I’m a new user on Steemit and I had a problem with my account name so I decided to buy another Steemit account using AnonSteem. The AnonSteem account differs from the free account I received from Steemit in some interesting ways.

The account that I signed up for on Steemit has username “@smarmy” and is worth about $0.22 even though it has 15 Steem Power (SP). 0.1 SP belongs to me and 14.9 SP is delegated to me. @smarmy’s SP is equivalent to 204 Vests.

The account that I bought through AnonSteem is called “@vividessor” and is worth $6.29 but has only 3 SP. I payed AnonSteem 0.1 LiteCoin (LTC) for the account (0.1 LTC = 17 USD at the time of purchase). Given that the value of the account that they gave me was about 6 USD and I can recover it, my total cost for the account was about $11. However, the @vividessor account’s voting weight is much diminished relative to the @smarmy account even though the 3 SP are worth 6,125 Vests.

Username	Source	SP	Account Value	Vests
@smarmy	Steemit	0.1+14.9	$0.22	204
@vividessor	AnonSteem	3	$6.29	6,125

Vests are good because their current value increases relative to Steem at a rate of about 2.25% per year (https://steemit.com/steemdev/@jesta/historical-rates-for-vests-and-steem). Currently, 1 Steem ($2.14) will buy about 2041 vests. The Vests aren’t doubling every year relative to Steem like they were in 2016 (https://steemit.com/interest/@sigmajin/understanding-the-steem-economic-system-vests-sbd-steem-dilution-interest-and-all-those-crazy-things). However, the value of STEEM in USD has gone from $0.16 to $6.20 between January 4, 2017 and January 4, 2018 (https://www.coingecko.com) but is very volatile and is currently in a bear market.

The bad thing about my account bought from AnonSteem is that it will cost me about $25 US to give @vividessor enough Steem Power to have the same voting weight as @smarmy. So, it will cost me a grand total of about $36 US to get the same Steem Power as a free account from Steemit (although the money is recoverable if I decide to power down and cash out). I calculate this amount by considering: $17 to AnonSteem for account creation - $6.29 value of the account created + $25 for enough Steem Power to bring the account to 15 SP. (However, if I think the value of Steem is going down and I wait to purchase the Steem Power, it will cost me much less in USD. The price of 12 Steem has fallen by $3 to $22 US since yesterday).

As you can see, there are some interesting differences between the accounts. I haven’t found much documentation on what exactly you get from AnonSteem when you buy an account so I thought this would be helpful to people considering it. I also had a problem getting the account (a topic for another blog post maybe) and AnonSteem fixed things for me within 24 hours after I sent an email to the address that they provide. I’m glad I was able to get another account and claim my name!

As of this writing (3/16/2018), I have not gained or lost any significant Steem in my accounts so they can both be accessed for comparison on steemd.com.