I am one of the "speculators" who bought about 50,000 ETC when the price crashed below .0001 when Poloniex first released it. I can respect your views and hopefully what I say next will give you some perspective, and if you need a better understanding of views of crypto, check my blog, I don't operate based on greed. I really do mean that and my actions and investment were towards what I feel is corporate manipulation infiltrating crypto. I don't think a foundation should be able to change transactions on a block chain for any reason. I think when they decided to bail out the DAO, and I won't get into the conspiracies many of us see about the "hack" in the first place, they violated the general nature of crypto currencies. I firmly believe that allowing for that manipulation and not fighting back sets the stage for future bailouts of coins to protect the interest of individuals over the interest of the platform as a whole. I can't imagine an extremely intelligent individual capable of recreating Java without the glaring holes in Java would allow a redundancy of that magnitude without it being intentional. I have never been pro Eth because until recently I didn't like the concept of a non finite supply of currency. The more I think about the Ethereum platform, and steem, as well as other block chain based services, I am learning that they way these "coins" operate and function basically requires the supply to be flexible. I have gotten past my initial ponzi scheme view of such coins by considering them as a commodity versus a currency, but I still feel that what the Ethereum Foundation did is not in the best interest of the crypto community. A ship doesn't sink in the ocean losing 30 million dollars worth of oil, and BP or Shell or whoever gets to say that it wasn't fair and go back in time and undo the loss. The market takes a hit and we move forward. Block chains cannot be allowed to move backwards at will as it violates the nature of immutability and hurts the fundamental ideology that crypto is built upon. I am sorry for anyone that lost money in the DAO attack, and I wish more people had read the terms of the contract when submitting their Ethereum for DAO tokens. I believe the whole concept of the DAO is actually great and although I couldn't see the value in Ethereum at the time, or even ETC when I bought it, I did see the value in fighting the greed and manipulation that are rampant in fiat currency. I can't see a bailout in crypto and put any faith or value in a crypto that has allowed for one. In my mind and my moral principals bailouts don't exist. You can't say that it wasn't a bailout, because it was by every definition related to finance, and you can't convince me that the Ethereum Foundation didn't have the largest stake invested into the DAO. I didn't buy into ETC to get rich, and I honestly figured I was throwing away Bitcoin by keeping the price from crashing through the floor. Others must have felt the same way, because I would have burnt through most of my Bitcoins keeping the price up if other large players didn't also chip in to support the price. I can't speak for anyone's motives but my own. I can just assure you that I didn't do it "speculate" on a price or hurt people that were dumping ETC, I did it to protect the integrity of the world I want to see exist in my lifetime.
Thanks for this. It's a great perspective and congrats on the ETC purchase. So I guess where we differ here is that you think that an immutable blockchain is best for the world, and I think an innovative blockchain that developers can build new use cases on is best for the world.
I would argue that we already have an immutable blockchain and its called the Bitcoin blockchain. I believe having one immutable blockchain to rule all as well as a flexible blockchain that can lead to innovative new use cases (led by the developers who had the vision) is the best approach to bring decentralization to the world, but we will see!