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I'd also like to know this - I had a similar experience signing up the other day... it wouldn't call it a cake-walk but I was able to apply in a few minutes and was approved a within a few hours. Ok maybe it was a cake-walk

There's got to be something to this...some sort of catch...

Like I said they must set them up and get them running with higher reputation and Steem Power.

Ok so from some searching, reading around comments and checking out the referenced @someguy123's anon method (https://anon.steem.network/), I'm inferring/distilling two things:

1.) Given that you can only have one account for free: If you want multiple accounts you have to pay your own way in, via the creation fee in steem, and set it up directly via a script to the blockchain, bypassing the approval queue (?)*

2.) The wait time for account approval appears to be directly related to traffic/requests (?)* - so in our case, we must have signed up on a slow day... like going to the DMV and not having to wait on line

I don't think rep or power come into play*, The service just does the legwork for you, getting you up and running with no email, no phone number, and no wait, for a small fee

Fellow Steemians, does this sound right?

*disclaimer I'm new here and I don't know what I don't know (you know?)