From steemd I can see that rancho started doing most of his buys in late may/mid june 2017. He's made a fraction of the initial investment back in post rewards.

Honestly I don't see what the big deal is. I'm presuming they weren't buying when the prices were in the single digits of cents, or they would have been using that account earlier.

Not many people have the balls to go into something like this for a million+. The fact that other people were selling in order for them to accumulate this makes this all just a big joke to me.

I have more of an issue with the chosen few who got their stake without having to put any money in. Just be a part of the inner circle of the BTS/Steemit/EOS mega circle-jerkers' club and they'll probably throw you a few bones is how these coins seem to operate.

Dudes spent over a million to get back about 300,000 when they easily could have just kept it liquid and made 10 million at the peak, or several million before or after that point in time.

And I don't want to point out the obvious, but everyone who runs a bot voting service has a motive to shame self-voting, even though it's a perfectly acceptable use of stake.