My friend @edicted, is trying to play a devil’s advocate and bring some arguments against mainstream belief that Justin Sun has stolen funds from 60+ users in the amount of 23K+ million Steem with Steem hardfork-23. @edicted is a talented content creator and a friend. I have been following him for a while and really enjoy his content. Occasionally you may find educational information within his content, but most of the time content has a great deal of entertaining value. His couple of posts regarding Steem hardfork-23, while very entertaining, fall short proving his point.
@edicted has a very unique style of writing that definitely falls into the entertainment category, and I believe that is the intent. But don’t be fooled with long-form posts and smart injection of quotes, definitions, and sources. It is all entertainment material. That’s it.
I won’t bore you with a long post or random injection of definitions and sources. I will just resort to common sense to respond to some of his claims.
- Claim 1 - All hardforks are the same, regardless if they create a new chain or not.
- Claim 2 - Based on claim-1, Justin Sun didn’t not still anything and just created a new chain.
- Claim 3 - If this case goes to courts and Justin Sun loses, not only Steem will fail but also will Hive.
Currently, this case is not being tried in legal courts. It is being tried in the court of public opinion on social media. Most of us, myself included, are not legal or blockchain experts. However, we all reason and make up our own minds based on the facts in front of us. The fact is Steem has gone through many hardforks. While technically @edicted may call them all new chains, for us ordinary people they mainly always been software/code updates. Whenever chain splits happened like Golos or Whaleshares, we all knew they were separate and new chains. So, for an ordinary person it is not hard to differentiate the two. In the court of public opinion, any reasonable person can see what is going on. Even if you did go technical and declare every hardfork as a chain split, legal courts also rely on how a reasonable person would perceive things. Some courts rely on a jury, who are not experts on blockchain and who would go by what is reasonable to their understanding based on law and circumstances.
CZ Binance also suggested a similar idea as a solution. He basically said, he would support if anybody came up with a forked chain starting from ta block where accounts are not zeroed out. He seems to be using the same logic. While I am no expert on blockchain, my common sense dictates it is stupid. Even if you continued the pre-Steem-HF23 chain, JS would still have power and stakes in the chain to alter things unless you nullify his stakes. Why would you continue a chain and nullify his stakes? We already have HIVE. It makes zero sense that anybody would be interested in that.
My point is whenever hardfork occurs and only one chain continues in practice, that basically makes any potential old chain obsolete and in reality produces a code update and seamless continuation of the chain. That is how an ordinary person would interpret it.
This one is easy because @edicted already conceded that this is a securities fraud. This even worse than just theft. I tend to agree with @edicted when he calls it a securities fraud. In essence, Steem has turned into security by Justin Sun personally, instead of being a decentralized crypto asset. One of the sub-claims @edicted makes is somehow Justin Sun is not personally liable, but Steemit Inc is due to actions being done in the name of Steemit Inc. If these crimes to be found as security fraud, Justin Sun will be personally held accountable for the actions. Not to mention the fact that he probably is the only one who holds the keys to the major accounts that executed fraudulent actions. Add to that planning and masterminding the whole criminal plot. If it went to courts as securities fraud, I doubt Steemit Inc would shield him from personal liability.
First let me note how @edicted bashes a brilliant legal opinion by @apshamilton. I have read the legal opinion. It is a brilliant piece and thanks for Andrew taking his time to study this case and provide a legal opinion pro-bono. It did convince my ordinary understanding and I wouldn’t be surprised if many more are convinced that there is a case there.
First of all, if this did go to courts as @edicted mentioned it would trigger securities fraud and related agencies. Which in turn would potentially expose many more frauds committed by Justin Sun? This case would be so big that nobody would even care about Hive. In the case this did go to courts, let’s civil, again I would assume it would attract the attention of agencies investigating securities fraud. Hence, it might turn it into a criminal case. While I doubt things would go that far, I doubt litigation would be about the technicalities of how hardforks and what they mean. But rather how much damage is done to regular people who bought into the idea of those assets, invested money, and lost due to the fraudulent actions of one or group of people.
In conclusion, I am not a legal or blockchain expert. This post is meant for entertainment purposes only and to annoy @edicted. :)