RE: It's time to consider your STEEM as a longer term investment instead of something that you earn and spend today.
I notice you put voting bots in your graphic. How are your feelings towards those? I've always had a pretty clear vision: Voting bots are bad and its users are taking away money from serious content creators, while lining the pockets of the rich. There are plenty of people who share this vision, though I see so many using them these days. I don't want to consider it, but if you take all the emotion out of it and just consider every action on Steemit as an investment in your own future, I understand using them.
How do you feel about them? Would you ever consider using them? What are your thoughts on people using them?
(I know this is a heavy subject for many, but on a steem-is-an-investment-article, I feel the question is kind of relevant here.)
I think bots give investors that don't want to blog or curate a tool to make ROI (return on investment) and a reason to buy STEEM. It also locks up SP so it can't be sold on the market and that's good for the STEEM price. It also gives users that want to a tool to promote their content. (You don't make money using a bot even though the payout might be high).
It's a good question though. I would like to ask you one in return.
What do you think what would happen if the voting bots could be banned and these investors were returned their delegated STEEM?
Oh boy, you make good points here! Taking emotion out of it, you make perfect sense.
In an ideal world, they would start to curate and look for the best content to upvote. We don't live in an ideal world though, so they would probably do one of the other two... 1 would be bad for Steem price and 2 would basically not be a big improvement on how things are now.
Do you think you would start using voting bots if your predictions came to be true and Steem will get harder and harder to come by?
For my own content no, you lose money using the bots even though the payouts are high. (you pay more than you receive).
The @Smartsteem bot seems to one of the few with a + ROI right now.
It mostly felt like gambling to me. I'm not sure what bots are around these days.