"...Why did Ned sell to the highest bidder...?"
[citation needed]
Tron may certainly have been the most benevolent of bidders, IMHO.
I am utterly confident that @justinsunsteemit has no intention of rendering his investment in Steem worthless by simply destroying Steem.
That's just silly.
Goolag, Fakebook, et alia would have, but why would they invest $M's to destroy Steem? They are investing such wealth in censoring their own platforms to far greater effect already.
Did you not read the balance of my comment? I said that Tron destroying Steem was silly. I don't think others destroying Steem is silly. Tron has made a series of acquistions including Opera, BitTorrent, and Poloniex, along with Steem, and these entities are all advancing decentralization. This indicates purpose contrary to any conception that Tron is going to decrease Steem's decentralization or success. It's a matter of considering actions as indicative of intent, and I submit that there is an underlying purpose that concatenation of the capabilities of all these entities can serve strongly empowering Steem and it's stakeholders.
And I have not heard of EEE. What is it?
EEE is Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
A Microsoft business tactic.
As for owning Opera, BitTorrent, Poloniex, and others, I will state clearly:
By having Tron own all of those entities, he has centralized them under the Tron umbrella. That is absolute centralization.
Ownership of private stock corporations is centralized no matter who the majority stockholder(s) is. What those companies do is increase decentralization. Opera provides a builtin VPN, which makes it's users far less able to be tracked, banned, or otherwise impeded in their communications online. Poloniex is a gateway to fiat for cryptos, clearly advancing decentralization financially. BitTorrent is a mechanism to crowdsource data downloads, one of the most powerful decentralization mechanisms online. Steemit I assume you grasp how it's a decentralizing mechanism online.
Ownership of those companies was always centralized. Tron putting them all under it's umbrella reveals the company is seeking either to use those technologies and foci to advance decentralization online, or to prevent them from being useful for that purpose. I find them not doing the latter, which they could have done easily as soon as they bought them.
Tron has clearly not EEE'd any of those companies, in any way.
BitTorrent has been associated with Thom Yorke (yes the musician) one of the biggest darlings of the world of centralized media. So, no. there’s absolutely no way I trust Justin. Just another verified face of the global media. In your frame of mind, centralized use of blockchain is an acceptable replacement for cryptocurrency. You might as well be replacing your bitcoin with jpmorgan Monopoly money right?