A lot has happened in the last few days, but let me start by finally congratulating the winners of the STINC lawsuit.
Finally after three years and one deceased judge later... our community gets a small taste of justice and vindication.
I took a few screenshots the day-of.
Surprisingly dumping millions of Steem on the market did not crash the price as much as expected... although certainly they knew it was coming so they could have purposefully softened the blow. On the other end Hive didn't spike up much if even at all. Perhaps these networks have better liquidity than previously estimated.
I was also a little surprised that the payouts were in Steem instead of dollars. I seem to recall I was told dollars would be used in a lawsuit like this. No matter, as the price of Steem today is basically the same as it was back then. Imagine that. Weird coincidence. Luckily Hive has done slightly better than that and actually has developers working on it tirelessly.
Bittrex
Some genius at Bittrex thought it would be a good idea to announce shutting down literal hours before April Fools day. Smort. I have to wonder if the Steemit case was expedited for this reason, as only a month ago leaked court documents were showing that STINC was still bickering about the definition of words like "you" and "agent". Pretty wild stuff... if you're a lawyer. Otherwise extremely boring and tedious as is the case of law.
The STINC case resolves and then Bittrex almost immediately announces a move overseas to Bittrex Global? That's pretty coincidental! Or not. I guess it doesn't matter either way as what's done is done. Bittrex had the worst liquidity of all the exchanges anyway and it's no surprise they wanted to get away from the current ridiculous regulatory overreach.
Tiktok backdoor
Speaking of regulatory overreach, the bill they are trying to pass to "ban Tiktok" is so absurd that everyone and their mother is complaining about it. It's being called the Patriot Act for the digital environment, and that's not far off.
Before Biden administration even took office, I and a handful of others reminded everyone that Biden is a warmongering police-state loving piece of garbage, and that sentiment really carries through when we look at this bill. Theoretically someone could be thrown in prison for 20 years just for using a VPN if this thing passes.
Of course that won't actually happen.
It's always good to remember that these laws they put into place just give them the technical power to do things, but an abuse in that power usually results in extreme pushback. The most flagrant offenders of pirating music and movies back in the day had the book thrown at them (a book that was designed for centralized agents making money off of the infringements), and it was hoped that this would instill fear in the rest of the population. It did not. This type of regulation was a failure, and it will be again.
Still this bill has extreme Net Neutrality vibes.
It will likely fail over and over again until it finally passes, and then when it does pass it will never be rolled back just like all the other bills that take away freedom and privacy from citizens. It's all getting very out of hand, and would be so depressed about all of it if crypto didn't exist. What on Earth would we be doing right now if there was no counterbalance to this ridiculous nonsense? Still, the war ahead seems like it will be an uphill battle the entire way. Not great.
Why Steem HF 23 is not theft
Back when STINC 'stole' those funds from so many people I wrote a series on why (and why not) the fork was theft. This one was the first and got a lot of pushback... so then I wrote another.
Remember when Blocktrades explained how a fork is not theft and you ate that shit up like it was candy?
Nothing like a good double-down amirite? The key ingredient for this argument is how we define and think about WEB3. Within an environment of WEB3, we can't go running to the courts in order to fix our problems; we have to fix our own problems. We are a sovereign entity, and outsourcing that sovereignty to another nation (especially an empire) is wholly unacceptable.
It was explained quite articulately why a fork is not theft... so then why would Steem's fork be theft? The answer is convoluted because by-in-large WEB3 doesn't actually exist yet. It's more of a concept that a socially accepted narrative. As we gain mainstream adoption these game-theories and rules will become more obvious.
Geekgirl's Rebuttal
Several users including @geekgirl were not too happy about my rants about this topic. This was a pretty good one so I reblogged it.
Why HF 23 is Theft
Ultimately what it all comes down to in the end is that WEB2 is a centralized shortcut. Anyone who lived through the hostile takeover knows what a nightmare clusterfuck it was. Hell, just look at Blurt (just kidding don't). We had to claw, kick, and scrape in order to justify the actions that were taken against our attacker. What did our attacker need to do? Nothing! He simply had to attack because he was in charge of the entire endeavor.
Consensus in WEB3 is difficult.
But with this difficultly comes immunity. There is no one to sue. Hive Blockchain Technologies tried to sue us for "stealing their brand" and that lawsuit died instantly. There was no one to serve. Too bad so sad. If the hostile takeover had been a WEB3 vs WEB3 situation there would be absolutely no way for anyone to reclaim their funds (on either side). However, it was WEB2 vs WEB3, and this is why we got to have our cake and eat it too.
These situations are just getting started.
There are many more lawsuits to resolve involving WEB2 vs WEB3. How will we know which side is WEB2 and which is WEB3? Well if someone pretending to be WEB3 can be served a court order... they're lying. Pretty simple. In fact if they can be taken to court and even have chance at losing or winning: same story.
The outcome of this lawsuit basically proves that Steem is a security and Hive is not. Pretty wild when you think about it. All you have to do is neutralize the corporation's premine and all of a sudden it becomes not a security. It's a shame that greed always kicks in to create these premines in the first place. I hope that one day we find a template that provides everyone with a better solution. Or perhaps Hive and Bitcoin are simply the unicorns that rose from the chaos. Perhaps decentralization is intrinsically much more rare than it ought to be on paper. Time will tell.
Conclusion
Unfortunately only 8.75M Steem were ordered to be returned to their rightful owners. Those who did not participate in the lawsuit get nothing, which is kind of ridiculous in a certain regard as the entire amount should have been rolled back. Only a little over a third of the money was returned to the rightful owners. Such is the court system.
That being said, it's nice to get a win with so many threats lingering on the fringe. It seemed like this lawsuit would never end. Now that it's finally over it's quite the surreal experience.
Onto the next battle.
This is a war of attrition.