I am thinking what most of us are thinking and are not just coming out and saying it so here goes. For those of you who have no idea what the Value Plan is it is a fund used to help grow HIVE through marketing. If you think you have an idea that would benefit HIVE you then forward a proposal to the @valueplan team for judgement. This Value Plan is seriously important for everyone of us as it should be used to help grow HIVE adoption and awareness and at some point the hope is this would boost the token value.
In the last 12 months @valueplan has paid out 1,013,743.05 HIVE and 686,957.64 HBD which equates to around 5.2 million HIVE. This is not a problem if it was benefitting HIVE and some of the spend does.
There has been a few posts of late with @blanchy who I think needs to be thanked doing his monthly updates and last night I spent a good few hours looking into some of these projects. The deeper I dug the more worried I became because there are some that just do not add up. I do not blame anyone or point fingers for what has happened, but I beg you please can we just hold back on certain payments whilst this can be assessed. This is more about certain sponsorships that I would say have serious question marks hanging over their heads.
I have not gone though all of the @valueplan payments and I dare say there are some good projects amongst them. I have written to various companies and I am waiting on quotes for another sponsorship that the numbers make no sense. I just do not want HIVE to be take advantage of and this is more about looking out for the community. The question is do they benefit HIVE and that is how each one of these has to be judged. There are some that I am seriously confused about and my gut instincts tell me we need to halt some payments to some projects immediately.
Look At These Numbers
I am going to highlight one which became two because they do over lap and this account is involved with both sponsorships.
$20.087.00 as a cost to HIVE so far in the last 12 months for bicycle racing?
Did you know HIVE doesn't only own a rally car, but they also bought an MTB bicycle for $6500. I had no idea as I have not seen any posts about this and you would expect to see something. I am always curating the sports posts and have seen zero thus far. For those that aren't sure what an MTB bike is it is an off road mountain bicycle. Unfortunately you will see the problem with this sponsorship as to why I am questioning this and opens up more questions on a few other projects.
As you can see the costs add up and I have not included all of the payments either as it does paint a picture and that is not my aim here. What I find worrying is so many events yet we have had no updates on HIVE with this account. The obvious question did they buy a bicycle for $6500 and did they actually participate in the race because I have no clue if they did or didn't. A post when doing these events would be the least we should expect and that cannot be asking too much as HIVE is funding this. No post and I automatically think red flags or is this too unreasonable, I think not.
There are so many questions as why so many components and repairs being charged out on regular intervals? I ran a bicycle assembly plant and know my costs on items and why I do find this so hard to believe. Surely you can service and repair your own bicycle like many cyclists do. Maybe @victorwallet is the unluckiest bicycle rider in the world, but these questions need to be asked. Does Victor have another HIVE account that he uses to update the community on his cycling career? I think these are valid questions and not being unreasonable.
The other cost factors including the design of the merchandise billed at $20 per hour noticing the 6 hour ($120), 19 hour ($380), 12 hour ($240), 19 hours ($380) plus others. Is this @victorwallet designing this or someone else? Obviously no expense is spared or savings found it seems.
As you can see this is one of the Street Workout Crew members who has this bike which also raises questions about that other particular sponsorship.
The SWC spent $2428 on a medical first aid kit and I know how much a top of the range first aid kid with all the bells and whistles costs and it is well under $1k. It is actually nearly 4 x cheaper than what was spent here.
The Street Workout Crew is another problem area that I am seriously struggling with. They have received over $77K in the last 12 months and I was wondering for what exactly. Are they building these training areas but no they are already in site for public use.
Apparently it is for branded merchandise and advertising gear plus transportation. Venezuela where the SWC is based has 11 street workout sites according to Google which have been built by the local government. I actually like this idea, but not at $77k again where is the benefit for HIVE?
These two sponsorships equate to $100K for the 12 months and I am kind of a little shocked and disappointed at the same time that this was even considered a viable project to support. We can and must do better and I am asking the HVE community can we get more involved because we are all to blame and not just those over seeing this at @valueplan
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Great post @cryptoandcoffee. I’m glad you are looking into the bike racing because it’s increasing in funding and this one is difficult to even find anything on. The designing is the job he does for SWC workout . He designs the flyers for the event and uses that wallet to for funding . As one of the disgruntled swc crew pointed out , they did up their own fliers for the event’s free of charge but this was Victors gig and it needed to be the official logos etc etc. With a nice handy number like this , why not form something that gets even more funding? Makes sense .
Hah now I get it. This Street Workout Crew was created in order to provide certain members with an income under the ruse of promoting HIVE. The design work for all the braded merchandise that was being changed constantly was the mechanism to achieve this. Providing clothing that was being made etc. I saw somewhere where they had 420 items of clothing made obviously with the branding etc. This is not about benefitting HIVE, but benefitting those involved and is disgustingly bad. @valueplan did you know about this and couldn't you see what is happening here? What stood out and did not make sense was why thigs had to be changed constantly and why so many hours with designing which was being charged at $20 per hour. Surely if you have the logo how much needs to change per event would be minimal. You would not need new clothing designed each time yet this is happening for an obvious reason and HIVE is being milked. This is a scam and needs to stop funding immediately. The costs do not add up and HIVE should not be funding this costing HIVE $100K per year. I have heard $100K in Venezuela goes a long way.
If the principals of Value Plan have arranged this theft by fraud mechanism, what does that say about other expenditures that disburse vastly larger sums of money? It is notable that no answer from Value Plan is given to your question above. In my discussions with GP and LB I was told directly that no receipts would be provided to disprove allegations by eyewitnesses that expenditures by Value Plan for materials in Venezuela had been taken by the local SWC 'leader' (forget that name off the top of my head), and materials that cost nothing were provided, in fact dug out of their living room.
This refusal to provide receipts amounts to aiding and abetting theft by fraud to my understanding.
I would like to see VP restructured and believe it has to be as this is serious money especially with HIVE going up in value.
I'd like to see it start over from scratch as separate proposals, all of which are required to use GAAP, but I note there's not a current proposal on the market, so what I think is happening is that the jig is up and they're getting out with what they've already got, while the getting is good.
The real Hive marketing department is the library of content and the stable of creators Hive provides folks that are interested in them. If so many hadn't been flagged off the platform so vehemently so early, we'd have a much larger library and stable to draw folks with. We can fix the problem and get that library and stable still, but while we wait platforms like Odysee and Rumble get that audience for censorship resistance Hive once had an exclusive on. We had a first to market advantage once, and now we're getting late in the game. We still have a very valuable market proposition that can fly, but we've got to cut the hobbles of rampant flagging before we can do much with it.
I only saw this because @dreamtales pinged me. I wish I had seen it at the time.
I just checked Peakd proposals, and I do not see Value Plan listed there, so I cannot ascertain who voted for it. That is important information, I believe. If anyone knows where I can find this information, please let me know.
Thanks!
these are a lot of fund given out to valueplan account and I agree that there should be some sort of a mechanism to check how the funds are used i.e. in a form of a post or a report and if the stakeholders agree that DHF funds should continue then only it should else there should be a stoppage.. thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Hi, I'm that guy who complained about GP and Valueplan's bullshit regarding SWC funding. I say it without mincing words, that funding should stop, but they seem to care very little about our opinion and will continue to fund something that brings no real benefits to the street workout, let alone Hive. If you want to read more about this blatant embezzlement, I invite you to check out the hashtag #StopSWC
Thank you for this post. I can't believe I didn't see this post beforehand. I too am starting to look deeper into this and all of it screams scammer flags.
I think that the major voters on this are definitely in on receiving kickbacks. @blocktrades for example is one of the biggest ones voting their proposal. If he is not aware of all this, then it needs to be brought to their attention or are they purposely ignoring it because they are benefiting from this in other ways.
@valued-customer and I have questioned the lack of invoices and receipts and @lordbutterfly and @guiltyparties have given nothing but dodging questions and lies. Not to mention the manner of which we have been given responses is nothing short of nasty behavior and ad hominem attacks.
Good work. Following your account.
I appreciate the heads up, because I had not seen this post either.
Thanks!