Can't continue extending the thread so a followup to your last message:
What's even worse is, investors are not informed upfront that, in fact, a portion of their investment is going to be donated to content creators, and they will only get that money back if more new investors join the platform.
So who do you propose act as the arbiter of when someone is 'well informed' enough to invest? Would you argue for a 'platform literacy test' before purchasing Steem from the platform?
It largely depends on how those at the top of the pyramid decide to cash out
Precisely my point. I contend that the vast majority have and will remain vested in the platform.
They may slowly sell over the years,
They must necessarily.
or power down and accumulate the tokens for a while then suddenly dump to the market.
What would be the 'rational actor' mentality that defines behaving in this way? Why would you effectively strangle your golden goose after it lays enough eggs to 'cash out'?
Either way, we're arguing time frames here - the mechanics stay the same.
We're arguing both time frames AND mechanics. I wholly disagree that your analysis calculates for the content creation variable OR the variable of 'more perfect information' available to know precisely how much liquid Steem could be sold at any point in time +7.01 days.
I definitely appreciate the dialogue... thank you for the civility.
Everyone should decide for themselves. But the information required to make a decision should be clear and accessible. Steem's mechanics are convoluted, the whitepaper is long and obfuscated and the only message they are pushing is along the lines of "everyone gets free money for everything", as if the platform was some magic money generating machine.
People are incentivized to lock down their investment for 2 years without being informed that they are actually paying earlier investors and content creators, and new investors with ever greater investments are required in the future if they ever want to see their money again. It only takes one sentence to provide this information, yet it is nowhere to be found.
It may even be so for a while. But eventually every investor will want to cash out their investment and their return on it, which must be covered by an increasing number of people lured into investing. But then again, the largest stake holders are powering down as we speak.
When they can't convince any more people to invest, the money stops flowing in and the market price starts going down. If at that point the top stake holders have enough accumulated liquid tokens, they might be better off dumping it all at once and let the market burn before the demand and price drop further.
If the top stake holders continue accumulating liquid tokens, that information will become increasingly meaningless. And even if they don't, that variable is only part of the story. In a scheme like this, in order to decide whether it's worth investing, you would have to know how much more money people are willing to invest in the next 2 years. Which in turn, among other things depends on how succesful steem is at marketing.
My point is, that information alone doesn't get you much.
To me, the mechanics and the outcome seem clear. The time frame I'm not sure about. But one thing is certain: the longer it goes on, the more people will lose their money to the ones at the top of the pyramid.