RE: Offer to Purchase Steemit.com for Custody of the Steem Community
It's basically immaterial. Steem is currently Tron's possession. We are allowed the illusion that we have community witnesses that can prevent a HF, but that is belied by the fact the exchanges remain powered up and able to instantly assume control of governance again.
Either Tron and the exchanges execute the code that prevents their accounts from voting on witnesses, or Steem remains the exclusive possession of Tron.
Websites are just specific assets, part of the whole.
The community seems not to realize this fact presently. Since Steem remains usable at this time, we are able to continue to post and discuss here. Either the community forks and institutes mechanisms to prevent stake nominal to exercising governance at it's sole option, or remains on Tron's exclusive possession, Steem.
Would you say the same thing about Bitcoin? I've heard that Bitcoin has no company. So, that appears to be a critical difference to the extent that Steem may depend on Steemit. But that is assuming that the Steem blockchain is not independent like Bitcoin is disconnected and independent of companies and exchanges and websites and apps. I don't know how hard forks are implemented on Bitcoin. I imagine that the miners vote on hard forks and that resulted in the forks of Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, etc. Weku forked from Steem. Others have forked as well. So, we could fork from Tron just like Weku forked from us, assuming Weku did and I think they did.
While no company 'owns' BTC, the miners control it's transfer, and therefore exercise control. AXA has been pointed to as a controlling entity of BTC, and it is demonstrable that the day the future's market for BTC was initiated the crash of BTC value began.
Yes, BTC is presently centralized, and further, the exchages are chokepoints that enable legacy financial mechanisms to specifically target users that exchange BTC for fiat.
Absent decentralized exchanges, crypto is captive to legacy financial institutions. Absent nominal mechanisms to limit the ability of substantial stake to exercise governance, Steem remains subject to Sybil attack. These are just the facts I am aware of, and not what I advocate.
At least Binance today said on Twitter they will start powering down.