It may be play money to him, but to the the exchanges, they have a duty of liquidity to their millions of account holders
Justin did make 1 Very Big Mistake with his version of the soft hardfork, he reduce the power down time to 24hours (to convience the exchanges to give him sole top 20 witness power). So until all the former top 20 witnesses find a way to heckle all the exchanges to pull in votes to get get back control... everyone now has 24hours (until Justin Sun loses the top 20 position) to fully powerdown and stay liquid (or keep their crypo in BTC) so they at least have a poncho when the shit really hit the fan
Btw. Most don't know this, but whaleshares drop in value during the witness war was something in tune of 99.898% and until today it's still unresolved. Steem just has to drop to 1/10 from 2500 Sats just before this started to a mere 250 Sats (it's still a nice 2100 Sats now) before all the exchanges stop fcuking around.... in 6 months time if BTC is > $20k, you probably could buy back > 200K worth of Steem with BTC. Also if Tim Draper is anywhere near accurate, we should see 250K BTC by late 2022 or early 2023, at btc price 8K to 250K, you would do great even with 1 BTC ~ quarter USD Million.
Best case scenario, the witness gains back a majority % of power cause Justin is an idiot turd bag with lots of Steem, we can still powerup all the liquid Steem in 3 seconds.