As I was reading your post, immediately Ripple came to my mind. I read, that supposedly the founders can pretty much manipulate it at will and if they decided to pull out all of their money, Ripple would collapse.
As much as all you say about real blockchain and decentralization makes sense I'm still a little worried, that those in power will find ways, to wrestle it all down. Sure, its probably not possible to shut down the whole internet for that, but what value is a crypto currency for instance going to have, when trading it becomes illegal or all the exchanges get shut down?
I heard about the facebook attempt. I have been wondering what their strategies concerning blockchain might be. Now, this probably sounds stupid, but isn't there a steemit, inc? Someone who also maintains the steemit interface and all? What if Zuckerberg bought them, how he did with other "competitors"?
I don't know much about reddit.. actually, I don't know anyone around here who does and think in Germany its about as popular as steemit. So, not such a big gap there ;-)
Clicked on your manna link the other day and gave my email address... no response or verificaton so far. Am I missing something?