Hi folks, I'd like to mention a couple of things on the subject of the digger and the future of CLAM that I feel are important and it seems are being left out (I tried to read back as far as I can and didn't find some of this stuff mentioned, forgive me if I am mistaken).
By the way, some of you may know me as "Fido" on JD, this here is an old account I made back in the day...
One fundamental aspect of CLAM is that it was well known from the very get-go that there were 3,208,032 sets of ~4.6 CLAM distributed to BTC LTC and DOGE addresses from the very beginning, making the total potential pre-staking supply of CLAM around 15 million, right away. The JD community got used to the slow "roll out" of clams initially, during the course of the first year or so, and got complacent with their trading and position placement. Basically, y'all got used to there being a total supply of around ~200-300K clams in circulation, plus that much more due to ongoing staking, and were basing your trading, betting, and all the other fun stuff you can do with CLAMS on that math I.E the community got complacent.
Also on that note, any reasonable investor/participant in the CLAM community could have and should have deduced that from the very get-go, a lot of the addresses that clams were sent to during the distro, were likely to have been mostly on exchanges, gambling sites, etc. We also know how difficult it is to get private keys for addy's on such places, and we can also assume that a lot of people would simply forget about a lot of these addresses, never find out about CLAM, or any number of other issues that would prevent them from ever claiming their CLAMS. Which means that all of these addy's would remain in the hands of the exchanges, who would have an easy method of claiming said CLAMS, making them the potential whales in the room. I know I came to these conclusions early on when gauging whether I should involve myself with CLAMS, and based on these factors, I decided that my CLAM positions would be limited to short or medium term holdings, until more of the potential CLAM supply becomes ACTUAL and this large uncertainty is removed.
What I am saying is, along comes the Digger, and a lot of people are crying foul now because their holdings' value is plummeting. I am not sure why they are surprised, this is something that should have been obvious that has a large potential of happening. My theorizing above is turning into reality, and it should come as no surprise. What's more, the digger is actually unloading a relatively SMALL part of all potential clams, and he isn't even dumping them on the markets en-masse. It could get a whole lot worse. Just look at the orderbook on the largest clam exchange Poloniex, it would take a dump of 188K clams to bring the price down to 5 satoshis. Yes, 5 satoshis!
So in this regard, I think BayAreaCoins is correct that a lot of the people who are crying foul now are the ones who are being inconvenienced by the digger, as a result of their own decision making. The digger's actions were to be expected, and I think everyone was hoping that something like that wouldn't happen, but at the same time shouldn't be surprised.
Another point that I think we ought to consider is the fact that CLAM's hallmark feature was the attempt at FAIR distribution, and this is where I make an honorary mention of BeLiefs and his posts. I think we should never deviate from this cause. One argument that could be made in favor of limiting the digger is, to me at least it seems obvious that the digger represents a commercial entity, and I think Doog did mention that it is very likely that the majority of addresses used to be on some gambling site. I don't think large exchanges and other entities using other users' CLAMS by virtue of having access to them was the CLAM founders' idea of fairness. I think the point was for average joe's to have an equal and fair chance to access to these coins. So perhaps the most fair thing to do would be to somehow limit large commercial entities from profiting at the expense of average Joe's? But how do we distinguish from clams that are being dug up by exchanges and gambling sites from clams that re being honestly claimed by individuals? Is such method even possible? I doubt it, but I will let the experts chime in on this one, such as Doog and the clam founders.
Finally, I think the fundamental problem with CLAM value right now boils down to this: there simply isn't enough demand to absorb potential dumps by large players such as the digger. 76% of all clams are invested in JD, with another who knows how many being held in deposit for gambling. I've always said it, as much as I trust Dooglus, we need to diversify, and I even threw around the idea to some members for creating a good Poker site based on clams. God forbid something were to happen to Doog, or the legal climate in Canada, and the site goes down. We need to expand the markets where clams can be used, so that there is enough demand for all 15 million clams distributed, so we wouldn't even have to worry about that.
In conclusion, I'd like to point out that I myself have CLAM holdings and while a high value is obviously in my financial interest, I don't want that to happen at the expense of sacrificing the core values that made this coin acceptable to many. Money IS NOT EVERYHING. From my experience in business, I have come to realize that money always follows good business practices, staying true to one self and to the customer base.
I am still not certain as to the proper course of action here, other than my idea that large institutions with access to CLAM addy's don't represent the intention of this coin and there could be a case made for limiting them, but again, I am not sure how this could be implemented in practice. I hope I am not repeating anyone else here, and thanks for considering my points. Comments by everyone will be much appreciated!
-Fido