RE: Don't "Vote for Witnesses", your vote does not matter.

transparency request coming from a guy who's obviously hiding his identity

Irony at its finest. And it's almost as if I want to bring up a controversial topic, anonymously.

some question I have as to whether this research was "funded" by a whale

Ludicrous and unfounded.

the concept that a straight vote count isn't generally subject to sybil attack is just ludicrous and trying to promote that this might be a reasonable view of people's opinion just ticks me off,

It IS subject to one, but my argument is that currently no one has bothered due to the fact that there is no need; people use voting proxies. Like I said in the post, take that data entry with a grain of salt.

not recognizing that the current voting is not a static thing, and therefore suggesting that if dan or val's votes were changed, no one else might change their votes as well.

You miss the point of the post.

While I have you here, let's talk about you, blocktrades. Of course you would downvote this post.

Blocktrades would want to hide any controversy or discussion about the witness list, as I believe he does not care about steemit, but simply wants to cash out as much money as possible.

Blocktrades is powering down and selling as fast as he can, on all his accounts. Here's some of them, there are lots:

{'maximo', 'braxton', 'yaretzi', 'tobias', 'benita', 'kevphanis', 'graavor', 'yadiel', 'abdul', 'tanner', 'gifthana', 'ashleigh', 'walter', 'foscarota', 'erihn', 'aguilar', 'anastacia', 'lessys', 'darah', 'augusta', 'bavihm', 'abbigail', 'bavak', 'analisa', 'weston', 'chana', 'sterling', 'adrian', 'brayan', 'killian', 'vincent', 'trinity', 'blocktrades', 'aftergut', 'bendixen', 'arroyo', 'cleta', 'sergio', 'danea', 'jamgotin', 'arsahk', 'tratorin', 'walter',  'brick', 'jamie', 'zachary'}

Am I missing any accounts? You tell me.

So how much money are you taking out of steemit?

1. All your accounts powering down and selling. Example..

2. I hear you are selling these accounts.

3. You operate an exchange, taking a large haircut on every transaction.

4. You upvote your own posts with your high power accounts on witness updates, earning thousands of dollars.

5. You are the most influential curator, but constantly upvote random things simply for curation rewards.

6. You are a top witness, getting massive witness funding. (1370 SP a day).

Does this level of cashing out of the Steemit community sound like an action a top witness should take? What does the community think about this behavior?

So, blocktrades, what are you using all your funding for?