It seems that they can and did. I don't even think there is a reasonable presumption that they should not. After all, the money is entrusted to them and is under their control. Why shouldn't they vote it?
You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
Because it deprives the actual owners of the funds, to whom they have a fiduciary trust, of their private right of ownership of those funds, which includes the sole and exclusive right to vote with those funds.
No part of their contracted arrangement with exchanges forfeited that lawful right of ownership. The exchanges seized those funds and exercised ownership of them in violation of their fiduciary trust. Hanging's too good for 'em.
Remember your legal theory when you have a daughter in school, under the control of authority figures there.
Surrendering the funds to a second party by depositing them to an exchange deprives the "actual owners of the funds" their right of private ownership of those funds.
Money in the bank isn't your money. It's the bank's money, and a corresponding liability to you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_is_nine-tenths_of_the_law
https://sneak.berlin/20191119/your-money-isnt-yours/
Money isn't voting rights, and Steem is. Powering it up does prevent it's use by it's rightful owners, and violates the fiduciary trust these exchanges undertake.
Banks are thieves, which is why I don't use banks.
Possession is nine-tenths of the law
Possession is nine-tenths of the law is an expression meaning that ownership is easier to maintain if one has possession of something, or difficult to enforce if one does not. The expression is also stated as "possession is nine points of the law", which is credited as derived from the Scottish expression "possession is eleven points in the law, and they say there are but twelve."Although the principle is an oversimplification, it can be restated as: "In a property dispute (whether real or personal), in the absence of clear and compelling testimony or documentation to the contrary, the person in actual, custodial possession of the property is presumed to be the rightful owner. The rightful owner shall have their possession returned to them; if taken or used.
Maybe they should be able to do that, maybe not. But for sure, locking up stake of their clients by converting to Steem Power (with all implications of that) IMO is a crime.
not your keys... etc. by sending DPoS tokens to an exchange, you give up your voting rights, and make them your "proxy".
I hate it too, but those are the rules.
Crimes aren't generally matters of opinion, and most cryptocurrency exchanges have "locked up" their customer funds offline for safety purposes, taking several days to access them from cold wallets. This doesn't seem that different to me.
What laws do you think have been broken, in which countries?
Philosophically I agree that whoever owns a token should be able to vote with it. (Nevermind the discussion of whether or not STINC was bound by their promise not to vote).
But any DPoS chain that wants me involved going forward need to have some sort of mechanism that still prevents this type of take-over from being possible.
Maybe a delay in time from when tokens are staked to when they can be used to vote for witnesses/BP combined with max votes being reduced to 5 would be sufficient.