RE: Method to the Madness - Vulture Capitalism Comes to the Blockchain
@v4vapid, thank you for a really well thought out and thorough explanation of the scenario we're dealing with here.
I had been pondering Steem's predicament as yet another example of "predatory capitalism" and your article only bears that our further. The "no-shop" clause was another piece I had not taken into consideration; thank you for that.
A true value investor could have come in here; acquired the Steemit, Inc. stake and assets, pumped maybe $10-20M into development and marketing, and could have seen their investment in 17-cent Steem potentially turn into a result of $10 Steem in the matter of a couple of years, while also being hailed as *"the savior" of Steem. Instead we have this... shitshow.
He clearly did not expect the community to "bite back." Not only did the community bait back, it made JS lose face and credibility with his cronies at Binance and Huobi... and much of the Steem liquidity dried up, so he was prevented from executing a quick fix by trying to buy millions of Steem to get the sock puppets back in change.
It does make me laugh that TRON holds itself forth as a developer and proponent of decentralization when it is one of the most centralized blockchain operations around!
These are exactly my thoughts on what happened. I am convinced Sun's reputation as a marketer is completely BS. What he is, is connected nepotically, and his degree of competence at business is revealed by his failure to pump a couple ducats into Steem with fanfare, capitalizing on the launch of communities, and watch the price moon as the market took notice of possibly competent, well funded leadership took the helm of Steemit.
He'd have had to glad hand the witnesses and stakeholders of Steem to do that, but he could have just blown smoke up their skirts and kept them in line as @ned did for years. He just failed to bother, and revealed his lack of acumen by letting the SF happen.
Then, to make things worse, instead of holding a steady course once he realized the witnesses and other stakeholders had relevance, he chose to remove that relevance to the best of his abilities, and degrade the value of what he had just spent $M's on. He also thereby exposed the soft, white underbellies of corrupt exchanges with zero respect for their fiduciary duty to the customers, or grasp of such acts on their future market. Anybody using Binance or Huobi today is either completely incapable of due diligence, or retarded, or both. @edicted well points out that the liquidity of Steem on Binance is none, and also drives Steem price down there, which makes using Binance for Steem now, regardless of it's demonstrable cavalier treatment of it's Steem customers, a guarantee of losing value.
Honestly, @ned may have been confused by the novel business he invented, and driven to lapses of judgment by exigency because of that, but compared to Sun he was as virtuous as a Vicar. I note his potential extrication from dependence on the community has caused his lack of ethics to be far better revealed in his desperation to break free, but even he was not so stupid as to centralize the DPoS flagship of decentralization and let everyone in the market see exactly what really was behind the curtain.
Were I Sun I'd have trouble sleeping because of all the cringing I'd be doing as my mind replayed all my asinine mistakes while I tried to fall asleep. He may not be capable of that, given just how clueless he seems to have been going into this mess. I mean, you have to be able to grasp you've made mistakes to regret them.
What's important going forward to the markets is whether he reveals he is capable of learning from his mistakes. The absence of actual conciliation and moves to begin pumping Steem is painting a brilliant target on his assets by revealing his utter incompetence to conduct business affairs. Weak buzzards don't just get less of the carcass the slavering gathering of corpse eaters pick apart. They become carrion, and part of the feast.
Thanks!
Exactly, this would be the best case scenario for Tron and Steem, the win-win scenario. Only it very quickly became a complete shitshow!
Why?
That's what everyone's been scratching their heads trying to figure out.
Again, you're right over the target as Sun didn't expect the community could rally so quickly and mount an adequate defense to the takeover. Now, there's a stalemate and the longer it continues and the more they seeks to gain the upper had, their plans come into greater focus for all to see.
Yes, the irony of their mantra of "decentralizing the web" is quite comical.
I suggested to some that we help correct their typo as their slogan should read something like:
Tron: Recentralizing the web