Spending an outrageous sum of donated funds on an unknown company when everyone said it was a bad idea and would not work. I don't see it as a violation of being the Admin here, but it's... a bit tacky, I guess. I suppose an analogy would be like spending taxpayer money on DEI initiatives that nobody wanted, asked for, or thought would result in a positive outcome.
- Not asking the community (or Donators) how we wanted our funds spent was unprofessional.
- Spending money on an unknown company always has some amount of risk.
- Now we have to spend time on this drama.
The insane amount of BTC that was wasted is unimportant, and I'd feel exactly the same if the wasted amount was 100x more or 100x less. If I'd been holding the BTC, no BTC would've been wasted at all, and in fact it would have grown from airdrops as I respect the responsibility that comes with fiduciary duty.
At the time proposals to create the new forum software were
solicited, there were issues with the software the forum was running on. Since, theymos (likely with the help of others) has improved the software such that these issues are no longer applicable.
For the reasons stated above, I don't think it is reasonable to say that new forum software was not needed in 2011, when the project started. Perhaps in the years after the project started, the new software was no longer needed, however, the overwhelming majority of the funds spent on the new forum software came from capital gains, not donations. So by the time the software was no longer needed, it was theymos spending his own money.