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RE: Justin Sun Conversation with Witnesses Is Online. @Ned Sold Out The Community - Failed to Disclose.

in #steem5 years ago

"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.

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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.