I guess it shows that you have engaged with the site and not just thrown money at it

I'm not so sure about that, in an ideal world it would be true but if I would have continued to use bid bots I would have been > 60 now and would have more Byteballs in my wallet. If I threw $1000 a post at bots I may have even reached 70.

Given an argument which is more important, SP or Rep I think most Steemians would go for the former. Doing it by Rep tells me that the Byteball chaps are not so well up on current affairs.

This isn't a moan by the way, just the first time I have seen Rep used over SP in terms of being more important.