Whales are wonderful concept. The pitty is that there are voices which say the STEEM was pre-mined by the inner circle and now they are holding the majority...such as in normal economic system... 1% owns more than 99% of others...big, big whales. The scissors are pretty similar and many people on steemit are frustrated about it. And it is a reason why steemit is being flagged as a ponzi scheme scam on public - which hurts the social network and the people inside - not talking about brands/businesses - how many of these are here? And why they are worried about joining? Because they can not get the risk being connected with ugly word "SCAM".
Lets hope that small fish will join to hunt the biggest whales together, or that the fishermen will appear so the whales will have to fight for their life as well as the minor steemians do have to. It will help steem itself if the wealth will be more distributed.
And steemit license is just another cross-bar. We are in hands of one corporation. All of us. It is maybe even worse than being in hands of several umbrella corps in the brick&mortar world. It is understandable, they did a great job bootstrapping a concept..but soon or later another player will come, as we already see it.. Synereo mentioned by @stellabelle, YOURS network and others... Maybe it would be the best survival sword for Steemit to become fully open and even forkable - because things which are forked are also trusted as authorities worth of forking - such as GNU/Linux and many other samples. And if somebody wants to put all eggs into one basket, it is not a sustainable practice at all.
There is a lot of raised questions to be answered and to be made easily discoverable for those who have concerns.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@thebiggestidea/just-a-question-to-anonymint
RE: If Steemit is a Ponzi Scam that would mean Money is the Root of all Politics!