Great and Terrible News: Hardfork Inc
Dear Diary,
It is day 14 of the #steemhostiletakeover, and this will be my final entry. The doublespeak and circular discussions have yielded no compromise. @blocktrades is forking the chain and deleting the ninjamine (SINMS).
https://steempeak.com/steem/@blocktrades/why-i-won-t-be-compromising-with-justin-sun
The time for talk is over.
Actions speak louder that words, and Jsun's actions have been deafening. His reputation (and the reputations of 3 exchanges) have been forever tarnished. He will now have to answer to his betters, and the exchanges will have to answer to their clients.
It appears the new sister fork will be called Hive. I rather liked Hydra, but it's really up to @blocktrades what they want to name it.
In some respects, this was the best way to play it. Saving the main chain by pushing a contentious hardfork that would delete the ninjamine has very bad optics from the outside looking in. By forking to a sister chain we show that the value comes from the community and we can't be bought, no matter what we call ourselves. It looks better to the world, and it is essentially the same result.
Steem was a bad name anyway. Can't tell you how many times people thought I meant Steam the game company.
The ultimate goal here is to get everyone onto the new chain Hive, and to dump Steem to zero. This should not be difficult, as Justin Sun is clearly a vulture capitalist and has absolutely no intention of keeping the Steem blockchain afloat. There are going to be millions dumped on the market after the fork. Who's going to buy those coins? I can't imagine there will be much demand. Even the users that support Sun want a higher token valuation and aren't looking to invest further.
I'm halfway temped to buy more coins now so they get copied to Hive and I can dump them on Steem the second they're airdropped. Normally a fork announcement like this would have already spiked the price of Steem in anticipation of the airdrop. However, because of the COVID-19 scare and impending economic collapse, this is not the case.
Even more relevant: forks like this usually have 2 sides that will continue on. I am 99% certain the Steem blockchain will be dead in the water quite fast. The only people who are going to stick around are the ones who think Jsun is going to bring value into the ecosystem despite everything that's happening right now. The guy doesn't even have a single C++ dev. Once the value of Steem is under a penny, everyone who sided with Sun will realize their folly and capitulate like everyone else. How much do you want to bet that downvotes will not be removed from Steem before it dies? How long before Steemit Inc closes up shop and shuts down the API node? Things are going to move quite quickly.
The exchanges.
Wow, I can't even imagine the shit they are going to be swimming in as Steem drops to zero and Binance still has over 20M coins powered up. I've spoken to this before, but everyone who has their Steem locked on Binance, Huobi, and Poloniex has a legitimate reason to sue their exchange. I fully expect class action lawsuits to arise over this. The best part about this is that the Steem community doesn't even have to waste any effort to make these things happen. Simply forking away to a new chain will cause it to happen for free. There are going to be a lot of angry trading-bot owners.
@blocktrades will have to freeze the exchange accounts until they agree to airdrop the coins onto the rightful stakeholders. This should be a pretty easy and painless process that might get them out of said lawsuits. Also, it gives Hive easy access to get listed on all the chains that Steem was already listed on.
My question is: if Steem dies quickly do we want the name back or will we just stick with the new name? I guess legally Sun owns a lot of that stuff and wouldn't let us have it back as one final F.U. to our community. So be it.
What about other stake that supported the coup?
Lucky for us, it doesn't look like Sun is trying to hide the stake he is buying up to attack us further. Millions of coins are being transferred to the same accounts. Had this not been the case @blocktrades may of had to blanket ban anyone who supported the sockpuppets. At the same time, they only claim they are not airdropping the ninjamined stake... so perhaps the stake Sun has bought legitimately will be honored on the new chain? Not sure. Other than that, the damages of removing account stake from the new chain will probably be mitigated so the optics look a lot better from the outside looking in.
The great unknown.
This an exciting and terrifying time. If nothing else, I look forward to watching Sun squirm as his investment circles the toilet. I hope he's stocked up on toilet paper like everyone else. Best case scenario: he bricks the chain trying to give himself quick powerdowns once he takes the super-majority back because everyone else is powering down and transitioning to the new chain.
This may be my last journal entry in the context of the hostile takeover, but surely this is far from over.
In fact, it may have just begun.
These two weeks may have felt like an eternity, but they were still only two weeks.
