Coins on exchanges give no power to the platform in terms of control. It is still based upon SP.
And if you are going to look at STEEM on the exchanges why not look at other crypto that one holds. If one has $100K in ETH, couldnt he or she just buy STEEM with it and power up? What about fiat, if one has that? That can be used too. STEEM as a currency certainly can be brought back in and powered up, but so can other crypto so I do not find it relevant to the discussion. Yes it exists out there but so do people who can come in and buy Whale status with $500K.
Have to draw the line somewhere....and when it comes to directly influencing the blockchain, SP is what increased one's standing. Powering down or selling out only decreases it.
I agree with you and maybe I didn’t get the point across but I was saying that whales are not a problem in a DPOS as long as a portion are contributing to the blockchain whether it being posted, curating and/or delegating to projects that have the protocol’s best interest in mind whereas other currencies under POW do not have that power. Which is why centralization is worst off in BTC and LTC. However, what I was saying on the exchanges is that many of those wallets hold a lot or the coins for their customers who do not control the private keys. So if we look at it from a fiduciary standpoint, there is less centralization in BTC/LTC than just the distribution of the wallet sizes. Many still hold assets on exchanges due to ignorance of the options...