Are you disgusted with the fact that I am so aptly providing evidence that Steem HF23 is not theft?
I sure am!
Take this tidbit for example: many users claim that this is theft because Steem is the original chain; the original asset. How do they know it's the original chain?
Because:
- they kept the same corporate branding: Steem.
- Hive had to fight get get exchange listings (rebrand).
- the IRS defines the tax law regarding forks in this manner.
- the SEC violations are quite clearcut.
So let me get this straight...
The reason why Steem is the original chain is because centralized exchanges, corporations, the IRS, and the SEC say so? This is open source code. Branding doesn't matter. Intellectual property is IRRELEVANT. These centralized power structures do not get a say and they hold zero weight. Giving them power in this matter is exactly the opposite of why everyone should be here: decentralization.
The only thing that gives crypto value is the layer zero community.
And we scooped the vast majority of the community.
We are the original chain!
It doesn't matter what the exchanges think.
It doesn't matter what the corporations think.
It doesn't matter what the IRS thinks.
It doesn't matter what the SEC thinks.
Steem HF23 is the airdrop, Steem is the new shitcoin.
Therefore, all this talk of theft and such is very disappointing to me on a foundational level. This Hardfork can only be defined as theft if we submit to the authorities that define it as theft.
RESIST!
RESIST, GOD DAMN IT!
Is anybody listening?
- Stop voting
- Stop submitting to this false authority
- Stop asking them to solve your problems
- Stop being subservient to the slavemasters!
- Stop being 100% dependent on THEM!
- All their "favors" come with strings attached.
- THEY ARE THE ENEMY!
Maybe you're thinking:
Well, what if we submit to the authority of Hive and define it as theft there?
Yeah, that's great, except that Hive has no authority on Steem and vice versa.
That's the whole point.
Sovereign nations should stay out of the affairs of other nations.
We'd probably know that if we weren't so brainwashed by imperialist countries.
The power of decentralization.
But that's not what this post is about, right? This post is about why Steem HF23 IS THEFT. Because in this scenario we live in the real world where everyone actually still is a slave to imperialism. I bet you're so glad you didn't take the blue pill.
Welcome, to the REAL world!
Securities fraud!
When Dan and Ned pulled all their ninjamine bullshit it was to get around securities law, and they just barely pulled it off. As @theycallmedan has stated multiple times, they would not have been able to get away with that shit today. Steem had somewhat of an "immaculate conception".
By mining tons of Steem in the beginning without really telling others how to do it, and then restarting the chain when they fucked up, and then jacking up inflation and upvoting themselves when no one knew that was a thing, and then lowering the inflation so no one else could get in on that action... we can see where this is going. It's amazing that Steem was never considered a security. But there certainly was a lot of talk about why it was, and adjacently why it was also a centralized shitcoin for the same reason.
The number one reason Steem was never considered a security was the fact that Steemit Inc never voted on governance. The witnesses, and thus the very security and path of the chain, were being determined in a much more decentralized manner; one that was immune to regulation and the SEC. That obviously all changed when the Tron Foundation purchased Steemit Inc.
This is probably the main reason why @freedom has stopped voting for witnesses. Whoever that is doesn't want to touch this shitstorm with a ten-foot pole.
It's quite easy to see that @freedom is now the first in line to get fucked by the long dick of the law should it be determined that the owner of this account is operating an unregulated security. Because @freedom is not voting, that means they're relatively safe. This puts @blocktrades first in line to get fucked by the SEC.
However, because @freedom is not voting, @blocktrades can claim that they don't really control anything because @freedom has more than double the stake. If the SEC pushes the issue, @blocktrades can stop voting altogether and be like:
What about now? I'm not even voting.
From here the torch would be handed to @darthknight. By this point the SEC is going to say "fuck this" and abandon this ludicrous crusade against Hive; it's too decentralized to regulate. I repeat: even though Hive is extremely centralized, it is still WAY TOO DECENTRALIZED to regulate by a central authority like the SEC.
Decentralization/centralization is not a binary concept; it is a spectrum.
The funny part about all this is that @freedom, @blocktrades, and @darthknight could all be controlled by the same entity. If anything there is a lot of evidence to support that this cabal is a tight-knit group and they will protect each other. @blocktrades, @darthknight, and a handful of other significant accounts have even been shown to deposit funds into identical centralized exchange accounts (on Binance I believe).
None of that really matters.
The SEC will not be able to figure out how we operate.
Our operations are greatly obscured by pseudo anonymity.
This dynamic is a huge pain in the ass for any kind of regulation.
They will not pursue the issue.
This is especially true now that the ninjamine is 'gone'.
You assholes should have destroyed it.
What if...
This is where it get's interesting! What if, for example, I were to create a killer dapp here and bring a shit ton of value to the network? What if I somehow acquired like 80M coins and started voting in witnesses? Would I now be in violation of securities law even though I built up all the value from nothing? Honestly, I have no idea.
Talk shit about Justin Sun! God I hate him!
Easy there, tiger.
Although I guess that was the intended purpose of this post.
Steemit Inc.
What STINC has done in this situation is transform an asset that MIGHT have been a security into one that 100% DEFINITELY IS A SECURITY. It is not hard to show that Steemit Inc runs the show. They should have done a better job shuffling money around and making it look like everything was legit. They are total scrubs.
In any case...
Steem can now be viewed as a security. Personally Steem is so centralized I fully view it as a more of a stock in the company Steemit Inc, just like Binance Coin BNB is stock in Binance.
So imagine you buy stock in a company (in this case Steemit INC) and that company just decides it's going to delete/move your stake in the company!
Justin Sun is trying to have it both ways.
He tried to buy us out in a hostile takeover just like one would do in the stock market, and then he used his majority share holding to do the one thing that the majority share holder is never allowed to do: delete/move other people's stake.
It's hilarious!
Chalk it up to blockchain being new and having zero regulation because no one knows how to regulate it. The more decentralized crytpo gets the harder it becomes to regulate, so no one knows what to do about regulation. Catch-22.
This is why the theft is quite obvious!
Justin Sun broke the cardinal-rule of securities law; the first and foremost rule of the entire system and the only reason that the stock market can exist in the first place: NEVER EVER EVER EVER modify someone's stake without their permission.
The reason why I so fervently took the position that Steem HF23 is not theft is because then I would have to admit that Hive HF23 was theft.
Let's do some metal gymnastics to get over that hurdle, shall we?
What a fun little GIF that aligns with my left-wing atheist foundations!
Too bad it's not more relevant to the topic at hand!
In any case, yes, Hive HF23 is theft! However, I've come to realize it is also not theft!
Jesus Christ man! Can you pick a side already?
No.
Okay, so let me explain myself. HF23 is theft, because we stole from Justin Sun, but it is also not theft, because Justin Sun is a terrorist.
Correct, Justin Sun is a criminal.
He engaged in war crimes against the great nation of Steem, so much so that we had to rebuild our entire country on the new chain and cut him out of it. To say that we stole funds from Justin Sun would be like saying a bank stole money from a terrorist. It's a wholly asinine argument. We did not steal from Justin Sun; we "reappropriated the funds of a criminal".
Sorted.
Justin Sun literally forced us to steal from him. We didn't want to do it. Anyone who was part of the hours and hours and hours of MSP Waves discussions could see that our country did not have consensus to steal his money. I would just like to point out that I was EXTREMELY on record of wanting just that, so much so that I detailed my plan for SCORCHED EARTH multiple times.
However, we used mental gymnastics regarding the Hive fork to trick a lot of people into a new line of thinking:
It is not theft:
- The SEC says so.
- The IRS says so.
- The exchanges agree.
- The corporations agree.
You see, Justin Sun engaged in the most egregious front-line attack against the Steem blockchain possible. He hit us front and center at our greatest weakness: stake-based voting acquired by a massive under-the-table discount.
The problem with that...
The world does not accept that Steem/Hive is a sovereign nation. The world does not understand blockchain. The world does not realize that what Justin Sun did was the ULTIMATE war crime against us. Therefore we had to play another game, where instead of proving that Justin Sun is indeed a criminal and a terrorist we simply 'prove' that we didn't steal money from him.
We most definitely did steal money from him, but he's a fucking imperialist who's trying to financially enslave us. Crime is defined by the authority that defines crime. If consensus on Hive is that we didn't steal anything, that's good enough for me. However, the same is true for Steem. If Steem consensus is that they didn't steal anything, I'm fine with that too. I'm more than willing to continue to accept Steem sovereignty (even though I arguably shouldn't).
Good thing it doesn't really matter what I think, amiright? The powers that shouldn't be are going to align with us (and against Steemit Inc) in this blatant 'theft'. The IRS, SEC, corporations, and exchanges are all in agreement: Steem HF23 was theft and Hive HF23 was not. This early in the game that's all that matters. Talk to me again in ten years.
The attack on Steem.
The other thing I desperately need to talk about is the justification of why Steem HF23 needed to happen. They claim to be protecting the network from malicious actors.
Is this true?
Now, the biggest argument against this line of thinking is obvious: of course they were not defending the network from attack. In fact as I have already explained in this post:
Wow! 17586 Block Difference!
The direct result of freezing accounts on Steem with a soft-fork resulted in the blockchain being rolled back over and over again. So many blocks were lost!
This was because the accounts that were being frozen with the soft-fork were still attempting to move their funds. Every time a rogue witness added those transactions into a block the main witnesses had to rollback the chain.
The hardfork changed all that. Now that there is no money left in the accounts they no longer need to be frozen, so from that perspective the Steem blockchain has been secured.
However, this still leaves us with the original argument: everything would have been just fine if they had never frozen accounts in the first place. This is unfortunately also false.
Normally when a fork happens everyone invovled has a choice to make:
Do you:
- Keep both tokens and wish both projects the best.
- Sell one token for the other because you support one side.
This put Hive at a huge advantage, because we nullified 80M coins worth of stake that couldn't be dumped on the market. It only makes logical sense that in return the "original" DPOS chain would also be allowed to nullify stake against the opposition.
Justin Sun and the new Steem witnesses have been holding their bags open this entire time trying to keep Steem afloat. Letting the value of the coin sink too far on the open market would look really bad, cause a lack of confidence, and possibly create a death-spiral for the Steem blockchain.
With this in mind, it makes perfect sense that the justifications for Steem HF23 are indeed accurate. They most certainly are protecting the network from harm. However, none of that matters because "protecting the network from harm" and "illegal theft" are no longer mutually exclusive. By securing the network with Steem HF23 the witnesses have done both: secure the network and broke the law.
Hold this bag, Bitch!
---Literally everyone dumping Steem.
HOWEVER!
It is EXTREMELY important to note that the only reason why Steem HF23 is theft is because Steem is a security. If Steem was still decentralized enough to avoid regulation it would absolutely not be theft, and even if it was, it would be impossible to enforce justice, given the very nature of decentralization.
Claiming Steem HF23 is not theft, but rather just securing the network, would be like stealing the stock from someone looking to hostile takeover your corporation.
It all boils down to centralization vs decentralization.
Decentralization wins.
Conclusion
Was Hive HF23 theft? Yes. But it was justified theft against hostile criminal attackers, making it not theft. However, we were forced to lie to the world and pretend like it wasn't theft because the world does not agree that a crime was committed.
Was Steem HF23 theft? Also yes. Not only was it theft, but it is centralized theft that is actually possible to prosecute and deliver justice for, unlike Hive's righteously justified decentralized theft. Steem can now be considered a stock (security) and Justin Sun has violated the #1 law for securities: don't fuck with stakeholders.
Part 1: Playing Devil's Advocate.
Part 2: Blocktrades explains why a fork is not theft.
I still don't understand why you are trying to make this so complicated. Hive was a legal split amd the creation of a new asset. Steem's HF23 illegally siezed assets. It doesn't matter if the witnesses agreed it was okay or not.
Steem doesn't exist in a vaccuum. I'm not sure dpos is the ideal system to allow witnesses to have the final say and be unaccountable for their actions. What is stopping them from voting away dpos?
If the Steem witnesses are held severely accountable for their crime, witnesses on other dpos chains such as Hive will reconsider any intentions of breaking laws.
This is far more valuable than some silly ideal that we are a sovereign nation. Remember most nations are completely messed up despite having much more experience, resources, talent and authority than Steem or Hive. Sorry to belittle Steem or Hive, but comparing 20 mostly anon witnesses to national governments is ridiculous. Even the largest corporations are hardly comparable since they onpy seem focused on profit.
Hive took some of the centralized aspects of Steem, but got rid of others. Shedding some toxic baggage (steemit, fools who supported steemit, justin sun) was great, but maybe not enough.
Originally, mining Steem wasn't done fairly, especially by Steemit. The reward pool is better, but we all know this is exploited a lot, too.
Steem was a great experiment and Hive is the continuation of this experiment. We will all gain from the experience.
I've come to the co conclusion that we probably need some major governance changes. Fortunately this is planned on Hive and more discussion is taking place.
That said I'm glad you had this discussion and took the side of being ridiculous by arguing Steem didn't steal. Thought and debate is more important than being right. Changing and improving thought is good. Blah blah
If I become a top 20 witness a lot of the things I say will be the foundation for many of the decisions I make.
I mean... also... I write a blog and that blog generates an income... so there is that.
Yeah it is up for interpretation.
I've made that quite clear with pages and pages of writing.
Nice try.
Web 3.0 rules state it is not theft.
Web 2.0 rules state it is theft.
It's a matter of perspective.
Anyone who says otherwise doesn't have perspective.
Spoiler alert: bull-headed self-righteous trolls don't have any perspective.
Just in case you didn't realize due to all the bull-headed self-righteousness.
You lashing out like a child doesn't accomplish anything but satisfy the feeble mind of an insecure troll who has nothing better to do. Sick burn.
I'm clearly not a moron, and even if I was, you pointing it out would accomplish nothing but prove you for the dickhead that you clearly are. Wow, look at me I'm just full of zingers.
#truthhurts
#lastword
It is literally impossible for you to not write a response to this.
That's how weak-minded you are.
That is the only time I write #lastword, and you fall for it every fucking time it's hilarious.
I wonder, what will you say this time?
"Crime is defined by the authority that defines crime." I need that on a T-Shirt pronto!
HIVE.D!
Deep dive Bruv! I'm very much in alignment with your logic.
Not disgusted, you weren't cheering over it. Just disagree(d).
Hah, don't think anyone thought that. You remind me of a man I was talking with before I jumped into Steem. He was/is a Bitcoin purist and a hacker (not for evil hacker). He mined Bitcoin very early and had quite a bit of it. He still worked and when I asked him why, he would express his disgust that people were tying money to Bitcoin, that it wasn't the purpose to be speculated on. While you don't go that far, your outlook is one of the closest to his I've encountered. Which means we can't see eye to eye on some of this. I remember reading about the Ethereum hack, and how it split the community there when they rolled back to recover the stolen coins. I remember shaking my head at those who were against it, not understanding the purist sentiment that would allow for the theft to stand.
Going to stop now, as I get what you're saying enough to feel my last sentence before this might cross into an area where you shake your head I'm not getting it, lol. I respect that you have the balls to not only present this argument, but explain why you stick by it.
I think you understand the issue pretty well.
Especially now that we have discussed it at such great length.
You can understand the merits of an argument but still ultimately disagree.
I always use the Sicilian defense when I play chess (black).
:D
So much this. If witness rewards are insufficient to pay for dev work, then we shouldn't be selling at all until the price recovers.
Steem hf23 and Hive hf23 are pretty different animals for one key reason: Hive never removed any funds from any wallet. It created a new asset
I know it's hard to believe, but it's true. Go look at the blockchains
A new asset was created on steem by doing some maths on steem. The steem witnesses don't know how to process this new asset, so they ignore it. Don't take my word for this, the blockchains show it
https://hiveblocks.com/b/41818752
https://steemd.com/b/41818752
Identical blocks. This is a pre-fork block. It's is produced by a Steem witness. It did math against the steem ledger to produce balances of an all new asset. Obviously if that code ran on steem and moved anything, steem users would see their balances gone from it... but they don't. Steem just doesn't show the deposits for the new asset because it can't
The creation of the new asset would have been ignored and looked like nothing ever happened, but for one key thing - the steem witness received it, and gtg started from that point with a fresh balance of a new asset on a new chain
It might be hard to fathom - but look at the blockchain. No assets were moved from any account at any time as part of the Hive hf23
And that makes a pretty big difference when we're talking about theft
Following Your thinking, every fork creates new asset. Technically it does 😅
So we have dozens of tokens related to previous fork versions.
lol! I get your meaning, but that's not my thinking - that'd be a normal fork. What blocktrades and gandalf pulled off was not a normal fork
On Chain1: do maths on steem balance to start ledger of new asset (still on steem). steem witnesses cannot "see" the new asset, so it's ignored and would probably just die off from consensus after a few blocks
On Chain2: fork as normal, but instead of assuming the asset steem uses, it assumes the new asset calculated on the block before it
not a lot of margin for error in that process. Quite possibly the fastest airdrop that's ever happened :D
gtg, bt, et al are frickin' mad men
I am against calling it "airdrop" still.
Look at hiveblocks before the fork happened. They exists; in #41818752 block the witness mined HIVE POWER and we can dig to transactions of HIVE between users https://hiveblocks.com/b/41818701#9713bf827dee69638ef353d77eb025e4929f6eed
How HIVE asset have existed before the fork? You can't deal with this. It is continuous chain, not a new one.
continuous chain, yes.... but not a continuous asset 41818752 is a steem witness block. You won't see the new asset on steemd, because nothing on steem was updated to show the new asset. The math is done against the original asset, but the result is printed in a new asset. The ledger for the new asset comes to life on the following block 418187523 is the first Hive block, and the first time the new ledger is ever used
That's how hive assets existed before the fork - they threw code at steem, steem took the code, but it game with this garbage noise of a new asset. As it isn't valid, consensus didn't commit it (it might have stuck around for a few blocks, but not long). That's why you see the calculation on a steem block and not on a hive block. When hive starts, it's a new asset never before processed by anything on steem or hive, and most importantly: no assets were removed from any wallet at any time. It's the whole reason for this process
I think the problem with all this technical logic and semantics is that HF23 could have theoretically pretty easily have ticked all the boxes for a "new asset" by your definition. Yet the final result would be exactly the same.
Yeah, I'm not great at right and wrong and good guys and bad guys and imagining what things might be - I don't know how people don't marvel at this technological wizardry. Legit - no stake was ever removed from any wallet in the creation of Hive
That doesn't make you feel a little cool to be able to say that about this place?
That they did it in real time AND managed a pretty smooth fork.... what hive hf23 pulled off is epic
And because no assets were ever moved from any account, Hive hf23 is not theft, but steem hf23 is. I know you say it doesn't matter because the scene looks the same at the end of the day
Let's imagine the cops call - your car is at the bottom of a lake. You left it parked in the lot!! Oh noez! You rush down there, the police arrest you and put you in jail for littering. You try to tell them it wasn't you. You're the victim! Someone stole your car and left it in a lake, and now you're in jail, because the cops don't care about the semantics of whether something was moved voluntarily or whether it was stolen.... the means of arriving at the picture do matter
I don't think we can underestimate the value of Hive hf23 - no stake was moved/removed from any account ever in any portion of the process. The same cannot be said for steem hf23
Sure, but I think this is a good time to state the obvious:
If Justin Sun hadn't attacked us, EVERYONE would say what Hive did was theft.
Only because he mercilessly attacked the network over and over did we get away with this.
We reallocated the funds of a criminal.
Honestly though, yes.
It is pretty cool how it all went down and how the witnesses actually pulled off a HF better than Steemit would have. Kudos!
The asset in question is the community.
Justin Sun was led to believe he was buying a community.
He done got swindled.
The damage done to both chains is beyond repair.
No one will trust them ever.
Posted Using LeoFinance
The people who don't trust DPOS didn't trust it BEFORE this all happened.
If anything this situation has worked out much better than I expected.
You don't have to trust DPOS to build value and make money off it and cash out to Bitcoin.
That much is certain.
Most people WILL trust DPOS simply because they don't know any better.
I really enjoy your analogy of nations in the decentralized community.
It makes the entire thing slightly more understandable for a noob like myself :)
Additionally, I enjoy reading your posts because you refuse to take a side. Do I agree with everything, I am not sure yet. I am still way too new in this community to have any opinion of the situation as I was not involved in any of it.
However, with that said, I do agree that Justin Sun is a bad person and the current situation has me worried about other platform(s) he has recently acquired that I am involved with.
Most people are very likely going to tell me to get out of that ASAP, but a part of me also don't want to abandon that community just because of one evil mans doings. I'm sure this sentiment is not unique.
But thank you for your post, I am learning a lot from them together with others views on the situation :D
you wanted to say that world and laws in world lied to us that it was not theft, because world laws say it was not. also by world laws steem hf was theft, and we just accepted it because we still live in that world?
Not sure what you're asking but... Blockchain is totally unregulated so what Justin did is not yet seen as a crime. Think of it as a Web 3.0 crime, but everyone is still playing the Web 2.0 game. We were forced to play the same game when we said we didn't steal anything.
According to Web 2.0 rules, we stole nothing, but Web 3.0 says we did.
Just imagine how different this situation would be if Justin Sun DIDNT attack us.
Everyone would be crying theft.
Interesting thesis,
I can see why you got a few comments
to reshuffle your argument. Abstract object !
It reminds me of this proverb
I made it upYou should not muzzle the bee while he is pollinating your flowers
Interesting thesis and info that I have to process some more to understand clearly. The comments section provided good counter-arguments.
I've heard a lot of bad things about this Justin fella. Was even asked to write a diss track on him. I don't have the time to read the rest of this now but I will. Need to brush up on the work I'll potentially do.
He'd make a great politician. He's great at schmoozing. Always saying one thing and doing another while never seeming to lose his support base. Pretty amazing.
I told you aliens were real!
Came here to this conclusion
I'm keeping a small stake on both chains just in case one of them ever amounts to shit
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Chill out dude, Britney is getting confused!
who owns the steem rights the name if we fork or run on block 1 . does that mean we own it?
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I've been reading this post and its comments for quite some time. Very in-depth discussions. I can't say I have a full understanding of this whole thing (although I believe I have a vague understanding of most of this). Reasonably, I won't offer an opinion based on my limited knowledge.
However, I wanted to say thank you for your post and thank you to everyone in the discussion for shedding a lot of light on this topic through amicable debate.
Cheers.
I can always count on you to think you're better than everyone else.
It's a shame you don't actually bring anything to the table.
You sound like a baby, do you think grown women like this nonsense?
Anyone supporting Hive is a Soy Boy that gives consent to criminal activity,
It's submissive, it's not normal Man
Sounds like you are projecting some pretty weird personal issues onto me. How many times did you get called "Soy Boy" before you started calling other people that? I had to look that shit up; didn't even know what it meant.
Why do you think I'm a man?
Why do you think I'm trying to attract women?
Is it because you're a man trying to attract women and you're not doing such a great job?
Tell me more about how men are supposed to act because you said so.
Tell me more about how you think you know me because of a blog post I got paid to write.
Silly nerd, you're barking up the wrong tree.