RE: Where does all the money come from on steemit? How long can it continue?
Thank you for this article @bycoleman. I read it over and over just so I can really understand what you are trying to say. I checked you out and I see you are a newbie to this platform as I am. I joined in December 2017. Lately I have been having problems with posting or commenting or replying because I get feedback that I have exceeded my bandwidth and that I have to wait or power up before I can post. Actually I have not posted any articles or blogs for the last 6 days and all I did was just comment and reply to some posts that I liked. My daughter who is in Steemit told me that this is like running out of ink when you write a lot. You either have to buy a new pen or wait until you recharge. But that's just my point. I haven't been writing a lot.
After reading your article I think I may have found the answer to this. You said this platform needs more power ups to sustain and I think I have found a correlation to your article and what's happening to me. I didn't have any problems with bandwidths when I started out and I have posted a lot since December. But now this problem has surfaced. Could it be that Steemit has now evolved in a way that users can only post if they power up? If you check my wallet, I only have 16 SP but 86 SBD. Clearly they are not making money from me, come to think of it. So they are kind of "encouraging" me to buy more SP so I can steem on uninterrupted.
I checked your wallet as you suggested and how much you invested in SP. That's a lot so I don't think you will have any problems with bandwidths. So there goes the anwer to your question,"Where does the money come from?" It will eventually come, not only from new users but also from existing ones who will now have to power up (pay) in order to be able to post. Then it isn't free after all.
Now I need your comment on this as well because although we are both newbies, you definitely know more about than I do.
This is interesting because I have a big group (400 people) that I help out daily and some of them are showing bandwith issues lately. I told them to power up their SBD to steem power and guess what, their problems went away quickly. Also most of the one that has trouble are the new ones that just signed up this month and December.
Not to mention, the people that has the issue tried cashing out their sbd.
gems --- this is a very good response! Thank you.
You are correct -- either new users or any user that needs or wants to power up to keep on posting or earn more revenue. The power up system is truly genius. But will steemers that do not get enough revenue from creating content and curating continue to create and curate when it cost them?
If the less wealthy are eventually filtered out due to this, then steemit looses a precious part of itself.
Keep on thinking and posting -- I really love thoughtful discussion as I believe most of us do!
I agree. Steemit needs the mass or the lower wealth steemians in order to survive. If we have the rich just circle jerking or voting themselves...the low wealth steemins will leave. If you think as an investor, would you want to invest on a site that has good quality content but does not have good traffic of readers?
For example, think of maybe reddit versus instagram or facebook. I would rather invest on FB or IG because traffic wise, there are more in those sites.
If the high wealth dont share their votes on the low wealth..most likely the mass (low wealth) will leave.
You got it!
Let's hope there is a better solution in mind by the developers.