During the acquisition justin would not clarify to the community what his intentions were with the SteemIt funds, nor would he acknowledge the prior agreements made between the community and SteemIt regarding those funds, like how they would not be used to vote. Why did he refuse to engage with the community and answer these simple questions?
The duly elected witnesses agreed that this back-handed deal and justin's silence on these important matters was a threat to the entire Steem community and made a last-resort decision to temporarily freeze SteemIt's funds until we could get some answers. If Justin thought this was an unjust decision, he could have taken the moral high ground by appealing to the community to vote for his witnesses and reverse the soft fork. Instead he completely neglected the voters and colluded with exchanges to misappropriate customer funds and overturn our democracy. His actions and those of the exchanges go against the basic principles of decentralization.
He has another chance to take the moral high ground by removing his sock-puppet witnesses and returning power to the community.