Dear Diary,

The Tron occupation continues. @huobi-withdrawal and @binance-hot have started a powerdown, but Binance has botched their position once again by only powering down 16k coins. I have to assume... well hold on a sec.

16k Steem coin powerdown on Binance.

So... 2000 times 16k = 32M, which is exactly how many coins Binance powered up. Binance has just powered down 32M Vests instead of 32M coins. WTF is wrong with them? They obviously aren't using a front-end to post these transactions to the chain. I guess that makes sense considering security issues.

Perhaps they are still stalling, or perhaps this is an honest mistake.

Obviously, they have no experience with powering up/down like this directly interacting with RPC nodes or however the F they are doing it. On one hand, it seems like a plausible mistake. On the other hand, it seems like a plausible mistake, meaning now they have a reason to be like "oops" and stall even longer.

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We really have to consider how security works on these exchange hot wallets. Simple operations like powering down are probably not as trivial as we think they should be.

They could be signing/testing these transactions on local machines with an airgap before they broadcast the public transaction to the network. We don't know how their corporate security works. Keep the pressure on.

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@aggroed led townhall

This most recent townhall meeting was the most deflated one yet. Aggroed was extremely sleep deprived and a bit depressed that he got bumped off the top 20 witness list. He even gave one of Justin Sun's accounts 1000SP as a peace offering, which I thought was interesting. It was a very casual affair where everyone was allowed to speak. I thought about talking but didn't really have anything super important to say. I'm a pretty introverted person and have quite the aversion to big groups and being social.

The sockpuppet accounts continue to make slight gains in terms of support on the network. It would take around 8.6M coins for Tron to regain the super majority, while it would take the real witnesses around 8 million coins to do the same. Essentially both sides need the same amount of support to override the other; a quite interesting balance indeed.

However,

I've been talking about forks a bit, but the realization of such a thing is starting to hit me. My original understanding of the situation was that if we retook super majority the soft fork would be implemented and Steemit Inc's stake would be immediately re-frozen.

This is not the case. If we regain super-majority, the softfork will be implemented, but it actually doesn't do anything. The softfork can only deny operations from being made, not take them away. Because the operations to vote in the sockpuppets has already been made, it makes no difference if the witnesses are blocking that operation from happening; it's already happened and can't be undone without the correct private keys or a hardfork.

Hardfork.

The Steem community does not have the developers to make a hardfork happen. If we retake the super majority, nothing will happen. It's becoming apparent to me that the only entity that can likely create such a hardfork is @blocktrades, which is good and bad.

The good news.

@blocktrades is the only team that can create a hardfork at the moment. The witnesses are exhausted and blockchain development isn't exactly their main squeeze anyway. This means that if Sun bricks the chain or successfully pushes a hardfork without community consensus, if @blocktrades pushes a sister fork that will likely be the only other option besides Sun's disaster of a blockchain. If Sun pushes that hardfork, that version of the code is no longer the Steem blockchain in my eyes and many others.

The bad news.

@blocktrades controls the narrative here. Whatever they decide to do in a sister fork will likely go uncontested. They could even hide some sneaky code in there that no one finds out about for years. Who knows. It's not like we have the resources to do code review. It's a matter of trust. In a truestless network, this is obviously not ideal.

Conclusion

The sister chain will be so much work that it's definitely worth sticking around on the main chain to the bitter end. That bitter end will be marked by Sun pushing a ill-conceived hardfork that either bricks the chain outright or breaks our economy and trust in the network.

"Unexpected" Bitcoin Dump is best buying opportunity we're going to get in a while.

Like Cockwork

This dump in the market is epic. I'm amazed at my prediction abilities. Literally every time I say the price of the market is going to go up, it dumps. The reverse correlation is legendary. I'm hearing that stocks and everything else is dumping as well, which would explain things.

Not to worry, once the weak hands get flushed out we should be on the rise once again. The market is almost fully bottomed out. Bitcoin will not dip under $7500; to do so would be defying a 7 year history of doubling every year. This is the only prediction I've made that seems to come true consistently.

Honestly this dump reminds me of the time Bitcoin flash crashed to $7500 and then spiked up to 10.5k. Remember that? When the prime minister of China said we should embrace blockchain?

Don't be surprised if this happens, but also don't be surprised if it doesn't. Still, I will be very surprised if Bitcoin's halving event doesn't get the pump/dump I've been expecting. I will also be FLOORED if Bitcoin dips below $7500.

Again, I am making no bets on these half-baked predictions. Most of my investment is locked up defending Steem from the Chinese invaders. Steem on!