The controversy surrounding Justin Sun’s handling of the Steem (STEEM) network continues to grow, with Steem moving to freeze another $5 million in tokens held by dissident Steemit witnesses and stakeholders. Network validators — called ‘witnesses’ — associated with Sun have sanctioned the move to freeze 23.6 million in STEEM tokens, accusing the account holders of posing an existential threat to the Steem network. However, critics claim the hard fork vindictively punishes users who opposed the Tron founder’s takeover and supported the Hive hard fork in March — a community led-fork that froze the founder’s reward Sun acquired alongside Steemit, …

Speaking at the Virtual Blockchain Week (VBW), Tron founder Justin Sun presented his side of the recent events involving Tron’s "partnership" with Steemit Inc, and the subsequent hard fork that resulted in Hive (HIVE) forking away from Steem (STEEM). During February, it was reported that Justin Sun had acquired Steemit Inc alongside the platform’s founder’s reward of 20% of the total STEEM token supply. In response to the purported acquisition, the Steem community moved to initiate a fork to freeze the reward. Sun rejects the narrative of Tron "acquiring" Steemit Inc At VWB, Sun stated that he does not think …

In response to customer demand, leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance launched trading support for the community-led Steem (STEEM) hard fork Hive (HIVE) on April 27. HIVE can now be traded against Bitcoin (BTC), Tether (USDT), and Binance Coin (BNB), however, withdrawals and deposits will not go live until April 29. While Huobi’s recently introduced support for HIVE skyrocketed the token’s price over 600% in three days, Binance’s announcement appears to have resulted in a bearish pull-back — with HIVE dropping 20% from $0.95 to $0.75 over the past 11 hours. Binance lists HIVE after voting controversy The announcement comes the month …

The price of Hive (HIVE), a hard-fork of Steem (STEEM), has skyrocketed following its listing on Huobi. The listing comes one month after Huobi and Binance mobilized customer funds to vote against the Steem community in favor of an apparent hostile takeover of the network, led by Tron founder and recent owner of Steemit, Justin Sun. However, the exchanges claimed that Sun had misrepresented the nature of the event that they were voting on, and quickly withdrew the votes. Shortly after, Huobi announced it would be distributing HIVE tokens to STEEM holders after the hard fork. Huobi listing sparks HIVE …

Bitcoin has had a rough week, down around 9 percent and trading below $6,700. Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, believes we’re in a bear market that could even take the price under $3,200. Ulbricht is serving two life sentences for money laundering, computer hacking, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics. Mike Novogratz disagrees. The famed investor and CEO of Galaxy Digital Holdings Ltd., is seeing greater adoption of Bitcoin, including among hedge funds and high-net worth individuals. He’s shorting stocks but believes “this is the time for Bitcoin.” It’s certainly time for debt. The US national debt has now …

Seven former top Steem developers have converged to form OpenOrchard, a company seeking to build innovative open-source technologies on top of Hive. Cointelegraph spoke to Andrew Levine, OpenOrchard CEO and former head of communications at Steemit, to find out more about the new project. OpenOrchard emerges after Hive hard fork OpenOrchard has grown out of OpenSeed, a team comprising Andrew Levine, Benjamin Flanagin, and Ron Hamenahem. This group was previously working on a second-layer solution for the network. But following Tron founder Justin Sun’s apparent attempts to execute what has been described as a hostile takeover of the Steem network, …

Major Steem stakeholder Dan Hensley has levied heavy accusations at TRON founder and CEO Justin Sun. According to Hensley’s April 8 writeup, Sun “bribed” his way to the top of the Steem hierarchy with “money, power and users.” As Cointelegraph reported in early March, Steem was the subject of what many supporters deemed a hostile takeover by Justin Sun. Hensley’s latest allegations shed new light on how the TRON founder allegedly influenced prominent Steemians into doing his bidding. A TRON representative declined to comment on this story. In a conversation with Cointelegraph, Hensley described Sun’s intention to circumvent established community …

Tensions between Steem (STEEM) and the Hive (HIVE) community continue to escalate, with Steem executing a soft fork to freeze up to 20 accounts owned by the network’s former witnesses. The frozen accounts hold 17.6 million STEEM, worth approximately $3.2 million and equating to nearly 5% of Steem’s total supply. On April 4, the soft fork was proposed in a Steemit post authored by the new account "softfork2288." In response to the purported “uncertain threat that the leaders and main influencers of [Hive] represented to the Steem Blockchain,” the fork sanctioned roughly “no more than 20 accounts “ that meet …

Over the past few days, the ex-Steem blockchain community has gained an upper hand over Justin Sun and his recently acquired Steemit startup. After blaming Sun for attempting to centralize their network, a substantial part of the original Steem community successfully launched a hard fork called Hive. Steem stakeholders are now actively migrating to the new chain. Its in-house token HIVE, which has been distributed among STEEM holders via an airdrop, is trading for a 20% premium over STEEM on some exchanges. Nonetheless, the network split hasn’t been without incident, as some complaints regarding the airdrop distribution were reported. What …

Canada-based company firm Hive Blockchain has announced that its legal representation is issuing a cease and desist request to the Hive community, which recently forked from the Steem (STEEM) network. According to a March 23 press release, the mining firm believes that the new blockchain’s use of the term ‘Hive’ creates confusion around its branding — asserting that many Hive Blockchain shareholders have sought clarification as to whether the company is associated with the hard fork. Hive Blockchain issues cease and desist to Hive community Hive Blockchain was founded in 2013 and claims the Steem fork is benefiting from “goodwill” …

After successfully forking from the Steem blockchain, Hive (HIVE) secured a listing on Bittrex — where it is trading for a 20% premium over Steem (STEEM). In a blow to Justin Sun, the cryptocurrency market appears to have chosen which chain it believes to be more valuable after Hive forked off from Steem on March 20. HIVE trades for 20% premium over Steem On Bittrex, HIVE is currently trading for $0.193, while STEEM is changing hands for roughly $0.154 on the same platform. HIVE’s 24-volume on Bittrex of $28,500 equates to 60% of Steem’s $49,500. In just a few days, …

The Steem (STEEM) blockchain community continues to oppose Steemit in the wake of the recent “takeover” orchestrated by Justin Sun, the startup’s new owner. On March 18, “a large group of Steem community members” announced its intention to hard fork the Steem blockchain and create a new platform called Hive. The network split that was scheduled for Friday, March 20, successfully took place at around 10.30AM CET, and the market already seems to be reacting to the news, as the price of STEEM token decreased by over 20% to around $0.23 as of press time. Hive is an exact code …