Recently I've found myself in a Twitter storm of anti-Steemness. How? I have no idea. It has been focusing on different aspects of Steem, but I'd like to focus on one right now.
We've all seen it before. The fated Bitcointalk Announcements (Altcoins) sub, where scamcoins, altcoins and the like come to live and (hopefully not) die.
If you look a little closely, there is an announcement for Steem - An Experiment Proof of Work on March 24th
Then on May 9th, the official Steemit platform was announced.
What happened during those 2 months has been one of the biggest arguments of people calling Steem a scam.
Steem as a company and its founders mine a large stake of Steem themselves between that time period, giving themselves one of the largest stakes in Steem.
Does that make it a Scam? I don't think so. Here is why.
I am more sensitive to the plight of companies trying to get off the ground and how hard it is to stay on the right side of the law. I believe the way Ned and Dan launched Steem was the one of the only kosher ways to do it. (I am no legal expert)
Take a look at Dan's article on the subject: https://bytemaster.github.io/article/2016/03/27/How-to-Launch-a-Crypto-Currency-Legally-while-Raising-Funds/
He writes that there are 4 bullet points must be satisfied for a blockchain launch to be considered legal:
- Do not pre-allocate any currency to yourself or others.
- Do not sell currency directly to others
- Aways sell through a regulated exchange.
- Complete the currency and protocol prior to launch.
One of Tone's biggest arguments is that on march 24th there was not enough information given for people to mine Steem and the lack of transparency. However Dan addresses that:
"A startup that attempts to comply with all of the FinCEN regulations AND all of the Bitcoin community cultural regulations finds itself in a pickle. If you reveal enough information about your product with enough warning then the market will speculatively place a high value on your tokens. The higher the value the market places on the tokens, the more capital is wasted on a computational competition to acquire the tokens."
I tend to agree with this.
In working on my own project in the past I realized that if I launched a token and announced it, many people would mine it making the value go up very quickly and my inability to mine enough for the company to fund development.
Why is it a bad thing that Steem and its founders mined so many in the beginning? Wouldn't you want the founders and the company to have enough money to further development of the platform thus making everyone else's Steem value worth more? Everyone who has Steem or Steem Power has an economic interest in furthering the project.
Playing devils advocate here. It is rumored that Satoshi Nakamoto owns a very large percentage of Bitcoin due to the fact that many of the earliest coins have not moved. I don't think thats a bad thing, he deserves those coins as the creator of Bitcoin. His development has brought us one of the most important technologies of our lifetime. https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/
I concede the white paper is very long and may not be perfect. Steem is new and experimental. However I don't think we should throw a project under the bus because of that. Besides, what financial investment is required to participate? NONE!
Let's try to be a bit more objective in our arguments
-Charlie
I have been getting lots of incoherant arguments about Steem also from various people. The more I dig into their arguments with them the more they come down to 'feelings' instead of 'thinking'. Most come down to ad hominmem arguments which, even if they were completely as argued, would still be irrelevant and not useful.
So far I have found Steem to operate, more or less, exactly as the whitepaper represents and it is a far superior content distribution platform to Seeking Alpha, where I am a gold standard contributor, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and so many others.
I am really at a loss for why people make the Steem is a scam argument but then I am a Steem noob and have not thoroughly researched it yet. But at least based on reading the whitepaper and the practical experience I have gained with it I do not find it to be a scam.
You and I are still very new and I'm also learning. We've both made a nice sum of SBD and SP writing here, and I agree thats because we are both good content writers and popular figures. However you and I have personally gone out in the past week and signed tons of people up to Steem, this is the point! We are not only being paid for our content, we are being paid to help further Steem.
I'm staying open minded and objective right now.
The only thing which is a pity is that they seem not to believe too much in the current valuation and are powering down, then dumping the received tokens each week. It seems that the consensus of the development team and whales is that a 150 mil. valuation is too high... Many people would like to see them not selling their tokens, even though it furthers the distribution of the SP's. It just shows a lack of faith that a 50 bil. valuation can be reached or existing social media be replaced. (This obviously does not change the fact that they are free to do what they want with their property for sure).
Many whales have to much of their wealth concentrated on steem !!! So even if they are bullish they are not comfortable to have for example 90% of their wealth on a single project... It is for them like a "one point of failure" ... I assume many of them want only to put some of their eggs on other baskets just in case the project fails...It is just a proper bankroll management, poker players out there can understand me ;)
PS BTW steemit whales could be good poker players ...
moved up ...
Not just this -- i know some "users" with larger stake and they starting to transfer to new users, friends - business partners - on the other side:
I was reading many complaints about the centralization on this game here - now look at the "POWER downs" - This also means - Whales won't have so much influence - From what i can observe - slowly but steady we will see by far more new larger stakeholders and it will get much more fairer "holding" distribution - not that i'm thinking the current distribution is "unfair".
Even u may should take into consideration, that on STEEM u are able to see all the "wealth" a user is [HODL] – ( Hold On for Dear Life ) not like facebook & Co. !
Is this essentially good or bad?
I can just speak for myself but i love the transparent way
of how things are going here ;) - my 2 SBD
Maybe the miserable negative trolls should just be recognized for who and what they are (not you @cass; you are pointing out the inconsistency, and rightly so).
If they held onto their steem how would they pay their developers and do things to grow the network. They are hiring like crazy, Devs can cost 120k+ per year. They need easily a million dollar a year developer budget.
In the case of Dan this is a reason I am aware of and which I respect, but out of 30 whales 28 were powering down, the last time I looked... many of whom are not going to pay any developers.
This is a reply to mexbit's comment below (the system wont let me reply to it). I'm not sure what their motives are, but powering down doesn't necessarily mean they are getting out long term. Perhaps they think the current price downtrend will continue for a bit and want to buy back in and power up even more. Or maybe they want to pay off their debts. I dont think powering down gives a clear indication of motives.
Good point here, can't rely forever on angel investors and volunteer hours - if the developers know the founders have been successful, they'll want to get paid!
Read the disclaimer, Steemitco has a disclamier that they have to do NOTHING!
Nothing zero, and are cashing out every week.
To me the real question is can we demonstrate that Steem Power is a good business investment and not just a potentially good speculative investment? I think we can with the right focus from whales, which I explain in my most recent post about 4 ways whales can help grow the market cap.
Whales almost make up most of what is the market cap. Whaledom is not about getting voted up, but having lots of SP, they are investors. They are the biggest content moderators and behaviour police. It is not about what the whale says but what they vote on that matters. Their effect on the ecosystem is big, and has an impact on engagement with the readers, with the interest that spreads from here to the internet. Fortunately the hard-working would-be dolphins and aspiring minnows who are out there marketing (see @xeroc's comment just above). Marketing people, we need them too.
Really Steem is a DAO, our product is media, but mostly textual, everyone here is not just an employee but to some degree a stakeholder. The Whales and the Devs are the two most important groups, but they need us little guys, and the competition that drives the creation of content.
I actually think, that to some extent the blogging/social media networking is largely and primarily marketing. The mechanisms of vesting are what makes Steem an investment. We minnows and dolphins, we are producing the material that helps get Steem noticed. The Whales mostly try to pick the best stuff we make, and as they do this, they distribute SP towards good content creators whose votes gradually increase in influence. If the mechanism works to elevate content that brings new users and triggers discussion, it also brings in investors. People need to understand that as an investor you get to add your influence to the marketing itself.
This is also where developers using the system to create more ways to access and interact with the data is so important, and why developers are amongst the highest voted single category of users posting. By enhancing the ability to access the material, we increase the chances of gaining more interest in the platform. Developers also can help with scaling issues relating to curation, like the filter and grouping systems I am working on.
I understand everything you've stated and agree, but nothing you've explained relates to my question, can we make Steem Power an obvious good investment?
This is the post I mentioned above that explains how I think we can make Steem Power business investment that will be highly desirable: https://steemit.com/steemit/@nathanbrown/top-4-ways-whales-can-increase-market-capitalization-of-steem-by-local-currency-expert-and-online-marketer-consultant#@wingz/re-nathanbrown-re-wingz-re-nathanbrown-top-4-ways-whales-can-increase-market-capitalization-of-steem-by-local-currency-expert-and-online-marketer-consultant-20160824t092235415z
The issues is "traction", I think. We still don't have the required traction so that marketing SteemPower as "ranking weight" on Steemit.com makes any sense. Holding SteemPower and voting on particular posts is like chaning the ranking algorithm (rather the weights) of the google search engine. Except that the search engine is a crowd of people and the weights are the SteemPower of those people.
Astutely put, Charlie.
I also see the same thing happen with people who release new tools, development libraries, and similar, they get paid a LOT for doing this work. @xeroc made 45k out of his piston platform, on a 'changelog' post. Anyone who is adding value seems to be voted up. Obviously this is an example of the incentives for the Whales to keep their fat balances from slimming down.
Please name them so we can fix this. You need to understand that there are alot of posts on steem and just because a post is good doesn't make the whales become aware of it. If you have good content, you need to market it to people and not just hope for a whale to drop in by accident.
Yes, I am quite aware of the deluge that is content and I am sure that it will probably get worse, this is why I talk so much about developing mechanisms for creating filters and grouping. I try to gather the lists of people, whose work I like, and who like my work, and check on the feed.
Well, I'm only little at this point but I try to remember to vote on things that stand out also. What I think is good is not any indicator for other people necessarily. When I am particularly proud of a piece I try to drop a link to the story, when I can see some angle to introduce it in the discussion. I am by no means any kind of sales genius. I can only sell things that are already very convincingly good by thesmelves. I also don't like to butt into other people's scenes too much.
Are you telling me that nobody, I mean zero people told either one of you something like the following. "hey post over at steem , I will make sure you get 10k$ in steem on your post" or somthing roundabout that? I am sure that this has happened with some other "famous" people. No in itself there is nothing wrong with that, just that it should be noted upfront that the post was payed in order to promote steemit.
I think I'd have more faith in steemit if the devs weren't seeming to power down and sell 2m USD worth of steem a week :/.
oh but it isnt a scam, and you are just crying because it isnt fair wahh , but satoshi has a lot of bitcoin , wahaha
Lol luckily dey making 2m a week and have already lost half their coins value and a majority of its support on exchanges
I think its largely people pinning their hopes and dreams at financial success on things like this and after seeing folks like you, @charlieshrem, @dollarvigilante, etc making tons of cash, and the inevitable emotional backlash when they sober up and realize "nope, this ain't a get rich quick scheme either". I can understand this, as your comment here has cleared the sum of all my content combined lol... but I'm here for shits and giggles at the moment so the money aspect doesn't factor in for me as much.
I think this is a great point. Ironically the fact that it is not a get rich quick scheme seems to be part of the problem!
You mean how upvoting by Dan and his buddies shows that it is not a get rich scheme, got it.
@tracemayer @charlieshrem would love your thoughts on XMR - is it really more anon that BTC - @charlieshrem your insight would be wicked good too on this
why? you dont earn steemit by commenting on anything non pro steemit or pro bitshares
There exists no other solution on the internet that allows for any user to get heavily rewarded for great content - and this user does not even have to invest a penny or has to be a celebrity. How can this be a scam if you do not invest anything except content!?
because of steem envy
damnit jl777, you really need to join us at our hangouts. Just so you know @inboundinken this guy is a very well known person in the cryptosphere. At least to those who see merit in not being in the cult of "only bitcoin"
still a bit busy finalizing iguana and helping with btcfork project, and have an upcoming one too.. I guess I will be a bit busy for a while, hopefully someone here can get me C code for local signing steemit tx so I can integrate it into iguana
Yea as long as you help the founders cash out by providing content, you are in!
There are the accusations that the mining start was intentionally restarted several times (I think it was three) to confuse or trick "outsiders". If that can be proven, then that would be wrongdoing right? Still reminds me a lot of the Dash Instamine Saga where I still think it was a honest mistake by the Devs. I'm still waiting for the XMR Steemit whales to display that level of scrutiny here. Thanks for your insights!
The Dash instamine has been proved many times NOT to be a honest mistake. You really think these "smart" people fucked up something as important as mining clients at the launch, well very well knowing that is a critial time, yea Im sure it was just a woopsie
@tracemayer That's Where I know your from, Seeking Alpha. I used to read their articles every once in a while. Anyways, welcome to STEEMIT and up vote and follow.
full $teem ahead!
@streetstyle
There is one more important fact that people miss that justifies why Steemit Inc has mined a substantial amount of STEEM in the beginning.
Due to the rate-limitation that allows free transfers on the Steem blockchain, all new accounts need to be pre-funded with a couple dollars worth of Steem Power. That means that creating an account is among the few transactions that actually cost a fee. So, Steemit Inc needs these funds to be able to onboard new users! So far, the Steem network knows 74,241 accounts with probably +80% having been registered by Steemit.
Let's assume the account creation fee was at 3 STEEM per account from the beginning (and it was not), then that would amount to 178,178 STEEM or more than a quarter million dollars. All payed by Steemit Inc.
@charlieshrem: Since you seem very open-minded about Steem and think that you can help the whole ecosystem to grow one or the other way, I would like to offer you to call me on skype or appear.in so that I can help you understand the details that are still unclear. Only if you like, of course.
@xeroc is one of the most respected developers/contributors of bitshares & steemit, his reputation of 69 represents quite well how valuable he is in general (he is the 11 most appreciated account out of 74241 !!!) http://steemwhales.com/?p=1&s=reputation Just in case you don't know who made you the invitation ;)
WOW, you mean to tell me Dan and his buddies upvoted a bitshares developers reputation so high! WOW Amazing! I am 100% sure that is based on merit! GOOD JOB! it means a LOT!
... so pathetic
... indeed what you wrote was oh so pathetic
Thats a fantastic point that I missed. I'd love to set up a skype call with you! My email is cs@charlieshrem.com or add me on skype.
Is this explained in the ANN post, Oh hell no.
Stop making excusies for yet antoher instamine.
It doesn't take much brain to understand why the ANN post did not include all the business-relevant details. Further, I didn't mean to make any "excusies" but merely pointed out something that is (obviously) not so obvious to many
Right, guys guys, sorry I mined most of it even though I have launched several crypto projects , I made a woopse! I just mined most of the coins my mistake. I know that you do not understand the power over the platform that I just gave myself, but hey so what. It was a bug. I did not explain what I will be able to do with all these coins in the ANN thread, and for that matter I will leave the tech stuff out of the whitepaper too! Who reads that stuff about distro , mining rewards and how it all works anyway. I am sure that if we fill the while paper full of feel good fluff there will be more users. The more users the higher of a price I can unload my insta mined coins.
It gets on my nerves when people who have never run a business expect the entrepreneurs to just give their creations away. I don't have a problem with Ned and Dan having a large stake because they are equally invested in the mission.
The people who expected everything for free are often people who have no idea what it takes to launch a real business. They just have an attitude of entitlement, that everything should just be given to them. That bothers me.
I don't think making a profit and providing value to society are opposing ideas. In fact I think they should have a directly relationship.
It would be nice if the richest person in the world was also the person who had contributed the most to humanity. Alas, I do not think I can say that about many of the people on the Forbes rich list.
:: applause :: -- Well said!
meh oversimplifcation and lacking any concrete examples.
Warning people about a scam is not entitlment. If you business is a scam, then be ready.
Sow the wind, weap the wirlwind.
I agree they are not the same, but that wasn't my point. There's a certain type of person that automatically labels something a scam if the founder stands to make a profit.
You can see therefore that this person would also expect everything to be given to them for free (because they don't like anyone making a profit). That's the entitlement bit.
The irony is that almost none of these people have ever created anything of value and then given it away (because that takes real work).
Which leaves me with the question to pose to these people "When did you get it into your head that the world should bend over backwards to please you?".
That's a question I'd be really interested in hearing answers to.
The issue is not if the founder stands to make a profit.
The issue is if something is misleading, a scam or some other form of fraud-pr not.
That is a seperate issue than a founder making profit or controling the majority of the coin supply which in turn lets them control what is on top of the platform, and many other questions. If it were mapped out fro the start "founders control everything basicly" well that would be different. Pointing out that the distro of steem is not begging your question.
If you are going ot call people out "almost none of these people" just name names so that we can see concreate cases of what you are talking about.
You are painting this as "profit, oh it must be a scam" and not going any of the reasons , coin distro, whitepaper lacking technicals , instamine launch and many other things. The critics have given concrete issues, please give us examples of these "people" you are talking about. If you can not do that then we can asume your argument is well, crap.
I was debating a principle, not Steem specifically, hence the lack of specific references to Steem.
Once upon a time, there was a great wizard who stomped a whole city out of the desert ground. When people moved in, some observed his house had a pool and furniture already and even books in the shelves. That is how they knew he was a trickster and so they burned him at the stake. And they lived happily ever after. The End.
I am amazed at the shortsightedness of my family and friends, its as though they have been numbed to recognizing opportunity and innovation. Several times I give the gist of steemit, show them articles of success, and even point out the many possibility's they have in their own talents that would earn them steem. They are just too comfortable with fascist book.
The other thing is that perhaps the biggest draw card at this point for people is that unlike Facistbook, precisely there is no censorship. In the circles I used to find myself there, the number of times I saw reports of this kind of mischief, and then there was the damning revelation that fascist books mods in fact have a definite agenda.
So in other words, for the time being, these MSM following types, and their leftist leanings, are not really in the target demographic for Steemit at this point anyway. The idea is that people who believe in freedom and anarchists and this kind of people, we now have our own soapboxes, and as we post this kind of thing here, and not get shut down, sooner or later the entire alt-community will be here because they can find stuff they want to read. Some proportion of the users migrating here will also bring money to the platform, bidding up the value of Steem as well.
Right now people think it's outrageous that a post can get $15,000. Wait until the market cap is over a billion, right now it's close to 200mln... I also mentioned before but those figures can be deceptive. They are based on Steem prices and the reward is split and most of it is vested, into 1 week maturing tokens and 2 year slow payout tokens.
From @l0k1 (So in other words, for the time being, these MSM following types, and their leftist leanings, are not really in the target demographic for Steemit at this point anyway.) I agree with your statement, but the people I am referring to are nearly computer illiterate, all use the smartphone, and those that have laptops & desktops used to depend on me for setup and repairs. ( and now I am hundreds of miles away from them). I am starting to come to the conclusion they might be intimidated by the complexity because all are conservative, libertarian or anarchist.
This is why there needs to be ongoing development. It is one of the very neat mechanisms of the voting rewards system that you can see if you look at for example someone like @xeroc's posts. He has done a lot of work towards developing a platform to allow further development of Steem related applications. He has effectively been paid for this work. He didn't have to go through the complex and probably non-programmer-type activity of marketing it, Whales and Dolphins did it for him. Anyone with an idea and some skill with code can then take that and make something more, and most likely, posting and publishing and making it available, will also result in the developer getting paid through the voting mechanism.
I am also wanting to get involved with this. I have some ideas that will help users filter content down, to facilitate moderated groups, a non-aggressive method of eliminating unwanted content from your feed, that does not impact others helps a lot.
Once all these things are in place and people can use them, the possibility for expanding the demographics of potential users greatly increases. Which is why I should stop talking about it and start coding it :)
My situation as well!
I do not understand why do we still focus on all these negative hodlers? Isn't enough already? It looks like he just doesn't like Dan. The only thing I am worried about is that no one at the moment has incentive to buy steem, so its marketcap could go very low maybe to tens of millions, so we definitely need more smartcontracts, sidechains and other great applications for steem. So far this is the only project that managed a)scale to so many users and introduce them b)steem dollars (stable crypto asset. It also introduced c)crypto as a whole, c)introduced zero fee d)actually fast transaction network and e)actual blockchain-based social network. And all of it with built-in redistribution of wealth. Of course old money does not like it.
I am looking at coinmarketcap and i see that indeed the Steem has decreased in size by about $9mln, in the last week.
I think it is possible that this is just the first wave of big posts making big money being powered down and sold. Steem is in active development at the moment and the community growing out of the facility to blog and earn is a factor in what moves people to buy in or cash out.
Once the codebase settles a bit, and a lot more ways are made to add value, the price should start to move towards a steady uptrend. The simple fact that as the sweat-equity contributors on the blog-discussion side goes, are not necessarily adding money in, but we are getting vested tokens back out that take time to cash out, should help people stop and think for a little while 'hmm well I'm not gonna see all of this SP back before 2 years, I might have another look at this, maybe buy some SBD, or even maybe buy some SP and use that to exert my influence as a curator'...
I think coinmarketcap.com marketcap figure might be a bit misleading, but I might be wrong. There is one problem to your last paragraph argument. No social network so far has managed to make people pay for to use it. Donald Trump in his AMA received 600 dollars worth of reddit gold. That is president candidate AMA. That would mean any trending top posts getting 10-15 bucks in steem. Yes. It could go that low too if no incentives for steem buying are available.
The value at coinmarketcap.com are denominated at base in BTC so the value of BTC has an influence on the figure as well. If BTC goes down, so does this number. A more complicated tracking system would be required to see that value in dollars, and besides, Steem can be traded for several other tokens as well, and is, so really, that value should account for multiple pair crosses... The numbers of different tokens going into exchanges is getting dizzying.
I will give you three guesses who is selling a lot of steem.
Hint , you need three letters.
The "scam" argument comes down to a religious belief about decentralization and immutability. These things are important characteristics of Bitcoin, but what many fail to realize is that decetralization and immutability aren't binary and there's degrees of them that make sense to be experimented with.
While not as decentralized as Bitcoin, that doesn't mean it's a scam. Just that it's more centralized than Bitcoin.
And as we have seen, the decentralization of Bitcoin has been quite problematic. It's incapable of doing important decisions on time. It's anarchy in the bad way – just chaos where people are having bitter fights and nothing gets done.
It's problematic for innovation, yes. I would argue that it's not problematic for it's intended application though: p2p digital cash. There's room for both innovation and p2p digital cash in the world though.
It's very big problem if Bitcoin wants to be cash that has large userbase. Currently it can't scale up and the development has been really, really slow. That's because it's too decentralized and can't do effectively any big decisions.
again, you're assuming the goal is scaling fast rather than being sound p2p cash.
when you scale fast, you sacrifice security. security is essential but comes at the cost of speed. so it's a constant tradeoff, and there's room for both approaches
@ntomaino since cash without a powerful network effect undermines itself, scaling up is a necessary part of becoming effective cash. Cash that I can't use to buy my groceries isn't cash.
If p2p cash can't scale, it's hard to consider it as sound cash. At least it should scale a lot more than Bitcoin does now. Bitshares and Steem are great examples how it can be done.
And the problem isn't exactly scalability, it's the incapability to make decisions on time. Governance model of Bitcoin sucks. If Bitcoin ever wants to be widely used cash, it should make big reforms on it's decision making process – which is, as I said, just chaos currently.
From a security standpoint, I think very much that sound decision making process is really important. If there is no clear way of deciding things, it's hard to react to different threats.
YEa, I know it has been horrible. Nobody uses it and it has no value.
No updates, and no new releases.
Dan got a lot of good experience with crowdfuning via PTS/AGS and did his homework on how to launch the Steem chain to minimize regulatory risk while maximizing stake distribution to partcipants motivated to help Steemit succeed rather than just profiting from mining and dumping ala Protoshares. My only gripe with Steemit is the conspicuous absence of a share drop on the Bitshares community, but overall I believe the roll out was balanced and well thought out. I really think the only people whining about a scam are miners that feel entitled to mine and dump every new coin that comes along.
I think the biggest hurdle is the perception that starting a cryptocurrency/blockchain business which becomes quickly profitable/valuable is unfair to others because of the founders stake. When in reality, the founders are the ones taking the biggest risk, developing innovation, and doing the vast majority of the work. We don't see this in other highly-successful traditional businesses as it is done behind the scenes. But with blockchain and cryptocurrencies, it is more transparent, therefore it is open to more criticisms.
Well said. It's called the risk return profile. It has been working for 6000 years already (or longer).
It's still a BETA project. It's an experiment. It's testing to see if could work. Steemit hasn't even been officially released and taken out of BETA yet.
I find the more popular something becomes, the people who miss it as an early adopter are always the first ones to throw it under the bus and encourage everyone else to throw it under the bus too.
It's human habit to hold true to your initial decision to not get involved in something, and see if you were right, by convincing others to rally with you.
We need to get over these personality defects for the greater good of cryptocurrency projects.
I listen to Tone Vays on his interviews a lot. 86% of what he says has a lot of smarts and accuracy to it. 14% of the time, he's wrong, and spends the remaining time qualifying why he's not wrong on that 14%
His hatred, disgust, and denouncing steemit in anyway he can, is that 14% WRONG where he's over thinking, and over-slamming steemit.
Tone Vays, give it more time. The best thing you can tell your followers is to stop slamming Charlie Shrem for making up his own mind on what he wants to do.. He's intelligent, and doesn't need to be "sold" on how to stay away from steemit.
Some people... really...
I've only heard Tone Vays on the interview posted here on steemit. I guess he's supposed to be an expert, but he comes across like a dope.
Many just want developers to go without anything to build their platform for them so they can later cash out. There are multiple people who knew what they were doing who are not on Dan and Ned's team who got alot of tokens as well (because it was open for anyone to get into--if they were realllly interested in learning to do so).
Satoshi had the first movers advantage, but now that the cat is out of the bag. Dan and Ned burned the bag so it can never go back in. Yeh I think we want them to have resources to keep the platform strong instead of giving it to people too early on who only look at this as a get rich quick scheme and want to cash out asap.
great post and thanks for considering ;)
If it makes you feel any better, Tone told me I wasn't qualified to answer whether or not a blockchain is best suited for Steem in our debate.
The heat will only increase from here on. Keep fighting the good fight.
Interesting post. I'm reading, watching , and learning! Thanks
We all should do , because we don't have a clue how this things works.
I have no problem with the creators making as much money as they'd like on their creation. Why shouldn't they? They built it, it was their ingenuity, hard work, and skill. Quite impressive, to say the least.
HOWEVER, I do understand peoples' concerns because it has consequences for the system.
From what I can tell if you powered up in the first week 1 mvest was 1 steem. Today it's 292 steem per mvest.
That means vests are 292x more expensive now (strictly in terms of steem) than they were in the first week. And this is not up to market chance, this is by design.
For example, the first person to power up was "faddy." He did so with 357 steem on March 25th. 357 steem has a market value of $421 presently, but since he powered up in the first week that translated into 357 mvests worth over $100,000.
The issue isn't that early adopters are rewarded (they should be), it's that the balance of power has been so massively skewed that I'm not sure it can ever recover.
The Steemit account powered up 264,662 steem in the first week @ 1 steem/mvest. If I were an investor that would make me really nervous because now that account alone has 60% of the steem and 51% of the steem power. That's kind of a big X factor. I mean, I think they have a long term interest in the platform, but what if the price starts to to go south? Would they dump their coin? Or weather the storm? Does anyone know?
In addition to all of this, when whales (and anyone actually) power down, the same number of vests converted each week result in progressively more steem because the steem per mvest conversion rate is always increasing. They are able to grab and dump the freshly minted steem from the vesting pool onto the market, i.e., they get to take advantage of most of the inflation, and sell it at a steem price which reflects the fact that, at present, only 4% is liquid.
And given that each week more and more liquid steem will hit the market due to the rising steem per mvest ratio that will place a downward pressure on prices. I think that's what we are seeing with the slow decline in price.
My overall point, with respect to your article, is that while it wasn't a pre-mine, and I don't feel that the creators have done anything wrong or committed any kind of fraud, the system is designed, because of that increasing steem per mvest ratio, and huge off-market inflation, to favor early adopters at such a scale that it's unclear whether the balance of power will ever really change significantly.
That all being said I also know that the Steemit community is a strong one and I expect to see lots of creative solutions to whatever problems the steem network encounters.
I keep getting hit with this
I brought followers over from twitter, who share my work back there, and I'm bombed again and again.
What do you mean "bombed again and again"? By people on Twitter calling Steemit a scam?
yes, backlash. Many come to Steemit and leave with a bitter taste. Its a revolving door churning out bitter minnows. I dont like it. Its not my fault. I havent given up on Steemit, not yet anyway. Baiting new users with the potential to earn rewards for good content only to find their value is less than 1/10th a cent to Steemit. Quality content writers will not stay week after week watching the top 10% continually taking all the rewards week after week. I have seen the examples, I understand it. These bitter users could potentially create a PR nightmare destroying Steemits reputation.
That is exactly what they did not factor in.... you have a good grasp of human nature
MEh, Dan is not new to this, he knows EXACTLY what he is doing.
Right you are, jennsky! Like in almost every walk of life, the over-privileged (define this however you want) always quickly seem to suck up all the money/power/attention, whatever it may be. Oh, how quickly the rest of us (the over-whelming majority on the planet) get shut out of 'their' system. A system always serves and benefits those that create it. Except one that is created by the poor and under-privileged people. I waiting for that one! Yep, still waiting. OK, any minute now...
Thank you for the valuable argumentation and dedication to a greatly important development in the realm of cryto-currencies. Namaste :)
Good job Dan and Ned upvoting this and linine up the whale cabal to get this to the top. Allthough there is no financial investment required the system will not work unless there is financial invesment in the form of people buying steem. Otherwise the system fails. The lauch of the mining on bitcoin talk was shady to say the very very LEAST. IT was not possible for everyone to mine at launch and this allowed the founders to mine the majortiy of the coins in a short time. You can not in anyway compare this to satoshi. Satoshi did not have any idea any of the coins would be worth anything, where as we know very well pletny of altcoins are launched and worth something. It is a totaly different enviorment, and since we are not in a vaccum it is important to think about that.
Very much agree with charlie.
It makes sense to keep the project low key, so you can dominate the mining aspect in the beginning and that is clearly what they have done.
As the creator you want and need to have a majority stake in the project to make it work. and also to get rewarded properly so you will keep working on improving it.
This is a new form of organisation, which is very interesting. THe steemit for the first time have found a way to build a system where the company does not really matter anymore. Everything is run by the blockchain. It is clearly an improvement and extension of what bitcoin has started. If this is a scam bitcoin is a scam also.
Looking forward to see what the world will come to think after they fully realize what Steem is all about!?! Thanks for sharing, namaste :)
What you are saying is that they intentionally gave less information to others to give themselves an unfair advantage at mining a currency. As we are talking a about a currency that is intended to be used by everyone I think this would be bad, as not everyone had an equal opportunity to gain that currency. Also it increases centralization.
I think the idea of a start-up based upon a currency is wrong and also rejected here I believe. Steemit is a start up and uses the currency steem to monetize. This is fair - an equivalent would be coinbase. But gaining a large stake in token which is meant to be used by everyone via hiding information would not be fair.
I am speaking hypothetically here - I do not know if the information that you provided are all correct.
Spreading the currency by letting people mine it is mostly stupid. It was done in that way only because there was no other legal way. Better way would have been just to create a lot of tokens when the blockchain was launched.
Everybody has an equal opportunity to earn it. It's possible by writing good content and getting rewards. No other blockchain has fairer and more effective way of letting users get the currency.
And of course mining shouldn't be considered as a fair way of distributing tokens because only a handful of people in the world can mine effectively.
Centralization of decision making power is very important, especially when the project is still young. Steem has already made several hardforks, some of them really fast, which wouldn't be possible if it was truely decentralized.
I just wrote a post about that: How to design efficient and resilient DAO.
These rewards are however decided by a few wealthy token holders (whales). Which in theory have the ability to reward in a way such that they never get out-competed. The way to do this would be to preferably vote for poorer minnows instead of established writers such as @stellabelle - then these established writers could never out-compete a whale. Note: Active whales also get multiple curation rewards which may are about equal or greater size than content rewards would ever generate consistently - e.g. @smooth 7,206 SP past 7 days - few or no other writer made this much this week.
Why would it not be legal to pre-assign some coins to a company or foundation or person? Is Ethereum illegal? Is Ripple illegal?
Read it all from Dan's blogpost: How to Launch a Crypto Currency Legally while Raising Funds
Thanks. I'll read it. But the first thing I noticed is
so I don't expect an answer ;-).
This is true if you think they intentionally gave less information. I'm not gonna make that accusation although I agree it was very difficult for others to mine.
This is a pretty common tactic, wether or not they used it or not, is debateable, i guess thats what makes it such a strong tactic. In your article you mentioned satoshi owning alot of btc, but he also told others about it, just no one else joined in. With steemit, mining wasnt a new topic and people were ready to do so, and even tried, the developers rolled back and started over because they didnt get enough the first time. Kinda shady, but -shrug-.
Guys, use your head.
Are these crypto noobs launching something?
They knew dman well what they were doing, give me a break.
Exactly, its not their first rodeo.
I think that when you reach a point of disillusion with the steemit ecosystem and it seems far to big a concept to grasp, you grasp at the short sighted disillusion.
Good points! My only grievance is the difficulty it takes for a minnow to ever see rewards for the content they contribute... It is supposed to be all about the content but it really is a giant popularity contest...
Minnows can always buy more Steem Power and become whales.
if you have $100,000 to invest, I think you would be a dolphin
You can be a small dolphin for just a few $thousand. 10 million vests puts you in the 1%
That's true but the amount of Steem Power you need to buy at this point to be able to make a noticeable difference seems to be quite a bit more than it used to be.
Buy how much steem power? and how much will that steem power be worth in 1 month, with 28 out of 30 top whales all dumping Steem for Fiat/Bitcoin?
Yea Dan and Trace will sell you some! Get on Poloniex and buy their orders! Otherwise they will never be able to exit their position. We know Steemit is a LONG term play right Trace?
Good point...
To understand the whale, you must understand that they vote for growth.
This will be necessary for quite some time, perhaps indefinitely. Once a strong pool of dolphins (millions) build communities based on providing quality content, the whales can go about their daily duties of promoting growth whilst minnows get paid for by those dolphins and the many others who have an average stake in our community.
There is much anxiety going around here, I get very edgy about it too. But I have so much to learn from others here, there are heaps of smart people in the crypto world.
I agree that right now it is, but thats all going to change and the rewards will be better distributed.
Really? How do you know this?
I guess because the majority stakeholders are selling as much as they can and so are redistributing their tokens to others who want them.
mexbit is right.
the whales have now opened multiple accounts, and distributed their power that way.
It could change today, but it doesnt, If you read the white paper, you see it is the way it is designed to work. Why would they change that.
It is all about the popularity at the moment, that does after all bring in many more people. But hopefully things will improve (not necessarily financially) in time, Steemit is still in beta.
I keep seeing that "steemit is still in beta" so is bitcoin after 7 years. I dont think that really makes the trickledown economics any better.
@marketingmonk wrote : "It would be nice if the richest person in the world was also the person who contributed the most to humanity".
Yes! And this is why Steemit MAY be the beginning of a totally groundbreaking formula. Inside the Steemit ecosystem the incentives line up according to a structure where the most powerful stakeholders are motivated to share their own value with those who bring maximum value to the whole community. It is actually in their objective self-interests to do so. And it will be in the objective long term interests for any newcomer to bring maximum value to the whole community.
If this is the case we are talking about a new paradigm of system design where individual and collective interests directly go together.
What if this incentive system was expanded far beyond Steemit as we currently know it it? Remember this is only the beginning. Steemit may evolve into something far more revolutionary than anyone has considered possible. Not just a different currency...not just a social media platform...not just content creation...maybe a totally new kind of super-hybrid-economy. I just think it is worth considering that we may have discovered a groundbreaking new economic model here.
Currency derives its value from what people consider to be valuable. This means that the ultimate value of any currency is always subjectively based. It has also been said that the only value that currently comes directly out of Steemit is the production of potentially great articles.
Here is my question : what would be the value of an article containing an algorithm for solving all the problems in the world?
They got too many tokens before the actual launch into PoS. This way they control most of the system, hence they can even sensor people. If they see users like you, who will bring more people in, due to their influence in the crypto communities, they will give you part of their shares by voting you. If they vote you, you gain a lot of money, without actually deserving it. No damn article, especially on steem it, actually deserves 10.000$+. Satoshi might control 1/15 of the supply, but :
Also Bytemaster, aka Dan Larimer scammed the BitShares users countless times in many ways and created a financially stupid DAO/blockchain
" If they see users like you, who will bring more people in, due to their influence in the crypto communities, they will give you part of their shares by voting you. If they vote you, you gain a lot of money, without actually deserving it."
Wether is undeserving is your opinion but I see it like this. Now I have alot of Steem Power and I'm financially invested in the success of Steem. I'm going to go out and get others to use it and author content. They are using myself and others for marketing.
I think that a lot of people see these numbers at the bottom of posts and comments and think somehow that the poster has this money and they can run off and buy themselves a maserati or something. Or have a big weekend with hookers and coke perhaps. But remember, it splits between all 3 tokens, in fact only 1/3 or so, maybe less, can be instantly sold, the rest you wait a week to move it to the tradeable token, and the Steem Power, you only get that back a little at a time over a period of 2 years.
This is an intentional design and the mania about the subject of post rewards never takes this into account. The purpose of this is to automatically give you a stake in continuing to support the system because if it falls, your vested stakes will decline in value.
You sir, are clearly paying too much for your hookers and coke! I know for an absolute fact that charlie can buy at least 7 hookers and 8 kilos of Columbian finest with the money from this post alone!
That would just be one night, surely!
But that's how a good ponzi works. At this moment Steemit is extremely centralized and if they don't like something, it disappears. It is a centralised website and centralised permissioned blockchain. I hope that with your intelligence and knowledge, that you can see that PoS systems are problematic and especially if the founders or whoever else holds a lot of power in the system.
I am not saying an article is worthless, but it can't be worth that much, on a platform that has no source of income i.e advertisments. Steem is based totally on speculation and it distributes money from people that have just bought steem and steem dollars to the previous people.
To put it this way : with no new users buying Steem or SBD, the platform can't survive. And that's what a ponzi is. But it is a great ponzi, because everyone is making lots of money, thinking that they are in a decentrilised platform, producing something amazing, when what actually happens is that they talk about how great steem is and Dan is giving them money.
I am sorry Charlie, but the same think that put you in prison, apart from the assholes in the government, is your greed. You want the money, you got some money and that's sweet. So it doesn't matter if it is illegal or the source doesn't make sense (i.e making money by taxing people on the communist steemit), you want it.
"An article can't be worth X?"
What ever happened to subjective value theory? Of course it can. Facebook accepted pictures and videos for any customer that signed up. They paid for hard drive space for cat pictures and pictures of people's meals for years before monitizing their investment. They were paying for customer content, they just we're paying Seagate ..not you.
Of course it can. It's based on inflation, which is just a way of redistributing wealth. If the market cap stays the same, it just means that those who get the new money benefit at the expense of those who own the old money.
Sorry @tarantulaz is more correct on that point in the present environment. People want to cash out their rewards and you can see this easily in the steady stream of coins flowing from authors to exchanges on the blockchain. Only if someone wants to buy in will the tokens be able to retain a value.
In a fantasy land where reward-earners are happy to stay within the system and enjoy their larger share of the Steem pie, buyers wouldn't be needed, but that won't happen for a long time, if ever.
@samupaha yes it is the same as Bitcoin, and Bitcoin can't survive without buyers either as long as miners and existing owners want to cash out. It isn't just a question of market cap going down, it flat out won't survive at all if no one want to buy it. Of course in practice the price finds an equilibrium. With few buyers spending little money that equilibrium ends up being low.
@jasonmcz the net cash outs have to be equal to the net buy ins (for every seller there is a buyer). It isn't that one being larger than the other makes the price go down, it is that the price moves to the point where the two become equal. In part this happens because some people have a fixed budget they are willing to invest. If someone is going to invest $1000 that absorbs a lot more STEEM at $1/STEEM than at $5/STEEM.
Like what @tarantulaz and @smooth are saying here, take a look at STEEM against other currency while is there a steady bleeding on the price? the answer is simple because of
authur_content_return > total_amount_outsider_buying_inand it will stay this way unfortunately if the user growth can't match up the content reward.It's the same thing with every inflationary currency. For example, if the market cap of Bitcoin stays the same, it means that price of bitcoin will go down because new coins are mined continuously.
New owners (miners) benefit while the value of coins owned by old holders will go down.
Of course the market cap will go down if people sell their cryptocurrency for fiat. But the same happens with Bitcoin, too, when miners have to sell their coins to pay their electricity bills and buy new hardware.
Compared to Bitcoin, Steem has advantage if the market place will come someday. It will create larger internal economy where people don't have so big need to exchange their SD to fiat currencies. Instead they can use them inside the Steem ecosystem.
I can't believe that you don't understand such a basic concept . So you survive because the fed is printing money. Even if a central bank was printing equivalent amounts for everyone and gave the money to them, nothing would really change. You can't create value.
So you would accept losing money constantly, because someone posted a good article. Not even based on what you think. Maybe BM thought someone wrote a good article, so he takes your money and distributes it to others.
AHAHAHAHAHAHA. What wealth? And with that redistribution, how will they make money if they don't sell their steem tokens? What gets me is that crypto people are so illiterate (financially), that it doesn't surprise me, how prone they are on getting scammed by people like Larimer.
I know you from the BitShares community. You moved scam and you expect to make money samupaha? Following the leader that created and then left Bitshares , expecting to make money as an early adopter this time. Nice!
@tarantulaz, wasn't that the idea behind the liquidity rewards? I know they removed liquidity rewards, but if they put it back into place , it wouldn't matter if new users stopped buying in because there would be people being rewarded for maintaining liquidity. Right?
The liquidity rewards are even scummier. They are taxing the rest of people, by giving money to the rest so that more people come and buy steem. Inflation and dilution, for something that doesn't actually fund development are techniques that bring people/money in and keep the scam going.
steemit will die without users.. your right so will facebook,reddit..ect.. the money is created from user activity, and it's working.. activite in the network/just like transactions solving is the new mining. Craigslist has over 200 million post a month worldwide.. if you add reputation to craigslist .. boom you have a perfect like steemit economy ready to be taken over and be disrupted.
I was with you @tarantulaz up until the 'greed' and 'prison' part. The distribution on the Steem platform is a problem, and it seems that all the most sensible arguments address this. I believe Charlie is also correct from a self-indulgent point of view, the developers do deserve something for their work. I think they need to find a way to bring more income to the platform, because otherwise the inequality not only disheartens new users, but it also removes the value of their investment very quickly. if you invested $1000 last month your upvote was worth $0.01, that same account will only have $0.004 now and that will be a massive redflag to many future investors if that trend continues.
Might be a bit of, but charlie wrote an article that won a lot of money, just because he was pro steem, saying how good a 'solo-mine/instamine/premine' is. We are talking about a Proof of Stake system and a social network, where someone with too much steem is effectively an administrator/moderator and the guy that is running the chain at the same time. If Charlie can't see that he is getting that money, from idiots that buy steem, because otherwise his tokens would have had no value, then I can't say anything else. Also don't forget that everyone else was complying or was trying to comply with regulation, something that charlie didn't do. Do you think that the rest were idiots that decided not to do what he did, in order to make money?
Well explained. Couldn't agree with you more. Its now clear that some WHALES have been powering down since the end of July at least. Something needs to be done with the distribution of our hard earned money that we invested in the platform. Frankly, I don't prefer that my money go to a mediocre post, that will eventially cash it out. The price of steem is plummeting as I am writing..
Yep, and it works untill nobody buys steem on the altcoin exchanges.
We're not talking about Bitshares, and past projects have no bearing on current or future projects. At least Dan is not hiding behind anonyimity, because if he did, that would be more worthy of scam accusations. He's laid out his life in public for everyone to see. Unfortunately when he makes a few mistakes, he gets roasted for it, as if he is not suppose to be human. I have yet to see people held at gunpoint to get involved in any of Dan's projects. We need to stop spoon feeding the public. If they get involved in something it is at their own risk and peril. Now can we get on with our lives, and stop wasting so much energy on this nonsense?
Want to know why Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin under an alias?
Want to know why Satoshi Nakamoto abandoned Bitcoin to work on other projects?
It is because of this kind of roasting people do with Dan. It's idiotic and serves no purpose.
You discredit yourself and your arguments by calling Bitshares a scam, as it quite clearly never was a scam.
Did I (and most others) lose lots of money on Bitshares so far? Yes most certainly.
Did Bitshares live up to its potential so far? No.
Did Dan over promise and under-deliver? Probably.
Does that make it a scam? Definitely not..
Bitshares is still alive with lots of exciting developments, so there's still hope there.
Nobody thinks that a normal company should give most of their shares away to people who do nothing for it. That same principle should be applied to blockchains, too.
Because this is built on a blockchain, nothing can't be censored.
This is just bullshit. Bitshares 2.0 is perhaps the best DAO so far. The biggest problem with it has been too much low-quality shareholders who don't understand how it is supposed to work.
As we have seen with Steem, Dan can design very fine blockchain when he has a good team and no opposition from other shareholders (because he and his team has the majority of the shares).
Ah... pull back a bit on your underlying intent. It's showing.
Censor, censor
Why do they power down ?
Steem has an anual expected inflation of more than 100 %, so it would be fucking stupid to not sell now.
This has nothing to do with not believing into this. Nobody would just hold their steem and happily watching its value dropping.
Is this a scam ?
Depends on the point of view I guess. But I did'nt see dan or ned asking anybody to invest into this, promising big returns if they do.
In fact most people just heard about simple posts making big profits on steemit. So they wanted this as well and signed up, started writing or maybe even invested into steem without even reading/knowing anything about it.
So this does'nt make this a scam but it shows, that a lot of people blindly invest into things they don't understand. This just shows: people love to be "scammed".
Overall the way, this platform is made might have a lot of things that do not seem to be fair for everyone. But this counts for the whole life, and I was thinking about how it could be done better without offering big chances for people to exploit it.
In fact I had to admit to myself, that a lot of their decisions just make sense for the future of this network, or better say: "For giving this network a chance to even have a future".
At the end they and a few others, secured their financial future with a good idea and the skills to get it running. Congratulations for this, you guys deserve it.
Even tho I can not say I would'nd be jealous and would prefer to have a piece of this myself. But I'm honest enough to myself, to admit that it was'nt me who had the idea, neither would have had the skills to do it.
In general humans love to complain and share their experience with the world. But there are not many who actually share their positive experiences, except with their closest friends maybe.
They brought a lot of people together, that would'nd have meet each other without this. A few people possibly made a bit money here, that they would'nt have got anywhere else. Some may deserve it - others don't - so is life !
This is simply people who did not make it rich fast on the Platform and took on the Mission to start the Scam march against us. Most know that Steemit is Legit, but there will always be those who are pissed because they did not make it on here and will continue to spread rumors. If they had the incite to use some of this following they are trying to hammer Steemit with, they might have had a better time on here. I find it Funny that some have huge followings elsewhere, but come on Steemit with Greed in mind and completely forget the fact that they could invite and make it big here, they expect us to just Vote them to the Sky and are Angry at the Fact that we Vote on Content that pertains to the Future of this place. I say let them Bitch, they don;t have the know how or the sense to make a proper argument as to why it is bad here...Steemit Strong...Haters Going to Hate...
Upvoted!! LOL
steemit is not a scam. I could go through the various reasons for that, but it is so self-evident that I don't want to waste anymore breath on it.
What's important is functionality, and my hope is that the steemit founders focus on that at least 50% in relation to that.
I see incredible potential in this platform. This is a platform with objective interests for all participants to create SUPERB content. Think about it. This system can only survive if the system as a whole produces original high quality content from its user base. If the user base can actually do this then not only is Steemit not a scam, it could be totally revolutionary, because it could be a tool for improving the quality of the content on the entire internet.
Thats a big deal. And something hugely attractive to outside investors. As well as the greatest writers and multimedia content providers. A culture of creative excellence.
So lets do it then! Simply make Steemit a platform of creative excellence. Build a system which produces material above and beyond anything else on the internet.
Yeah, me too. That's why it's so weird that people like to bitch about it so much. If that wasn't a good way to launch Steem, maybe they should tell what would have been a better way?
I agree with you, if people invest in the Projects, it means hope for the long term. I think steem alive and will live.
People tend to have very interesting attitudes concerning money. I saw similar arguments against Steemit on YouTube. What does YouTube pay you for using their service? Nothing. Twitter? Nothing. FaceBook? Nothing. What did it cost you to join Steemit? Nothing. They will spend their time conversing on these "free"platforms telling you Steemit is a scam, preferring to put themselves in an environment where there is absolutely no opportunity for income whatsoever? They prefer to provide their personal information for free so the service can sell that information to the highest bidder? Do you have to sit through endless advertisement you aren't interested in here? No you don't. I don't get some people sometimes.
There are pessimist for every topic online steem is diverse and bitcoin is the future currency
its always propoganda behind something considered good by the masses AND ITS FREE.................
These discussions are great, if you look at a person's reputation, you don't need to read their comment, It works like this.
level 1-20 = I hate steemit, its a communist censored platform
level 20-30 = I think there is a problem with whales, I thought I was a good writer but nothing I write here gains traction
level 30-50 = Steem is a decent platform, not without its problems, but I enjoy blogging, and I made a few dollars.
level 50-70 = I was either well-known before I started using Steem/invested very early, I believe in Steem, it works, I know it because I've made over $100 SBD for a single post
level 70+ = I am god around here, If I write a post about my time on the toilet it will earn $1000, I decide which dolphins become minnows, hell hath no fury like my flag! The only way I lose my power here is if I sell so much of it that I become rich in Dollar terms, which is not the worst thing that could happen to me
While it might be a kink of the reputation algorithm, I am almost at 50 rep, but didn't make much of anything. About 50 SBD over about ten days. Still, I do beleive it is a good project. I just need to get out of the wilderness, as well as brush up my writing skills. Or maybe photo skills, since the only post that brought significant money was a photo.
One of the things that could work better is distribution of SP over time. A lot of the problems come from human psychology. It works like this:
People come in, see big numbers on main page.
Have a $_$ moment, and go write their first post.
Most likely the part where they thought ??? PROFIT! never comes.
They spend time learning the system, which is a moving target, I might add, and write their second and subsequent posts.
Then it goes one of several ways
a. Due to increasing userbase and Zipfs law as specified in White Paper, and mostly static number of whales they drown in the noise and aren't really discovered by curators and leave disappointed.
b. They are discovered, but that doesn't help them much and they either stay or leave.
c. They stick around, communicate, and stay but...
As the numbers are showing they eventually leave.
Part of the reason is that the curation system as it is now while well designed depends on the number of actors that are to few in the face of increasing userbase. There are a number of solutions being suggested from splitting the site into siloed parts a la Reddit, to things like @robinhoodwhale, to what I like (since I took part in comming up with the idea) is #spreadthepower, offering services for STEEM / STEEM POWER (there is a way to stend STEEM as SP).
Anyhow, something needs to be done.
Yes, the self interest guides the comments, not the "content"
Great Post .. and totally agree, SatNak deserves his treasure - would be nice if he could come out of the shadows and start spending.
Thank you, Charlie. I see a lot of complaints about Steemit while people seem to gloss over how it is the most decentralized social media platform ever which actually has a chance to be significant to every-day people while also promoting cryptocurrency adoption to the masses. Tone has made his point many times over, but I'm still not convinced. His "tone" has also been quite frustrating in almost all of the interactions I've seen with him on this topic (other than the @dollarvigilante interview where at the end he at least admits he might be wrong).
I want to see this succeed, and I want those who created it to be greatly rewarded. I see no conflicts there. I really appreciate your input regarding the legal sides of this discussion which I hadn't previously considered. I hope your personal experience and expertise in this matter is appreciated.
Yes, :) Tone admits that it might be very difficult for him in future. Even though he might have temptation to jump on board, but can't.
It is simple really ; steemit is a scam , the same way it was a scam to use small metal token for convince to buy a pig hundreds of years ago instead of having to carry or cart along the seven chickens you other wise would have had to use to pay the owner of the pig you were buying...
The guy who wrote the 'Declaration of Independence' or the "Magna Carta" were running scams until enough people decided to believe in those concepts...
Heck in 1775 the Presidency of The United States of America was a scam till marketing or Social Media manipulated honest people into believing in those ideals.
Simply anything new or different is a scam until enough people are not caught out over time, in other words people are just wary and distrustful of change...
Funny how history repeats itself over time; in 1775 the Presidency was a scam now in the year 2016, The Presidency of The United States of America is just simply up for sale prices.
Please try and find an honest Representative to vote for (or Against) come November, after all if you fail to vote in November your nothing but an anti-social domestic terrorist enemy to Democracy...
/ hugz ; )
They call it "fake it till you make it."
What is "enough for myself"? Why should you be more allowed to mine enough for yourself than anyone else? Isn't this actually "pre-allocating any currency to yourself" while pretending it's not?
I am so impressed by your life and efforts. One tiny grammatical error...I think. Where you wanting to say "Objective" instead of "Let's try to be a bit more object in our arguments"
https://steemit.com/steemit/@romanskv/boosters-time-on-steemit
Are we talking hopes or reality. At a point we discuss lottery viewer to be on steem. I know and believe as well that Steem is not a scam. But at the same time the payout for the newbies are hidden or shydown by others that are ahead. For me my hopes are also shaky as I don't write. I read and upvote and talk my heaet out in the comments. That also now feels like chasing the dark. What are you guys doing to keep the newbies stead fast on this platform?
Let's be honest, time will tell, but hey I believe in it. Why not?!
I dont think its scam, but numbers not shows good
There are just so many people that don't understand the concept of crytocurrency and are stuck in the system that was taught to them. It's like the Matrix, there are many people dependent on the system that they can't be unplugged. There are inventors, and people that use the invention.
Investigating by tone.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@adinda/investigating-about-steemit-by-tone
I don't think it's a scam in any way... Is it set up to their advantage? Sure, but it should be... they are the creators!
inappropriately Verity rumors .the main thing that we are all arranged
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Interesting post.