Once upon a time there was a guy named Bob .....

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Part 6.  The Fall of the Salamander

Gentle readers. Look at the stage.

There is movement now. Different shades of darkness within the darkness.

You can see the ronin, my former brothers-in-arms, warming themselves around fires in the shadows of Paul and David. But they are fewer now. How many of you are left?
How many of you have laid down your weapons and withdrawn to your homes, your families?
 
You can see the darkness that has enveloped Bob. The darkness of a leader without followers, cut off from his greatness. Alone.

You can see the battle camps of Paul and David, ringed by the fires of their ronin.  They have found each other in the darkness. War makes strange bedfellows. Now they are pegging their fortunes and trying desperately not to fall.

Deep in the backround you can see Lin. Unmoving. Invisible. Betting that everyone will finish each other off, leaving him unscathed.

You can see Steve. Tied to his sins, roped permanently to David. Sinking slowly in this wine dark sea.

But you cannot see the Salamander.

He was the first to fall.


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When the Salamander saw what was happening in Cambodia he should have just walked away. He should have gotten on the plane and messaged Bob it’s a clusterfuck. Keep the fuck out.

But he didn’t.

The Salamander was a fixer.  He was not supposed to be the fixer in BitBay though. He was supposed to be the briefcase man, the bridge between the Chinese and Bob. After all, months earlier, the Chinese had brought on the wunderkind Zimbeck; no one imagined that Zimbeck would become the one thing that needed fixing the most – but the one thing that could not be fixed.

For starters, Zimbeck was in Cambodia. The logic was that Zimbeck could hire and train a team of Cambodian devs for a fraction of what that might cost in the West. There was just one problem with this. There seemed to be no devs in Cambodia. And Zimbeck was having no luck training devs himself. He was even having problems getting the first Bay wallet to compile.

The Salamander looked at this situation, and looked at the BitBay roadmap. Smart contracts were supposed to be released in three weeks. A functioning decentralized market in less than two months. This was clearly a situation in need of fixing.

There was another problem. David began to tell the Salamander that of all the technology he was working on, only the pegging would be exclusive to Bay. Everything else – the multicoin wallet, the markets, the mesh technology  - would be shared with Halo. He even told Salamander that the Halo Nighttrader and markets would be released about the same time as BitBay.

The Salamander knew this was a headshot for BitBay.  BitBay’s whole identity was to be the first online decentralized marketplace. To have Halo offering essentially to license the same thing to anyone who came along made no sense at all.  Again – here was a situation that needed fixing.

But there was a problem. Somewhere along the line, David had become a partner in BitBay. So no one could tell him what to do.

It is standard operating procedure in any corporation, even in politics – that when one takes on a partnership role, one must divest oneself of any asset that can lead to conflict of interest. But this had not happened here. David was full speed ahead on Halo. While being a partner in Bay. And since he was a partner, no one could exert any authority over him.

The situation could not possibly be fixed.

This was the Salamander’s fatal mistake. He should have turned around and messaged Bob, it’s a clusterfuck. Stay the fuck away.

But he didn’t. He set about trying to fix the situation.

Gentle reader. You all know what happened next. David and the Salamander fought each other to a bloody finish, first in private, and then in public.

The irony in David’s situation is this: he was a full partner in Bay. Bay was not yet tarnished – it had heavy backing, and a shot at being the first true decentralized marketplace in Asia. If he had just ported Halo into Bay and respected basic divestment procedures, he could have been rich beyond what Halo would ever make him.

Instead, there he is, gentle readers – before you on the stage. Encamped in the darkness. Exiled. Surrounded by rings of believers, and the fires of his ronin.

We will return to David. But first we must witness the rest of the Salamander’s fall.


To be continued.