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The steemit, steemit1 and steemit2 accounts all seem to be used for managing aspects of Steemit Inc's ongoing distribution of the original ninjamine funds that were originally powered up into 'steemit', including internal and external market trades and transferring stake to employees, contractors, and advisors. It isn't clear whether there is a specific purpose for each of these individual accounts. The one related account that does seem to have a specific purpose is the 'steem' account, which creates and funds the new accounts for users who sign up on the web site.

Was it for sure a ninjamine? I hear that term thrown around a bit, but I've also read through posts like this one saying this may have been the only legal way to do it or posts like this and others which seem to indicate early mining was open for everyone, even though it was difficult/undocumented at first without a windows client and had to restart once due to a bug. Does that count as a ninjamine?

"Ninjamine" is the term that has been suggested to me to describe it by a founding member of the Steemit team. I think the term "sneaky-mine" was also mentioned, but I'm not 100% sure about that, so I'll stick with ninjamine (clearly the implication of "ninja" is sneaky or stealthy though).

In any case, I'm not attaching any particular interpretation to that term. Factually, it was set up in a manner so that Steemit would mine about 80% of the supply and distribute it according to a process that was described by them: 1) half distributed to new users, 2) half of the rest sold to fund Steemit Inc, and 3) the other half of the rest kept by Steemit Inc. (since one might reasonably assume they weren't necessarily stating an intent to keep it forever, this last portion might better be described as "unspecified"). This plan was officially described by the developers on the original launch thread and maybe one or two other places.

Thanks for clarifying, @smooth. I've often thought of it as a derogatory term. I wasn't aware a founding member used that term also. Quite interesting. I was aware of the plan, which is why I'm often surprised when others are shocked at how much steem is being "dumped" on the market. They said what they would do and they are doing it. Should they do it slowly or differently? Maybe, but they also have more important things to focus on such as growing this platform.

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