One of the main reasons I opted to become a member of this awesome community was the fact that it was a **DE-CENTRALIZED** blockchain. Simply meaning there wasn't a king on the throne who could snap his fingers and make changes on a whim or censor someone because they didn't like what they had to say.


<center>![steem witness.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmXoBLsW9YnT2ism25mWUTez741JHPravXxHGaG9mBzRSA/steem%20witness.png)</center>
[source](https://www.google.com/search?q=steem+witnesses&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiulIHLhPznAhVJY60KHdzDBjgQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=steem+witnesses&gs_l=img.3...8823.9426..9552...0.0..0.85.444.6......0....1..gws-wiz-img.......0i7i30j0i8i7i30.UtquVPFaisg&ei=2BxdXq7IBcnGtQXch5vAAw&bih=943&biw=1680#imgrc=CTZRYoD4y1US-M)

Unfortunately, all that changed over night when Justin Sun used his resources on public exchanges to vote in himself as all of the top 20 witnesses. Effectively making him King of STEEM.

Reason #1 in my mind is that this was his recourse after the original witnesses did a soft fork. It essentially locked him out of his funds and he didn't like that. A sit down talk was scheduled for this Wednesday to hopefully resolve this matter, but Justin decided to play his cards two days early instead of waiting. @lukestokes made a great short video explaining this better than I ever could, you can watch that here: [link](https://steemit.com/steem/@lukestokes/your-stake-in-steem-on-centralized-exchanges-was-just-used-to-take-over-the-steem-blockchain)

My suggestion (not financial advice), get and KEEP your crypto OFF of public exchanges. Justin used all of the power behind each STEEM token to do what he just did, but he most likely wouldn't have been able to if people had the private keys themselves instead of keeping them on a public exchange like Binance, Poloniex, etc.

So what am I going to do??? Well, when you're playing poker and you know you have a losing hand, you fold. In this case, I'm sitting pre-flop with a low pair and was just called to raise. I am on the clock. Fold, or push my chips back in. These next few days will determine my fate here on STEEM, and I am guessing many other people too are in the same boat. My power down has been initiated to possibly beat all the other people who will PD and sell in the upcoming weeks. If this doesn't go well on Wednesday, I imagine the STEEM token taking an absolute nosedive. Scary times my friends, I wish the best for all of you.

STEEM on??????? I'm not so sure anymore...