It takes 63.4m HP worth of votes to scrape into the top 20. You need more than 80m to displace 3rd place. You need to fill all positions from 20 to 3.
63.4m HP is $25m worth of Hive. You simply can't buy that amount on the open market quickly: the price would start rising so dramatically we'd all love you. Couple that with the modest earnings a top 20 witness makes ($5k per month) and the considerable investment all the top witnesses have in Hive's future as a project, corrupting them for money is very hard.
You would need to deploy a whole lot of money to do this, in a way that we didn't notice and hope you get to keep any rewards.
And if you really are successful and a majority of us really don't like what you're doing, we'll fork off. We've done it before.
Now this is getting very clear as to why it's economically unfeasible, especially with the figures you provide. Even if it's done insidiously so as not to alter the price too much, it'll likely be noticed over time, thus making it a far riskier maneuver. The risk itself would be a deterrent for any whale to try to perform this, especially since the eventual selling off would potentially induce price crashes, thus defeating the purpose of their investment.
Now, isn't also true that there is a ceiling to how much HP can be owned by a single user? If the ceiling is less than the minimum to break into the Top 20 witness position, then the witness positions are actually completely protected, thus alleviating the concern I had about puppet accounts / buying out witnessed, and consequently decentralized.
There's no limits in theory or in code to HP by a single account. But there are very real practical limits to how much can be accumulated and how quickly by any single entity.
Ah, I see. At any rate, yes, like you said: the practical limits provide a ceiling. Before that ceiling is reached, there would be very noticeable movements in price action, and thus a potential takeover would end up taking far, far more than a month and could be detected in advance.
Do you think that a coded ceiling for HP would be useful?
I think I'll make a post about our conversation at some point, if that's all right with you: this entire concept, as understood by a common person without much experience in cryptocurrency, and virtually no experience in blockchain aside from using it as a poster haha.
Would love to see the info here arranged into a post. Take anything of mine with pleasure!
Nope, a cap on HP would be communist... I don't like communism!
It shall be done! If the information can be relayed from the everyman to other everym(e)n, then the concepts may be more approachable. Simplification is one of the keys to expanding adoption of cryptocurrency.
I'll tag you when I make the post, just to make sure that everything I wrote it accurate, since I
I'll phrase things in context of my understanding.
I hope you'll excuse me for that one. The thought came into my mind when I was 80% asleep. Sleepwalking communism? 🤔
At any rate, I agree that wouldn't be a good idea because the downhill implications would be terrible. My own family understands the consequences from personal experience.