I'm not sure what the reason for this theoretical is when it's already documented that self-hosted instances have full free access to the paid perks.

It's become pretty clear since all of this kicked off that none of the Discord-replacement hopefuls have the infrastructure to accept even the smallest fraction of users fleeing Discord. Paying for some nice-to-have features when using the official instance is at least a plan towards paying for that infrastructure.

Speaking on a more broad level, I find it more suspicious when services are free these days with no path to self-sufficient monetization. We've seen enough of those fall to venture capital influence at this point.

I was under the impression that plutonium on my server would be controlled by me. Say, if I wanted to give it away, I could. At least, that's what I've read.