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They will be hit with a class action lawsuit if they do. @jpbliberty will organise it.

Sounds great. Like the time I tried to sue a company for not paying my paycheck.

He shuttered the company, reopened under a new name the next week and I was out a significant chunk of change with no (legal) recourse. What prevents that?

This can sometimes happen with small businesses with no real assets, but there are laws against it.
Large exchanges with licences and huge asset bases can't practically do this.

"This can sometimes happen with small businesses with no real assets, but there are laws against it."

What "laws" are those? There are no laws against a company shutting down in order to escape some liability that it may have. It happens every day!

"Large exchanges with licences and huge asset bases can't practically do this."

Perhaps not! But do you realize just how low the chances are of ever winning such a lawsuit against a giant company like Binance? Do you know how many lawsuits are on the books against companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and other such giants? Such companies have teams of lawyers who can make sure that cases are never heard before the plaintiffs either go broke, give up, or just die.

Exactly.

Steem (the company) has the power in this situation, I can't be the only one to notice the power struggle with the witnesses that ended with a whole pile of staff 'resigning' a few days later. If nothing else, that shows that the owners have the real power in this dynamic.

People love to go with the Steem is not steemit is not dapps. Except that without the company, the rest just falls apart, it might still exist on servers, just minus everything that gives it value stripped away (overly simplistic, I realize).

"Except that without the company, the rest just falls apart, it might still exist on servers, just minus everything that gives it value stripped away"

And that is exactly what blows my mind when I hear so many people naively talk about crypo and blockchains. Somehow they have adopted the false belief that if you have a decentralized system, it can continue on even if, and after, its founding company folds. Yet in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. As you so accurately pointed out, there is so much more to a successful coin or blockchain than its blockchain. Without the company behind it (providing core centralization), the rest is just a pile of unorganized parts which will very quickly fall apart on their own, and then everything is lost.

There was a bit of a mixup; In general cryptos can operate in a decentralized way, they aren't connected to anything like with Steem, where value is at least in part derived from interaction with the platform.

That could be a nitpicking distinction.

The reality of the way blockchains are operating now is far closer to the operation of a ponzi scheme than anything else (regardless of steem), consider, anyone could create a block chain. They convince others to invest, which gives the blockchain SOME value, and the increase in value only comes in from increasing people being convinced to invest so that they gain value in the coin from future investors. Whether that be investment of time, machinery or funding into the crypto 'markets'.

"The reality of the way blockchains are operating now is far closer to the operation of a ponzi scheme than anything else"

That is exactly right! Just like a ponzi scheme, once the platform (Steemit, Whaleshares, or any similar blockchain based forum platform), runs out of new "naive" people to invest in the scheme, the whole thing comes tumbling down, and when that happens, those invested in the scheme at that time, lose everything. This is exactly what is happening with Steemit right now. It's just a matter of time before the platform either shuts down (or is shut down). All anyone need do is check the accounts of Steemit's largest "investors" and it can easily be seen that most of them, if not all, are in power-down mode. Clearly they know hat the end is not far off, and want to get their money out asap...albeit money of which a big percentage of it was stolen from Steemit naive members pool.

Well, what the exchanges did already was illegal.

"Well, what the exchanges did already was illegal."

Says who? I'm sure these exchanges have their own teams of lawyers who see otherwise.

Do you like robbery?

"Do you like robbery?"

No I don't, which is why Steemit witnesses must be removed, one way or another.

You want centralization?

"You want centralization?"

Absolutely! That is the only way we can have accountability. Otherwise we will always end up with nothing more than a cesspool of fraud and corruption, just as Steemit has now become. Without accountability, both Steem and Steemit are only a few steps away from the grave.

Who gets to be the centralized governors?

"They will be hit with a class action lawsuit if they do."

First of all, no one has enough Steem value to start a class-action lawsuit against a giant such as Binance. They would likely go broke before they would ever see a dime from such a lawsuit even if they had the potential of winning. And even if they won, they would likely never receive enough to cover all their legal expenses, let alone anything else. And secondly, the whole cryptocurrency industry is still seen as being rather shady, so it would be very unlikely that a Court would grant class-action status to a such a claim in the first place. Obtaining a judge that even understands the crypto industry would not be an easy task.

I am glad I do not know very much about the crypto process of buying and selling. I am learning slowly, mostly learning that you get screwed pretty easy in the crypto world.

Especially the small fish like you and me, hehe.

"The only problem is that exchanges will just disable withdrawals."

I am told this is ongoing presently.

Even Blocktrades, hehe.