Justin came here to earn money, and he doesn't care about Steem as a blockchain or Steem as a community. The mobilization during the "fight" showed that we are a unique community in a crypto world, and the value is where the people are. Even if the price of a new chain's tokens will be lower for some time, I can't imagine a situation when the old steem wins. Justin does not own a community, and since a few days, he doesn't have developers that could introduce any changes to the blockchain itself.

I'm excited about the new chain and its possibilities to grow and evolve without Steemit baggage.

Fortunatly with a HF you don't have to guess, you could think of it in terms of a "back-up" in case Justin Sun destroys the current version. The real community (the humans that make the real STEEM) can't afford to risk not having a HF.

We understand You have concerns and I hope you are not treated poorly for them... perhpas the group of users running the new chain will respond with reasons why you should re-consider instead of any threats. 

The value isn't in the token, it's <a href="https://steempeak.com/steem/@lukestokes/the-value-is-always-with-the-community">in the community</a>. I hope that post helps clarify some things a bit.

As to this point:

> At the same time those users seem to be afraid to speak out (myself included) in fear that we will become targetted and downvoted for expressing our thoughts. 

I have raised this issue as well. It's unfortunate that some here on Steem have no concern for cussing others out, attacking them personally, or flagging / spamming them because I do think it has a silencing effect. I don't know of a solution to this other than communities where guidelines for participation can be clear and those who don't want to follow them are excluded. I hope that everyone is free to express their views and they will be respected, even when people disagree.

If you're so afraid, why not simply send/spam this message to our wallets like you always do?

Speaking of which.  You agreed to stop spamming my wallet after I told you the cost is now 10 SBD per memo.  You owe me ten bucks. ;)

I will certainly never downvote you for a comment of this sort. I'm sorry if someone did, but people's emotions run high in times like these.

But I think you're wrong on many points, starting with: 

>majority of people out there seem to hope that our witnesses and Justin will find way of working together

It's definitely not the majority of people I know, it's pretty much the opposite. 

I've seen a few individuals and one block of users (zzhang group) that seem to think that is the best solution. And frankly, I think that group simply doesn't have enough information to evaluate the situation correctly. Like you, they seem to believe that Justin actually has plans for this chain, something I feel has obviously never been true: his only plan was to move everyone to TRON. I've seen the original contract with Steemit Inc, so I can say this with some certainty. 

All his attempts to deny this plan after he got so much opposition to the token swap have fallen flat. And each time his subordinates like Roy, Eli, David, etc promise something, he then goes and does something that shows their words don't matter, it's just what he wants to do. And what he wants is to control the chain and stamp out opposition.

>Personally I can find it very difficult to imagine any product/project being successful, knowing that major investor/stakeholder (marketing guru) and community build around project are in open and very public conflict. It's hard not to feel that we're in serious trouble.

Describing Justin Sun as a marketing guru at this point is just pretty funny to me. He's revealed here just how bad he is at real marketing. I was actually expecting him to be OK at this, based on his reputation, when I first learned he was coming to the chain. But the disastrous "AMA" that he had with Ned where they droned on about things no one cared about, ignored all feedback from the audience, answered literally only 3 questions form the AMA (choosing only the easiest to answer) and then fleeing because of "battery problems", made it clear to me he is no marketing guru. 

He seems like a Bitconnect guy: he can make a lot of noise and fool people who don't understand any of the technology of blockchains. This type of guy makes money off new, inexperienced speculators, not experienced cryptocurreny investors. And he does it by selling them crap and empty promises, so I won't be a part of such efforts, even if it is a way to make money. No one of sound ethics should ever stoop to making money this way.

And he simply doesn't know how to market himself to informed crypto people. He acts in ways that immediately make them angry (for example, attempting to centralize the chain via sockpuppets). And it's obvious that he doesn't even know what the response will be to such actions.

Finally, marketing aside, it's clear that he has never understood the battle he should have been fighting. He's been fighting for token-based control of the blockchain, without ever realizing that the value of this chain is the community that supports it, not the tokens themselves. Instead, every action he has taken has made the community less willing to work with him.

>I'm failing to see how new chain could hold any value. And I'm really trying. Also what would make people keep their steem and sell all airdropped tokens, bringing price to it's knees with no time? Wealth cannot be just doubled like that.

I don't think the overall token value will double in this case, [although there can be an increase sometimes during a fork](https://steempeak.com/cryptocurrency/@blocktrades/cryptocurrency-forks-why-do-they-happen-and-what-happens-after). 

But overall value should be about the same as before in this case, because I don't see Justin supporting Steem in any meaningful way for very long. So I expect Steem value will go towards zero quickly after the airdrop of Hive, and value will migrate to Hive coin as most of the users will migrate there. Some holdouts will stay on Steem for a while, but as Justin dumps Steemit stake and fails to support the chain properly, the price of Steem will tank.

>Sometimes conflicts cannot be won.

This is true. But I haven't heard a single argument from you yet that explains why you think this one can't be won, or a plausible strategy for how he will fight back against our plan. I've written an entire post with reasons why it will be won. So to convince me otherwise, I need to hear concrete reasons beyond "marketing guru". 

And if your other reason why you think this conflict cannot be won is "Justin's wealthy", let me say a couple things about that. First,  I firmly believe that Justin's real wealth is greatly exaggerated, based on the amount of time that was spent negotiating to acquire Steemit Inc, quibbling over terms of a relatively small amount. I wouldn't have even spent that much time on the negotiation of such a sum, and my net wealth even including intangibles like IP is only a couple hundred million at best. 

I think he's sitting on a bunch of TRON tokens, that give him a theoretically large wealth, but not one that he can realize, because of lack of sufficient market willpower to absorb those tokens if he tries to sell them. This is similar to the problem he will be facing with the Steem tokens, except it will be worse with the Steem tokens. 

Also he's been very cautious about acquiring Steem tokens lately, and he hasn't even powered up the ones he bought yet. This is a sign of a man having severe doubts about his plans.