I know that blocktrades knew because of his shares in Steemit, he even told me in a comment. It doesn't matter what the motives are, the truth is that hive is less reliant on blocktrades now that it was reliant on Steemit.
Steemit had a huge stake. And they were selling more dollars just for node costs than the DAO is printnig now. At least blocktrades made node run 8x cheaper.
Hive is simply better now, don't know why you get sucked into weird guesses. If you don't trust blocktrades then fine, I can see why. I personally think he really wants to implement on hive his vision of a huge reputation system, which I am not a fan of honestly.
But hive will be successful even without that.
Time will tell 🙃. The real issue I have with Hive is that the BTS camp and their enabling significant others have turn this to their personal BS. Which created an unscalable amish-like internet atmosphere.
Globalization is so much more. Some people don't like rim jobs, that isn't part of the process. Fortunately they overestimated their legitimacy, and are more than wrong on several fronts.
At the start of every great revolution they hang the "intellectuals" from the gallows. It will now take several years for this mess to get sorted out. Perhaps a double digit percentage on a young life. Those old bastards this is entanglement.
They made something minute to some, serious for them. Very big problem. I suggest they don't act so tough, and keep it on the backburner. It is very sad this is what some people have energy to do in retirement. Tragic.