RE: STEEM: Whales Are Losing Their Power....The System Is Not Broken...Report through 12/31/18 (Year End)
This view is quite lacking, for a multitude of reasons:
A. You look at percentages within the class. It is valid, but if you look at it from an ecosystem perspective, the changes are much more minor, such as Orcas gaining +0.8% in December, and not over 4.1%, in your figures.
B. This is especially important when we look at the annual changes.
There is no mention of the fact Mvests only went up 2.54% over the entire year. And this isn't an old network that reached its potential, this is tiny.
This is important, again, because you're looking at things from a limited in-class perspective only, it's not that Orcas and Dolphins and Minnows grew, while the Whales remained where they were (and honestly, orcas should be grouped with whales, they're not part of the "middle class."), but rather, whales actually left, or downgraded. Quite a lot of them.
This is relevant, because a true "middle class forming" would be the people at the bottom growing in spite of the people up top being there, I'd say. Instead, what we see is cannibalization.
If the whale SP numbers remained constant, and the lower classes grew, that'd be middle-class formation. We're not seeing that. We see that in absolute SP terms, the whales lost 16.13% of their SP. Most of the mvests the other classes picked up is simply that.
This is not Steemit growing. This is not a true middle-class formation, it's just the redistribution of a mostly static amount of SP.
- I still think it might be healthier, yes. It's healthier for there to not be whales, at all, who could decide everyone below them doesn't get to earn money. But it's not the "system working," and helping create a redistribution model. No. What we're seeing is the people at the top leaving, and the system as a whole remaining stagnant. There's a locked amount of value in Steemit, and all that changes is who holds it.
C. To finish from the above, a closed system is how social networks die. At the end of the day, being a social network is the only justification for Steemit's existence. The system is working? Hardly.
Sorry but you lost me with your repeated references to Steemit. While you might bring up some valid points, you negate that by using the term Steemit when you mean Steem.
This is NOT the Steemit blockchain nor is it the Steemit ecosystem. Your repeated use of the name is not only misleading, it is completely untrue. It is also part of the problem. People confuse Steemit with Steem and people who keep espousing that are only fostering it.
Steemit is a private company that holders of STEEM have no financial stake in (unless one is a stockholder). It is also an application on this blockchain that is an interface. Of course there are others such as busy.org which this post was written on.
As for the reply itself:
Orcas (I presume you just typed Whales on accident) had 19.30% of all the SP as compared to the rest of the ecosystem at the end of November. It had 20.10% of it at the end of December....that is over a 4% increase. As such, that is an ecosystem wide comparison. If you want to look at the .8% increase within the category, it is useful information but completely backwards from what you wrote.
There are two points here. Yes the total MVests of the Whales decreased mostly because of Steemit (the company so proper use of the name here) selling STEEM to pay its employees. That said, the percentage of SP held in the Whale category decrease even in months that the MVest increased. This means they grew at a slower rate as compared to the rest of the ecosystem. This is logical since accounts like @steemit are not active on the platform. This is true of most of the Whales, they do not share much in the reward pool.
B1: What percentage would you like? The inflation rate is set at about 8.5% (give or take a few right now) total. SP (Mvests) is investing in the platform. People cash their STEEM out for a variety of reasons. We know there is a ton of STEEM held on the exchanges. I know a couple people who do not hold STEEM in SP for probably the same reasons. Also, not all STEEM holders are going to be active on the platform. Regardless on the view of bidbots, a lot of users of them keep liquid STEEM on hand to buy votes. The bots also keep STEEM liquid to send out for promotions 2-3 times a day. I am sure there are other reason people have for not powering up. Personally, I power up all I can but to each their own.
Someone who joins and buys in as a minnow with 500 SP, are they not part of the system? Should that 500 SP be discounted from the "official" numbers. If that came from a Whale, does that weaken the system? Does anyone believe that early investors are going to hold their stake forever?
If you take a look at the number of users in each account, you will see that the Orcas, Dolphins, and Minnows all grew in number. Isn't that the goal of the system over the long term? Again, you can complain it isn't moving fast enough but it is moving. Certainly, the fact we have sign up problems is still a challenge; hopefully it is changing.
So I disagree. The system is working. Month in, month out it is the same story. The numbers for each class keeps growing while the select few at the top get weaker. That is how it works in cryptocurrency. You do not see a currency open up with 1M wallets holding it.
Come back in 12 months and I can guarantee you the numbers will have shifted again along the same trend. The only question is the pace of it.
I 100% meant Steemit each time I used the term. I'm referring not to Steemit Inc., but the blockchain we're on.
And the reason "Steem" is the misleading is exactly what you mentioned, people can hold Steem elsewhere. This is only about SP. SP is equivalent to the Steemit value, as it is currently held.
Selling Steem is definitely part of the system. But as a whole, when people are selling more than they are buying, especially the big players, it shows a lack of belief in the ecosystem. So yes, we're disagreeing on what the numbers are saying. If someone comes in and buys 500 SP, that's great. It doesn't really matter where it came from.
Except, the whales are disappearing. They're making a vote of no-confidence. And the rate of new accounts coming, and how fast they're growing? I disagree that it's a good one.
(And yes, I mistyped Whales by accident early on. Fixed!)