of his money and that you’re trying to convince other people here that it’s not really his money, it’s your money…
I feel bad for everyone involved to be honest.
To those that invested but haven’t seen a product and to know what they parted with is just temptingly sitting there.
Feel bad for David worrying one of the most visible and potentially promising projects here from being scared off. Safe Network needs apps and with the war chest Decorum has they could legit compete against the big boys, think about that.
Feel bad for Harmen for having to choose to either do a buy back and maybe suffer tax liability or choose not to and upset good people who once wanted to support him.
This is a toughy. Opinions here probably aren’t much help. Decorum team will just have to pick one way or the other for it to be settled.
Eh? I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything. Nor did I ever say it was still ‘my money’ after I entered the ico. Harmen could have changed it to usd and there could be no real discussion here. It’s only thanks to him that there is any discussion to have. Ofc he deserves to be the biggest winner from this, and no, he certainly should also never have been in position to be a personal loser or to owe us anything apart from the protocol itself and an explanation of where the funds went if it wasn’t delivered. The point is only that since he was too early and has sat on the funds he has the fortunate position of being able to offer a buy back to some whilst still keeping an insanely big war chest that’s far bigger than he ever could have dreamed. Having some of his own coins is no bad thing really, especially if it isn’t many. He doesn’t have to do it, but surely you can see how it would seem a fair thing to do given he hasn’t been able to deliver yet and can easily afford to keep those who invested and supported him happy with a partial buy back offer after 40x’ing?
I didn’t weigh in until after this was all resolved and Seneca has made his basic decision to offer a buy back of some kind. I’m not sure where you got the idea that I was trying to convince anyone that the money was still ‘ours’, I thought I was pretty clear in saying it was 100% Harmen’s decision. Either way we own a stake in what the funds were going to be spent on. The greedy option would be to hold, the project has a lot of money behind it and even if SAFE never happens it could move to another network or do an actual refund if it never delivers but still holds the investment. The call for buy back now is just the desperate sound of those who want some liquidity, it’s not ‘greed’.
I will ask one more time. Where in the general conditions of the sale it is written that we have given money to the project?
My understanding is that this money is 100% prepaid salary of the two programmers, not money to be used to promote the product after it is created or to buy coins from the market?
That’s why there isn’t PDC war chest, there is personal money of the two programmers, which they may have kept in bitcoin…
The goals of this crowdsale are to secure funding for the development of the Project Decorum protocol and software, and to provide an initial amount of Clike tokens to the community to kickstart their usage.
Well in that case, where is the delivered protocol? If a contractor was going to put an extension on my house by bad weather stopped him doing it for 6 months, I would still consider that money unsettled. If he offered me the chance to have my money back because it had now been 5 years and he still hadn’t gotten around to it then that money would come back to me.
I don’t think this is really about Ts and Cs because we’ve all agreed and established that Harmen does not legally have to offer any buy back. What we’re talking about here is just a fair appraisal of the situation and keeping investors/supporters happy in lieu of him being able to deliver and 5 years passing.
In his own words
That seems a bit extreme. Why don’t you just mute this thread (which I’m of a mind to do)? There are so many more valuable and less toxic aspects to this community. I wouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. My two cents.
I have no financial interest on either side. Just commenting my thoughts because there are some things here that could be bad for the project and community as a whole.
@Seneca has proven an honest and shrewd steward of the investment entrusted to his company. All his investors should be very happy about that and, I would think, continue to trust that he will continue to make the right choices. Most would be either tempted to personally use the money or make bad management choices to hire a lot of devs to build something that would be later abandoned. He will likely make the correct judgement call here as well based on his track record.
Some have suggested that it’s “his money”. It is not. It’s his company’s money. There’s a difference, and it’s a serious one. I’m assuming there’s a company for decorum that the investment went to, otherwise this is even more complicated and legally hairy for the founder(s), not just for the investors. Let me just put it nicely and say it would be less than appropriate for a founder to think of money that investors put into their project as being personally theirs or advance salary. It is not.
The declarations that if the matter were taken to court, it would be found that decorum would have to only pay fiat value that was invested probably won’t hold in the real world. Any good lawyer can successfully argue that it should be the btc that is reimbursed. Similarly, any good lawyer could use any claim that the investment is the personal possession of the founder as proof of fiduciary breach. **A legal course of action would not lead to a good outcome for anyone or for the project. The courts would most likely appoint an “independent” custodian for the proceeds. It would take years of expensive fighting, appeals, etc. Nobody would win. Neither side should want to go through discovery, court battles, etc. It’s a nightmare. Only the lawyers win. Investors who have suggested legal action, it would be better to work with the founder who has steered the ship right to this point and together ensure the project is realized.
@Seneca, I would get legal counsel now (if you haven’t already). Do not rely on any non-expert opinion on this topic.
Good luck to everyone involved.
This is not true. The site says very clearly what the money will be used for. Seneca did not try to deceive anyone.
He wrote in plain text that the money will be used to create a protocol (salary for the devs) + possibly if there is money left it can be used to promote the protocol.
I have invested my money with a clear understanding of this. I am sure that everyone else who invested then could also read and understand the following text, it is written quite clearly:
The goals of this crowdsale are to secure funding for the development of the Project Decorum protocol and software, and to provide an initial amount of Clike tokens to the community to kickstart their usage.
I don’t think legal threats are appropriate when Harmen has been totally reasonable and responsible so far. It’s a nuclear option and no one really wins there, as you say. I agree there seems to be a certain amount of naivety about the legal protections offered by Ts and Cs in a contract, and Harmen’s responsibility to the project and accountability for money spent (although not by Harmen himself thus far). As I mentioned TON had an army of lawyers and a very clear contract. They are still being sued for the remaining 30% that they didn’t refund after actually doing the work they said they would, regardless of the Ts and Cs in their contract. And although tax operates exclusively in fiat there are certainly conditions under which the asset being held itself is divided up amongst stakeholders.
Threatening legal action is a serious and nasty business though. Panda only suggested that out of frustration I think (because Harmen hadn’t yet made his position clear) and no one has mentioned it since. I don’t think Harmen needs to run off to speak to lawyers, he just needs to be reasonable and fair to those who sent him their crypto to build decorum. It has been 5 years, the crypto is now worth a small fortune. He still can’t build it, it’s not unreasonable for some people to ask for a partial exit given the value increases and time delay.
This took a weird turn. It’s either BTC (we know Harmen is honest for no touching, but can’t be quite sure if he even holds it 
) sitting there until Decorum can be developed and delivered (which may never be the case), or Harmen going broke on tax liability.
Nothing in between?
Like… is there anyone among the investors who actually hoped Harmen would cover the tax cost of the potential refund/buy-back operation? I doubt it.
Plus: One thing that irks me is that argument investors were well aware of the risk. They were. But should they be the only ones taking the brunt of it? I mean, if I propose a project and collect money for it although the platform it’s supposed to be built on is not ready to be built on yet, why should I be free of financial consequence in case the platform fails/isn’t ready in the foreseeable future? That just doesn’t make any sense. Partially at least, the risk should be on me, too.
Don’t think anyone has suggested the tax shouldn’t be accounted for in any buy back offer and not by Harmen or even the remaining decorum project coffers, but rather exclusively by those who exit. Seems like the tax ‘issue’ is just misdirection really…
Some time ago I read in the news about an utility token creator and how a group of greedy people blackmailed him. The man had a wallet with bitcoin and turned it into wBTC and then sold it for Ethereum in UniSwap, and completely anonymous the ETH into https://tornado.cash/
Has anyone read this news? I’m trying to remember the name of the token?
…I suggest a mediator. There must be a way for people to reach an agreement that allows the early investors to back out for now since the future is very unclear, benefits Harmen, and still gives the project financial base needed to materialize once the network is ready.
If people start bringing lawyers into this it could easily kill the project because that pot will be attractive to folks who specialise in litigating money into their own pockets.
That’s now the biggest risk to Decorum IMO, the project derailed and defunded by people squabbling over money rather than letting @Seneca get on with delivering what most of those from this community gave money to achieve.
Now this has started I don’t see those people ever being satisfied until there’s nothing worth squabbling over, which would be a real shame and not benefit anyone.
Whatever happens, it will at least serve as a lesson for future projects, and I would hope make the funding models which Safe will enable even more attractive to developers and new styles of business.
It won’t be the end of Safe by any means, but after waiting all this time it would be a terrible shame, and unfair on all the people who scraped a little cash together because they believed that @Seneca could deliver such an important technology on top of Safe Network.
And you believe they care about that? The money, this sweet x40 money, one will be happy with 50% back, another will want 100%. If it starts, there is no end, except when the money runs out. Let me note - another person’s money, which they consider their own…