After Steem Voting Controversy and Hardfork, Binance Lists HIVE

Published at: April 27, 2020

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 after Binance and Huobi mobilized customer funds to support Tron founder and new Steemit Inc owner Justin Sun’s apparent attempted takeover of the Steem network — ousting Steem’s block validators in favor of Sun.

However, the exchanges claimed that they were misled by Justin Sun as to the nature of what they were voting on, and quickly withdrew their votes. CZ claimed that he had been made aware of an upcoming upgrade that he had supported.

In later statements, CZ admonished Sun, saying:

“Justin didn’t talk to me about it actually. My internal team said it was a necessary network upgrade, so I said go ahead. There are network upgrades all the time, and we are always supportive.”

CZ continued, saying: “I told him already directly, explain what you are trying to do to the community and get support first, then do it. Transparency works.”

Apparent takeover sparks resignations from Steem

In an interview with Cointelegraph, OpenOrchard CEO and former Steemit Inc head of communications, Andrew Levine, stated that the situation where Huobi and Binance supported Sun’s takeover comprised the catalyst for his resignation.

“It became intolerable once we saw what happened with the exchanges. That was a black swan event for us,” Levine said, continuing:

“When I saw that the exchange had gotten involved in governance and not just one exchange, once we saw that, it really shattered our conception of the blockchain space. It really had a massive impact on us.”

Former Steem developer is willing to put past behind him

When asked how he would feel about HIVE being listed on Huobi and Binance, the developer said:

“I have no problem with Hive being listed on those exchanges — you always want your tokens on exchanges, there are customers there, there are people who want your token — you want your users to have options.”

Levine noted that the situation comprised an “extremely rare event,” also acknowledging that Steem’s “confusing” Delegated Proof-of-Stake governance model played a part in facilitating the takeover. He said:

“When you have exchanges out there where the executives are overseeing hundreds of tokens, each with their own crazy governance models, it should have been taken into account at launch, 'hey, people aren't going to understand the nuances of this.'”

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