Justin Sun is essentially buying power and influence with his money.

The unfortunate thing about this whole situation is that if the witnesses just would have forked off the ninja-mined coins years ago it never would have come to this.

The first best time to fork off the ninja-mined coins is when it was discovered, the second best time was the day after that, the third best time was the day after that. The witnesses had many chances to deal with this ninja-mined stake, which ultimately led to the complete take over by hostile actors.

Let this be a lesson to those who didn't do the right thing to begin with, the naivety of most witnesses caused this to happen. Whether or not people think I am being too harsh, the end result was predictable. Exchanges powering up Steem was a valid attack vector that was talked about by the crypto community as far back as 2017 I have seen, probably sooner.

If the question is, will someone collude to take over anything, and there is power/money to be made, the answer is yes.

I personally like and still vote for a lot of the actual top Steemit witnesses despite this, because there isn't really a better option.