I am pretty sure that the financial manipulation factor has tainted Steem with the 'scamcoin' tag, from the research I have done. Particularly the early mined stakes in Steem, which remain today the largest stakes on the chain, since mining is no longer possible, and certain ploys were undertaken to ensure that those stakes were overwhelmingly large (including relaunching the chain when others mined competitive stakes).

99.9% of people will never be able to just buy enough stake to compete, and those that can are unlikely to be interested in doing so to promote uncensored social discourse, but rather focused on doing so to control the platform in a Sybil attack.

I believe you have seen and commented on my earlier posts on how to fix this problem (going from memory here, rather than taking the time to search for the actual data) and have found my proposal insuperable.

The code permits these rewards mining schemes @jerrybanfield has pointed out (and that I have discussed with @snowflake, and others regarding a flagging endeavor undertaken by @transisto, IIRC. In that conversation @snowflake admitted that @mindhunter was buying his upvotes, acting as a sort of one-man @randowhale, just for @mindhunter. Since the value of the upvotes does not come out of @snowflakes pocket, and selling them was more cryptic than self-votes, which draw flags, it's a profitable scheme for all concerned), and permitting this makes those early mined stakes possessed by those that control the witnesses presently worth $millions when a Sybil attack is undertaken.

Because of this I reckon the rest of us, who have no mined Steem, are powerless to affect the outcome. HF20, intended to dramatically increase the number of accounts on Steemit, will cause an upsurge in both the price of Steem, and the value of the platform to those with nominal wealth to mount a successful attack.

I expect we will see very soon after HF20 is implemented whether Steemit is a pump and dump scheme or not.

$Mx are at stake in those holdings that potentiate a Sybil attack, and for this reason I am confident in how they will proceed.

Remember that controlling the witnesses potentiates ending the 13 week power down (even to limit that exception to certain accounts), and the simplest agreement between the stakes currently in control of the witnesses (and @alexvan's comment points out just how easy it can be to influence the witnesses with cash) can enable them to simply take their buckets of cash and leave the platform to Zuckerberg, or whoever wants it, and has the money to buy it.

Edit: according to the white paper, the weighting of VP by SP was intended to allow whales to curate with greater control of the discourse on the platform, not to provide some kind of dividend to whales for their investment.

However, folks immediately understood that these rewards pool mines were possible, and this has caused many including the top witnesses with whom I have conversed, to become dedicated to the rewards mining, rather than curation, inherent in the VP weighting scheme.

While the white paper pays lip service to discouraging financial manipulation, one only has to look at politics to see that words can often hide intentions exactly the opposite of the meaning of the words.

This seems to be the case with Steemit and VP.