RE: Meet Steem's #1 Author!
I read a post asking the users to justify "Why SteemIt isn't a Waste of Time"
SteemIt isn't "sold" as anything. It is a platform where people can earn Steem from "Stake based voting" meaning the more stake you have the more your vote matters. Some users write marketing type pieces which are just their own opinions.
There is no promise of quality content although the topic comes up a lot.
There is no promise of earning.. comes up a lot.
No agreed upon marketing plan.
Anything you read that lead you to believe differently was just someone's opinion. @whatsup
The greater the risk you are willing to take the stronger your faith in your opinion and the greater your resulting profit or loss will be. @dantheman [source]
The money/Steem people are making on Steem is money that is coming from the investors. You are right about that. To make Steem people have to convince other people they should "pay" you for the work you've done.
People abusing the system are destroying the value of the currency they are trying to get their hands on. There need to be at least 51% people looking to spread valuable content for Steem to be worth something.
I agree 100% people who are just "printing money" are destroying its value... and thus steem it still only at $1 and change...
I'm unclear on why you quoted my post here. Is that is response to me?
The vision was, is people shouldn't be able to be bad actors because there are others of the same size that have flags to fix the problems. The system has all of the tools built into it to fix the problems. If you are concerned about the problem... Why not just deal with it.
I quoted your post cause it's a nice thought that seemed fitting as it describe Steem pretty well. People shouldn't feel entitled to anything more than "Stake based voting" reward system, all the rest is someone's opinion pretty much.
Thank you for the clarification.
The money that was mined before Steemit even existed, as most Steem was, isn't from investors, but from those that were 'insiders' and who were able to control the code that permitted mining.
There are investors in Steem, like @snowflake, for example, who did not mine their large stakes in Steem.
Most of the Steem in existence today, isn't doled out as upvotes, as upvotes don't draw from your personal holdings, but rather the rewards pool, was mined before Steemit even existed. The value of your upvote is BASED on your holdings, but does not draw on them.
Steem is not produced by upvotes. Votes merely disburse the Steem that is created otherwise, through a different mechanism, and supplied to the rewards pool.
For this reason, when @mindhunter buys votes from @snowflake, he draws down the rewards pool from which we all are paid rewards, in proportion to the value of the upvotes we receive.
In other words, those scams mean more for the scammers, and less for the rest of the authors. They get more Steem, and we get less, because they draw down the pool and leave less in it for us to split.
I know all of this. You also misunderstood some stuff. If no investors ever bought any Steem then the price of Steem would be 0$. The price of Steem comes from investors.
I could re-start a Bitcoin blockchain from 0, if nobody mine any, no matter if I hold thousands of them, they will be worth 0$.
I know about the reward pool and how it work. I was here in May of 2016 and I've been spending 40 hours a week on Steem ever since...
No investors will buy any Steem unless Steemit will grow, so the platform needs to be able to resist scams.
Satoshi did exactly that, and whoever he/they is, he's got a lot of BTC now. There are no 'dividends' from hodling BTC, and no use case beyond it's original novelty, unlike Steem, which is driven by Steemit.
I know you are one of the old guard. I know you are dedicated to making Steemit become a platform capable of crushing Fakebook. I don't know why you consider my comment to be aimed at ONLY you, as my response to you was intended to extend the information to the wider audience that will read them here.
I just think that making sure that people have the information I included will help them to understand better how Steemit works. Most people, I think, still don't know that the votes they receive don't come out of the upvoters personal holdings, but out of the rewards pool, and that's an important distinction - particularly as vote sellers aren't selling their money, but the common resource we all depend on for rewards.
Good points.
I don't consider myself from the old guard but more like an early adopter.
Excellent post, thank you for this explanation.
Best easy explanation for how the reward pool works yet and very clearly defines how high powered self-voting decreases others' rewards (even if it is only a few cents from each user, the impact across the board is significant). And I think the investor issue is what should be pushing for a solution here, people don't invest in companies where they know abusing the company's infrastructure is tolerated, unless they plan on abusing it as well.
I reckon that those investors worth their salt understand the difference between cashflow now, and potential capital gains, particularly as regards a platform that seems to be so rife with such 'features'.
Cash, as they say, is King.