This is a great idea IMO. Remove visibility of the $ for everybody else, except for the author, until payout. As @rampant said - "That way users upvote feels like it has the same power"

& also -

This way, individuals are voting on the value they obtain from the post, rather than voting on the collective value already attached to it, by the time they have seen the post - A system, which seems to encourage the same names to be trending and reward quantity over quality, with some of the already established "big hitters" , outsourcing content to fill "their" blogs more and more rapidly". Gaming the system" - as many people see it.