I like your motivation and the support you provide for bitshares, but let's not lie to ourselves: if we were as popular as bitcoin, we would have a buttload of forks and copycats too. Scammers and assholes don't care what consensus protocol you use - they'll hijack anything. Same goes to the "blockchain was made for greater good but manipulators are manipulating" - it's not bitcoins fault. We could be in its place and bts would be artificially pumped the same way.
While I agree that bitshares is better in every way, we should not try and attract new investors through misguidance.
It all depends on the witnesses to make that decisions. We as community will be liable for that for voting in who will lead us to prosperity. Everything is transparent in Bitshares even ideas before implementing it. We are govern by our leaders(the witnesses).
I agree that it's not Bitcoin fault. But if we look into it? Why is Bitcoin pumping? Then there is what we called margin where traders safely store their money in USDT which doesn't even exist in the first place. Cryptocurrency is already corrupted and we are not condemning these actions.
It really does not depend on the witnesses. New bitshares blockchain can be created by anyone at any time, it's open source, remember? Nothing can stop even you from creating your own "bitshares cash".
And no witness can protect the network from pumping coins with counterfeit money.
Bitcoin is pumping because it is the most popular coin with the most exposure. You pump it a little and millions of lemmings start throwing money at it, pumping even more. When the pump stops - print more tethers and pump btc a little more - and the cycle continues
But who are supporting this pumps? Actually who are the ones circulating information about bitcoin reaching 13,000 usd? What happened to those who bought Bitcoing at such price? Actually it will never stop if we continue supporting the use of USDT.
Yes it is actually open source but it's up to us to weather support it or not.
It looks like the folks on twitter are finding more and more information that supports the theory of bitfinex and tether pumping btc together with non-existent money. But you probably already know that.
It will stop one day and I see only two possible outcomes: either tether/ bitfinex scheme collapses and everyone will lose tons of money, crippling all crypto for a long time, or everyone switches to bitusd and everything continues as normal but with less btc pumps.
As per forks - look at bitcoin again, community divide on some major decision is inevitable when so much people are involved. If we'll face similar adoption, there will be forks and not a whole lot to do about it
I think crypto will survive without USDT. There's bitUSD now and we have plenty of supply of Bitshares for everyone. All they have to do is implement bitUSD in their exchanges for ex. Bittrex and Poloniex.