The Steem blockchain doesn't seem to be a part of the Steemit takeover, but I need to see what is going on with Tron. I haven't used Steemit for a while, and it may be time to review the changes.

It isn't really relevant to Bitcoin in my opinion. Bitcoin has a different business model.

you are actually outlining the huge flaw in PoS coins and also those coins that are heavily centralized already. Steem was already centralized and the "power" to control the coin was sold from the previous owners to the new owner! i don't think takeover was an appropriate term to use here, Justin Sun just tried to take more power when the sellers tried to reduce his power. he simply spent a couple of million to buy up 1/4 of the total supply of Steem and gain the majority voting power. which in a PoS coin means full control.

the current cost of gaining majority power in bitcoin (majority of hashrate) is above $1 billion. and that is only hashrate which is a small part of the bitcoin network. the bigger and more important part is the nodes that protect the network and enforce the consensus rules. and they can not be controlled or taken over.

Don't mix steemit with bitcoin as they are inherently different. So let's talk about bitcoin only!

It is possible for whales or governments to launch a 51% attack on bitcoin network. Governments can indeed invest trillions of dollars to set up a massive mining operations to capture 51% mining hash rate. Whales can merge mining pools to control 51% of the mining hash rate. Theoretically it is possible!

But the question is - why?

Bitcoin is flourishing because it is decentralized. People have their own freedom and they are happy that no one else is controlling their finances. Bitcoin is all about people. If this basic piller of bitcoin is compromised, it won't take much time to loose its value. There are literally thousands of alternatives in the market and intelligent people will quickly move to another suitable alternative. So whales or governments will not get any monetary benefits out of it. Think about reality!

Exactly, Steemit is a blockchain-based blogging and social media website, that's a completely different concept compared to Bitcoin.

Steem's users are doing something about it - https://old.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/fcydwq/something_beautiful_is_happening_on_the_steem/

That bug eyed creep will likely find encroaching on anyone else's shitcoin will provoke a sharp response.

As for Bitcoin do not underestimate the ferocity of its users. Even if it were possible, whoever tried it would be wiped out and they'd be stunningly stupid to try it in the first place as removing one of its main value propositions would destroy whatever power, profit and influence they were looking for.

Nah, I doubt that it will happened, there are two many actors in bitcoin's decentralization, whales, average joe's and every day noob. Well small miners can be bought up by big and powerful miners out there, but that's as close as you can get from companies buying companies into a decentralize bitcoin.

As for Steemit, there are no comparisons, apples to oranges.

What kind of merger exactly? The centralized companies or the miners merging together? Well, that is one of the reasons we need lots of decentralized things on Bitcoin. By the way, there should be  ways to punish miners or companies when they move against Bitcoin. There power should always be checked esle they grow beyond a decentralized community/communities ability to control them

Nor can it be insta-mined like STEEM was. That's the root of this whole fork controversy -- Steemit Inc. printed at least 65 million STEEM for themselves. They were apparently transferred to Justin Sun when the Tron Foundation acquired Steemit. The community soft forked to freeze those funds, prompting Sun and at least two exchanges (Binance and Huobi) to launch an attempted takeover of the DPOS consensus.

CZ is trying to brush this under the rug, but Binance and Huobi (and obviously Poloniex) acted very questionably in all this.

Fortunately, this type of attack can never happen to Bitcoin. Custody over of bitcoins doesn't equate to voting rights in consensus changes.

What happened to Steemit will never happen to bitcoin. We follow different consensus rules, and even if one has the capacity to get the control in the hashrate, a fork can be created to fend the nefarious people off. What people are seeing on thr Tron-Steemit debacle is the susceptibility of PoS-based coins to get engulfed by a larger, 'richer' group with greedy intentions. Bitcoin will not encounter such--or it might see some challengers but those will never succeed.

I don't know anything about a "Steemit takeover" and I don't care about altcoin blockchains like Tron,so I won't read your article.
Technically it's possible for the crypto whales to create some sort of secret cartel and dictate the crypto prices,but it would be very difficult to keep that cartel.Such cartels manage that manipulate  and control prices are illegal,according to any anti-trust legislation in any normal country.
Centralizing BTC mining by merging all the miners is theoretically possible but it's really expensive and difficult to be achieved.