It was based on quality but not based on there being something in it for me or stakeholders profiting off of it like you seem to imply. If anyone's profited off of it it's Steemit due to adrevenue. I'm just shocked you'd take the side of someone who's shown what he's ready to do and possibly always intended to break up this community and chain.
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First, they signed a Non-Disclosure-Agreement, so they'll both never tell.
Second,
The Steem community was outraged by Scott’s comments, saying that over Steem’s four-year history that the founder had promised [apparently a non-binding verbal agreement] that these coins would be used to “decentralize” and wouldn’t be used in voting.
https://cryptobriefing.com/tron-executes-hostile-takeover-steem-exchanges-collude/
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We can know what they said because CEO's are simple ego-powered machines that are only interested in two things.
(1) MAKE MORE MONEY AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE
(2) HUMILIATE COMPETITORS
We can know what they said because NOBODY (especially a CEO) would buy a property unless they could (EITHER) MAKE MORE MONEY QUICKLY (OR) HUMILIATE COMPETITORS.
We can know what they said because NOBODY (especially a CEO) would buy a property in order to "help build a community of idealistic rapscallions who believe in decentralized governance".
CEO = EXECUTIVE POWER = CENTRALIZED CONTROL
"Decentralized Governance" is anathema to their very existence on all levels.
CEO will crush anyone who questions them.
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Justin Sun basically did the same thing to TRON. Like most CEO's he doesn't "negotiate" when he's holding all the cards.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/tron-community-in-uproar-as-genesis-coins-used-in-super-reps-vote
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He used the genesis-block, the original block of crypto that was reserved for "supporting the community", (which is exactly what the steem-ninjamine was), he used that reserved crypto to CONSOLIDATE AND CENTRALIZE CONTROL OF THE CHAIN (which was touted as "decentralized").
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Basically the question is, do you want one self-serving-moron in charge, or do you want seventeen self-serving-morons in charge?
Personally, I'll take the seventeen morons over one moron any day of the week.
We've already had one for four years, I'll gladly take 17 that can be voted in or out.
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I'm personally keeping my powered-up steem where it is. If the chain forks, you'll still have all your tokens and associated on-chain benefits, but the market price will likely drop significantly.
Justin also might just dump all his steem on the open market out of spite in order to crash the price.
So, if you can't afford to lose the cash-equivalent of what you've "invested" in steem, you might consider cashing out until this whole thing blows over.
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This will all blow-over in about a year we won't even remember it.
If The Sun fails their hostile-take-over attempt, they will probably get mad and dump their steem.
Sure, this might cause steem to drop down to 0.0017 USD, but there are lots of cryptos even lower that are still viable blockchains.
And if "the steem community" is real, and we actually survive this trial-by-fire, the value of steem will recover, my guess is a "natural" free-market-value should be about 0.01 USD. And it should stabilize around that mark and will increase in value slowly as the COMMUNITY grows.
Your tokens are safe.
Their value may crash, but your tokens are not going to be "stolen" or "frozen" by the top 17 witnesses (regardless of who they are or might be in the future).
Because if that happened, then steem would be worth zero and they have a lot more to lose than you do.
And, I don't even think it's technically possible (nobody has a copy of your steem-keys).
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Exactly. I can't disclose some information but what we know doesn't seem like Justin is the buyer we wanted or one who had the best intentions for the chain in mind that we've worked years on. It's your choice and I'm not holding it against you nor will it affect my future curation. His actions after the temporary softfork should speak louder about his intentions to what to do with this cheap stake he got OTC. At least he won't also get the community on top of this deal.
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As I said I'm not holding you against your opinions and from what I'm hearing your concerns are legit for many witnesses and many have played the political game and stayed in power for too long without providing much back to the community. About your other comment, I believe actions and history speak louder about certain witnesses than who they are. We're in this short squeeze of price now where there's a lot of leeway for allowing some witnesses certain positions because not enough big stakeholders care or are active in judging their performances outside of just verifying blocks. I do believe that once things turn around and Steem gets more traction and value many who aren't constantly evolving, adapting and bringing value back to the platform will find themselves in lower positions.
Right now we have this problem though and my personal opinion after everything I've read, watched and taken into account are that this buyer does not care about the community other than getting them onto his ghosttown of a blockchain. Some things have been told to me in confidence that I can't share, you may think that's convenient and I might be using it to bend the truth but there's nothing in it for me to do so. I wouldn't even mind not being in the top20 with my partner that I share the witness with if there's others doing way better things for Steem. I'm someone who thinks the bar of what is done by witnesses should be increased than just producing blocks and maintaining their position by votetrading or other political games. Steem is weird cause it's disincentivized to buy witness votes by sharing rewards with the voters which is something that occurs on EOS and other DPOS blockchains but at the same time some try defending that producing blocks is the only "job" they're supposed to be held accountable for.
Anyway, the crypto community in general is not easy to understand, the majority hate Steem due to past experiences and former people in charge which is sort of understandable. Many are not aware of the positive changes that have occurred here since but one thing you can't deny is the reputation of Justin Sun there. If the crypto community hate him more than Steem itself it should tell you something, even so, I've done a lot of research on the matter and I've concluded that Tron is what I suspected it to be. A bad copy of code in a bad coding language that could very well be a competitor to Steem but they haven't focused on introducing the social aspect to it because they know people would realize then how dead of real users that coin really is. His acquisitions make sense if you think he's trying to buy users and a community, with buying Steemit he could also have the team work on creating something very similar to Steem and have everyone swap over to that sidechain which is hard to argue were not his intentions to begin with.
So my honest opinion is. JS bought Steemit+stake dirt cheap from someone who wanted out and couldn't find enough buyers because of its reputation. He either wanted a quick profit to flip the coins and knew about the promises of the Steemit stake but plays dumb now because the former seller agreed to sign NDA's not mentioning he knew about it but seeing as how cheap he got it it must've been part of the deal. His best case scenario was probably having the Steemit team who now quit build his steem sidechain, have the community swap over and bring all the value from his Steem over there. Now he realized he lost the community and doesn't want to lose the extra stake that came with the deal and wants out as soon as possible. I don't think there was ever a plan for a true partnership to have both blockchains grow side by side even though that's something me and many others would have wanted. It's sad and I wish there would've been someone else interested in buying Steem or getting the deal through instead because there were (Ned mentioned he had talked to blocktrades as well) but we got JS instead and Ned sold us to someone he probably knew didn't give a shit but he got some more money out of it with tainted stake he insists was no promised for anything and only belongs to Steemit to do whatever it wants with after years of bringing in investors who bought Steem and stayed invested because of that stake being used for the future development, marketing (which we never saw any of) and other distribution.
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