@ned will still have millions of steem. haejin is powering down also, why not mention of that from anyone? like me I guess afraid to put the @ in front of his name lest they become the newest of the low. I would like to point out that I did see one post where haejin is wrong just about 76% of the time on his predictions, so that is really really good new for steem.
I think @ned is just going through an existential identity crisis, and is getting ready to buy himself a Bugatti Veyron - rather expensive at - about $1.5 million - a power down of 1,800,111.122 STEEM should about cover it, and the insurance and the tickets generated from driving it.
Ned does seem to be going through an odd phase. Maybe the pressure is getting to him.
If H leaves then it's one less distraction.
I don't know if it is pressure getting to him, more of a growth phase ever since coming back from S. Korea, and Anthony Bourdain's suicide. He is at that age we all were when we first start thinking about what next, where am I going, do I want family, the age of oh God I'm going to be 30 soon, life is over now. I don't actually know how old he is, somewhere late 20's mid 30's maybe, no clue. But he has left the teenage angst years to the first set of many I'm getting old angst years. The 30 stage, the marry or not marry stage, the fast car or nicer house.
Me I was lucky during all that most people are lucky during all that, because most of us do not have a huge wad of income to do whatever we please during those phases, so like in the 60's/70's rich kids trying to find their place in the sun, only now there is no place for rich kids to run away from all their worries. No more fun allowed.
I think this period is going to be good for him, and good for steem. It is not like he is a total doofus, he is a smart person, just a little lost right now, and being sucked into the white coat bootlick society. When he learns he is allowed to accept his ego, as all the great thinkers and movers have done for eons, then he will be stepping onto the right path for himself.
He's definitely smart and he is young, but it must be stressful to be the figurehead of something like Steem. I think he and Dan created it with the best intentions, but they deliberately gave up some control. It must be frustrating to see some of what happens here. I just hope he has good people around him to support him.
Sometimes it seems he does, sometimes it seems he does not, so as an individual looking in from outside, yeah it could be hard for him to find the support he needs.
When a CEO of my former employer sold some of his shares,he made a public announcement that he wanted to help his daughter out and he had put almost everything in the shares, that's all. That did the trick in the market.
Carrying something like "I have a goal and not enough cash on me at the moment" would ease the paranoid ones.