Thanks for the honest update. I really appreciate getting some on-the-ground knowledge outside of the sycophantic comments on Stan's HERO posts.

"My previous posts on this topic make it sound like you can make free, easy money shorting the USD with BitShares."

This is exactly what everyone of Stan's posts sound like. They basically sound like salesmen (at best), with their Yogi bear pictures and their numerous Star Trek references. Not to mention MichaelX aka "Murderistic" on stage, with the "Banx" scammer running the Heronomex show behind the scenes. Love his falsely inflated statistics - the only concrete, fact-checkable thing he said in the video was a 5x understatement of Jamaican average salaries to attempt to make his point stronger. (He claimed it was under $40/month)

If you think I'm slinging mud, just check this thread. Michael has a legit breakdown and Stan responds to very valid observations about surrounding himself with (the appearnace of, at least) scammers and terrible attitudes repeatedly by simply ignoring the valid points, telling someone "You'll see" or "Just wait", then closing with a smiley emoji and a signature disclaimer not to listen to anything he says.

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,22957.0.html

Every time I ask in a HERO thread "how is a freely traded asset guaranteed to appreciate at 5% per year" they either ignore me or refer me to some Smart Coin definiton that states "In all but extreme times of illiquidity, these coins are programmed to do X". Then they go back to talking about how many degrees faster Star Trek Warp Speed is than a horse.

Of course, the only time you really need them to do what they are designed is exactly when things get illiquid. As you, unfortunately, appear to have found out.

I think a lot of people are going to get stopped out on this, and the idea of increasing BTS from a point where their $666,666 dollar prize is worth a billion is a pretty laughable claim. Well over 1000x gain.

I wouldn't touch a thing made by a group making these claims this way, and I have less than zero faith in any part of this team other than Stan. It's all really a shame because the idea is appealing, the technology should be there to make it work, and Stan "should" be more competent and confidence-inducing than this.

Even if you ignore everything I've already said above, there is no getting around that all Stan really ever says about the Hero is that it will make you rich and "everyone is going to use it, forget crypto enthusiasts and geeks, we will have mass adoption".