How are all my Chicken Littles doing?
To anyone who thought the AMA was actually going to answer a single question.
How are we feeling today?
I mean, I guess they assured us that everything is slow moving and not set in stone. Some of the users here think the stink we made over all of this is what caused Steem to not be immediately taken over by Tron. I think that's a pretty self-important attitude but whatever.
Although a part of me does think that we're being tested. Everyone at the top knows what's going to happen when you make vague doomsday statements like that with no explanation. Yet still, Ned, Steemit Inc, the Tron Foundation, and Justin Sun just let it happen... caused it to happen... on purpose. Does Ned get off on trolling everyone and stirring the hornet's nest? I have to assume so. Kid is getting high off his own supply. Such a pretentious troll.
Why does a company buy another company?
Sure, there are a lot of reasons, but the obvious core foundation is obviously to increase profit margins. Everyone is so worried that Steem is going to be stripped bare and all the value is going to be leeched from it.
There is no value to leech.
This is not a traditional corporate acquisition. Steem has no value if the owner of Steemit.com tries to strip it down and extract its lifeforce. We are too small. Steem needs every piece that it has otherwise it's quite pointless.
But he's eliminating the competition!
There is no competition. DLT is cooperative. Steem isn't "taking business" from anyone. It's an open source platform. Steem being dismantled isn't going to make Tron any money.
We should be glad this is happening now rather than when the network has a market cap of multiple billions. Justin Sun has to play nice with the gloves on in order to get what he wants out of this acquisition.
Profits
So how does one extract profits from Steem? First off, take a look at the position that Steem is in. Sure, we aren't in "survival mode" anymore, but it's not like we have a supply of excess funding for development and marketing. Guess who does have funding.
Tron.
Obviously. So if you're Justin Sun you're thinking, hm I can inject capital into this project and scoop the lion's share of the profits that come out of that investment. This is a situation that happens all the time, and it can often be a win-win situation for everyone involved. The synergy of the merger is far more valuable than any of the drawbacks.
Conclusion
We shouldn't worry about Tron stripping the value of Steem because Steem has no value to strip. We aren't as valuable as we think we are. We should get over ourselves. The sky isn't falling just yet, although it is nice that we have so many doomsday preppers ready to hunker down at a moment's notice.
Steem Witnesses be like:
HEY THERE ARE NO SETTLIN' DOWN!
THIS IS BLOOD FOR BLOOD!
AND BY THE GALLONS!
THIS IS THE OLD DAYS, MAN
THE BAD DAYS!
THE ALL OR NOTHING DAYS!
THEY'RE BACK!
THERE'S NO CHOICES LEFT!
AND I'M READY FOR WAR!
I am recovering well from the alarm at Sun's initial post on medium that was indeed a threat to Steem. During the AMA he stated that was not going to happen 'for now' and made several other statements, such as he had no intention of centralizing Steem governance, that greatly reduced the threat to Steem.
I do believe he made those statements in response to community reactions, because he is intent on making money, and fracturing the community with ill advised governance centralization or capturing Steem by Tron will not facilitate that. The most valuable asset he hopes to gain by acquiring Steemit is the Steem community, and he may not have previously understood, as so many new Steemers don't, that Steemit isn't Steem.
He's bright, and seems to have grasped that fact quickly.
Thanks!
I honestly thought it was a bit more straight forward than that. Sun mentioned in a video several days back that their involvement with companies such as steem/steemit was more just a financial backing while mostly leaving things in place and leaving them to run their own project. That same concept seemed to what they were saying in the AMA.
Yes that contradicts some of the postings yesterday, but I think that is closer to reality at this point.
Thank you for offering a more reasonable approach @edicted. I think people in our community tend to easily get a little too myopic.
Possible scenario I was rolling over in my head... one that truly would be a win-win:
Justin Sun buys Steemit, Inc. and its assets (presumably including the Steem in key accounts) as a value play. Let's for grins call it the name +/- 35M Steem.
TRON has the resources to throw into development and marketing.
The Steem ecosystem — including dApps, SMTs and so forth — becomes a really big deal. Steem rises from 25 cents to $10 or more.
Justin's US $10M investment is now valued at US $400M, less (let's say) $20M thrown at development and marketing. If I were the investing sort, I'd consider that a really nice ROI...
=^..^=
Posted via Steemleo
What do you mean the sky isn't falling?
Did anyone talk about the thing steemit really needs? Searching and sorting?
This might be my favorite post on the Tron/Steem partnership so far.
Very interesting statement. Sure, the relationships are meaningful to me, but it is not as if the partnership is going to pay me anything for the people I have met. I still think there is some more of waiting to do before taking action, but it might be time to become a bit more liquid (but that was probably true even before yesterday's news).
I mean I really don't see anything extra here.
There is no fat to cut.
Yes, with steem only being valued around $80 million or so, there isn't a ton here... I mean Tron is close to $2 billion, that is a long ways apart... Not that we have a say at this point, but I think this partnership may end up being what saves steem, or kills it depending on which way they go. :)
Did Steem need saving?
I thought we were doin alright.
Well just about everything was headed in the wrong direction. From price, to ranking on coinmarketcap, to number of exchange listings, to user numbers on steem, to website rankings, to financial resources etc etc etc.
Lots of things were pointing to a slow death.
Yes we had major development coming in communities and SMTs, but without enough financial backing it was always going to be that much harder to make them a success, not impossible, but difficult.
This may greatly increase those odds of success.
Spot on.
As a very optimistic developer I see this place as more of a gold mine. Unfortunately no one knows what they are doing. The pickaxe hasn't been invented yet and everyone is clawing at the veins with plastic spoons.
Developers don't quite understand yet the recipes that make for amazing distributed programs. Everyone is stuck trying to jam a square peg (the legacy economy) into the round hole of this cooperative space.
It could be, though the code is open sourced and anyone with money and a plan could do this on their own... that is if they had the desire to. Steem needs to do something before someone else does... you don't get these opportunities forever in the business world, even if you had the better mouse trap first.
This isn't the business world. That is the entire crux of this problem: Projection of a competitive business environment onto this arena.
Before crypto, it was really really easy to build value by selflessly putting time and energy into creating open source products. Often, the creators of said value had no way of capturing any value for themselves.
With crypto, the system we have now automatically captures value because the coins gain value. Selfless open source programmers can generate value without having to capture it and they're still guaranteed to make money because they have stake in the network.
There are also a bunch of other things like being able to subvert regulations (like gambling/banking)... the point is that the vast majority of value in these platforms is the quantity and quality of the community members in them. We actually can afford to not be innovative and just copy other chains and be just fine in the long run... However unidealistic that scenario is.
Yes we should not be afraid or worried because decentralize or open source means nobody controlled or owned the blockchain everyone have its share in it only
If we think steem is decentralize and open source that is surely steem blockchain is we should not be worried from tron and steemit developments
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Yeah...buying Steemit is akin to adopting an open source project. Maybe there's profit to be had, such as in the Steem they hold, but that's like stock. You gotta make Steem worth more to make money. So, we just gotta be hopeful that they aren't complete idiots, and turn out to be half-competent stewards. Can't do much worse than Steemit has.
But I've been mostly away, and not quite up on what's happened.
It makes sense to actually keep steem separate if I was him and create a bridge between the 2 it would give Justin More reach since he can extend Tron in the East and Steem in the west without much political issues! He can position each strongly in the market and value can flow between the two ecosystems
What now u say sky isn't falling? I just powered down cause u and everyone else were just saying the steem sky was walling!! Oh well chicken little, I will still get liquid & prepare to wait & sell the top, maybe next year?!!