Justin Sun could have allowed the soft fork to remain, and opened up communication with the community like he promised. He could have kept the ace up his sleeves (the threat of using borrowed money from foreign exchanges), and offered to at least respect the opinions of the community to allow things to continue peacefully, and allow us to govern ourselves.

I am sure the witnesses would have allowed him to regain access to his stake over time, but he took it as a hostile assault leaving him no option other than to hit the kill button. He wants access to his stake instantly, which is why he changed the power down time. That way he can borrow investors money to force changes on us at any moment he needs the extra firepower. This will ruin the price of steem forever, and possibly destroy its reputation as a currency that can be trusted.