I was convinced to power up by an entirely different narrative, as a way to gain influence on a social platform
How is this going to be any different than now?
or receive an ROI
Hmm..so you suggest people buying steem power should be driven by ideology instead of money, this is a flawed business strategy. Investors are essential to bootstrap the platform and keep it running and these investors are only interested about ROI.
If it's influence then not being able to Power Down quickly is proof of long term interest. It reveals confidence.
This doesn't reveal confidence in any meaningfull way, what reveals confidence is an open system where everyone can cash out anytime but nobody does.
I hope I'm wrong but I expect and predict that everyone rational is going to Power Down in a rush to exit and get whatever value out they can before the next person takes it and I see no alternative to this scenario when it's a 3 month period.
Why do you assume that people will rush to the exit? Do you not think the concept of steem is interesting and has potential? What you implied with this statement is that the only reason steem isn't dead yet is because people's money is locked, do you not think steem is attractive to people for reasons other than " IM TRAPPED, CANT GET OUT"
When people are playing games, they aren't motivated by ROI. No one is upgrading accounts in order to get more ROI. People upgrade accounts because it makes the game more fun to them so no I'm not saying it's ideology, but it's about fun and entertainment.
Steem doesn't and will never be safe enough to attract real investors. Crypto traders are more like gamblers. You can gamble enough as it is just posting and curating on Steem so why do you need this?
Because it's not being treated as a game. So now it goes into an entirely different mindset. Who is going to take the risk if the founders are Powering Down and confidence is low? I mean no one is really going to be there to Power Up in the future that I can see and who wants to hold the bag? When you start moving toward an investor narrative and focus only on making money then you will make people behave in different ways than how gamers or chatters or bloggers typically behave.
If you can get for example $10,000 if you Power Down immediately, vs the risk of waiting for Dan and Ned to power down, wouldn't you take what you can within the 3 months if you see the biggest holders doing it? And when Steem Power has a value which now is not concrete or we don't even know what it is, why would anyone want it?
Tell me what Steem Power is and why I should not power down? Try.
If the goal is to cash out at some point then apparently people aren't confident in the value of Steem Power. They are perhaps confident Steem Power will be worth something in dollars but that is not the same! When people start talking about never wanting to cash out or enjoying the benefits of having a lot of Steem Power that is when you know there is confidence but right now that doesn't exist and may be gone after these changes. If Steem Power is a power up in a game, but people only want to acquire it to sell it for fiat, well what does that do for the fun of the game? It's like WoW has people in China farming for WoW gold, but these players aren't having fun.
The summary, Steem is not fun enough anymore for people to want to not Power Down even when they might not even need the money. Steem speculators aren't playing games or focused on fun.
I get your point. But nobody cares about power in a platform that has no rewards, what makes this thing innovative and power something people want is the money aspect.
I understand what you are saying and agree with pretty much everything but as I said the rewards on this platform have been going downhill for the last couple months and users have left as rewards went down.
You are not going to be able to compete with facebook and the likes just because you have games on the site, most of these sites already have games anyway, the innovation here is the money aspect so it is very important that these rewards are steady.
My point is that money isn't and has never been the only possible reward. Money is what people get when they sell their rewards but Steem Dollars and Steem tokens aren't money.
Facebook isn't competition so the aim shouldn't be to compete with Facebook. Steem doesn't need a billion users to be a success. 50 million users would be a success.
It never was to begin with. If you read the whitepaper there is no mention of SP being some kind of in game currency.
However I agree that the gaming aspect is interesting but this doesn't mean it can't coexist with speculation. Speculation exists in every succesfull business , what do you think stocks are?
SP was never marketed as a currency and Steem was marketed as a social media game.