this all seems very pessimistic to me. I would say that the proposal is a good one.
There are a lot of "ifs" in your assumption.
Steem holds about 60 million Steem that is at current prices 20 million dollars. So what "if" that 2.5 million goes to blocktrades? they support the community and are here to make the blockchain better. Its not like they are going to dump it on the market??
If by spending 250k they could reduce the cost of running a witness (there are about 200 witnesses out there not counting the backups) that would be saving a lot of people a lot of money. AND they would save Steemit Inc a lot of running expenses that they claim would be roughly won back in a year. Then why the negativity?
And why would steem need to keep their 60 million Steem?? If they can cut costs and cut spending through this solution its a good one. Plus I would say that @blocktrades would be held accountable by Steemit inc and by the community as a whole if they do not deliver and try to take advantage of the whole situation.
There's a lot more "ifs" in hiring blocktrades than not. It's only a promise and no guarantees. Coding software doesn't always go as planned. I see it like this either
Pay up to 2.5 million steem for a hope
dramatically reduce costs and let the businesses innovate for themselves and focus on what steemit inc does best
I go for option 2. I would never want to put the success of steemit inc or steem itself into the hands of one 3rd party. talk about centralization.