Thanks so much for your input. You make some really excellent points, Christopher. I see the headline this morning thus far is N. Korea drama to the world stage. That is where China to a large degree is playing the puppet master. Albeit, the whole nation game at that level is mostly an illusion for them to play on us munchkins. Iran is probably the next hotspot in their script to be played out. The funny thing I saw as the second headline on Yahoo news was that the Phoenix Suns Win Draft Pick. It made me think of the Phoenix of The Economist magazine cover 30 years ago. :)

On the last paragraph of steemit, I've researched this inside and out for the last 6 weeks and have come to the conclusion that I really doubt it has much of a chance at all. The code simply seems to have too many flaws to fix. The solution seems clear to just start from scratch and create a new blockchain that fixes the inherent flaws of this one. My biggest worry here is the direction of the management. In my view Ned is really good at some things, but at least lacks in some very important areas a CEO needs to be good at. If he added the right people and skills to his management team and they really honed in on fixing the foundation of steem before the SMTs being built on top it, they may make it. Who knows though. Maybe the Phoenix will rise out of all the steem too... :)