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There is no Mexican stand off. The exchanges remain powered up and able to effect governance instantly.

We are allowed the same appearance of control @ned allowed during his four years tenure as Stinc CEO. It's an illusion.

Steem is an asset of Tron, since @ned sold his stake.

There is a good chance that what the exchanges did is illegal. I doubt they will be able to keep it going without a lawsuit coming. A lot of users of their exchanges are pissed right now.

The wheels of justice turn exceedingly fine, but slow. They currently wield complete instant control of governance, and until law enforcement or code execution obviates that control, we remain only as decentralized as they allow.

Lawsuits take a lot longer than 13 weeks, once it is going before the courts there is a very real possibility that status quo at the time of filing will be enacted by the legal system so that no power down can be started, until such time as the lawsuit reaches conclusion. Then the accounts will be frozen, and the votes will be frozen, and nothing will be able to be done with the funds in order for the courts to preserve the value. I doubt that the people that had funds sitting on those exchanges are going to want to wait for years for the legal system to sort it out.

If the turf war keeps up, scarcity will greatly effect the price. For the Steem devout this is a terrible situation, but for the opportunistic investor its a dream come true scenario. The more valuable STEEM is the higher the exchanges' liability.

Lord of War quote:

Yuri Orlov
"There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11?"