The Great Steemit Debate: Tone Vays vs. Jeff Berwick "Ponzi Scheme or Paradigm Shift?"
When I first arrived on Steemit about two weeks and $50,000 ago, I was shocked at what I had stumbled upon.
I posted about my success on the site and countless people called it a scam.
I responded, "Usually a scam is where you lose money, not make money."
Those who replied had no response to this. Many would just repeat, "This is a scam and you are a scammer!"
Confused, I began to look into these allegations of Steemit being a scam... and perhaps the worst designed scam of all time, since all it does is give money to people who produce good content.
All roads seemed to lead to one man: Tone Vays. When I pushed the people alleging Steemit was a "scam" or a "ponzi scheme" enough they eventually would retort, "Just listen to what Tone Vays says."
Tone is actually a friend of mine. He's been on my show Anarchast twice and spoke at the last two Anarchapulco (http://anarchapulco.com) events.
So, getting a hold of him wasn't a problem and he agreed to a debate/conversation on Steem and Steemit.
And, you can see the debate exclusively here on Steemit (until the end of the upvoting period the video is unlisted on Youtube):
We got into every aspect of Steemit from the technical details to the big picture of how it could be a paradigm shift in how social media is done online.
You may be surprised to see how it turns out!
As a note, many anti-Steem people will be down voting the video and posting negative comments on Youtube once it goes live. You, as a Steemer, get the opportunity to give it the "thumbs up" and post positive comments before the troll brigade arrives.
If you do enjoy our debate, please make sure to give it a like on Youtube... and, as always, follow me here on Steemit for more exclusive content to come.
I don't know why anyone listens to this guy.
He's overly emotional and his rants are pretty close to incoherent. Guys like him give Bitcoin a bad name and I'm glad he's not interested in Steem.
you forgot ARROGANT to the fucking extreme.
It comes from his false sense of self-worth his "six figure wall st position" gave him.
The are many thousands of guys like him. Not hard to find.
"six figures"? Really? Oh god, that's funny. My wife has a "seven figure" oil investment, but she doesn't presume to think she's a genius because of it.
Haha! Yeah! Because six figure ain't nothing. I blow six figures on ice cream every month!
Seven Figs? Pffff...lolcatz
Compare that to trillions bruh /s
what makes a person humble? I think people that are arrogant have forgotten what god simply wants of us all to be like -its to be kind to others.. you can't be kind when your being arrogant. The two are mutually exclusive =)
Good catch then... ;)
To be fair, wall street (at least post 90s) is extremely selective in the people they hire, at least for front office or quantitative jobs. So this isn't 100% accurate.
I can point that finger at back at you: what qualifies you to assert someone has a "false sense of self-worth".
Didn't seem arrogant to me, seemed very reasoned and reasonable. But to each their own.
That is exactly what I thought. Emotional, incoherent, and as the other guy writes. He seems pretty arrogant.
Makes the points he actualy have, go away into a dark corner.
Reminds me of Mark T. Williams, the BU professor that bet Bitcoin would trade below $10 by the end of '14 and tried to make a name for himself by being critical of it.
There's now a Wikipedia entry for him where his most noteworthy achievement was being critical of Bitcoin :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_T._Williams
Never heard of that guy before. But I did chuckle a little, while reading. ^,.,^
He has a point though. Not quite sure what was incoherent. No offense but this smells like cognitive dissonance.
Value in this context is relative i.e (based on similar works)
If you went on a freelancer site (e.g. fiverr) for example, you'll find that an article of DollarVigilante's quality is worth about $20.
You can smell it all you want. But with the comments I usually see you write, I'm not going to take this as anything but a bad attempt at trolling like always.
Whatever. Call it trolling. I've never trolled and have always responded with evidence.
If you're not able to rebut (which clearly you're not), admit it to yourself, it'll be better for your mental health, than throwing shit at me to make yourself feel better, while you're not improving.
Rebut what? All you did was say "you're wrong, because I say so" Not gonna waste my time. :D
Well, if you ain't trying to troll, then you're obviously a sad existence of a human being. You're more into provoking people, than actually having an intellectual conversation. - And as I did try that with you before, where I explained why I'm gonna take your username serious, and see you as nothing but satire. Then yeah, enjoy the failed attempt at troling, @satire. ^_^
If he put the same energy into writing for steemit as he did bashing Dan and the entire platform, he probably could afford a better hairpiece
priceless!!!
I'm glad you appreciated it :) Thought a little poking of fun was in order.
You noticed that too?
Funny pic, but ive seen very very very well written articles on this platform with 20-50 upvotes that were barely over a dollar in value. The "whales" are choosing very specific people to empower.
@dollarvigilante covered this in one of his most recent podcasts. Similar to the music industry, there are some great musicians out there that receive very little money for the work they do. Same is true with authors. But if you keep working as hard as you can, you're bound to get noticed :)
Just because an article is well written doesn't necessarily mean it will make a lot of money. Consistent hard work is rewarded in the long term. The whales are choosing people to empower that they feel have the best future for steemit in mind.
I could write the most heartfelt thoughtful dental articles (as someone has) and it may receive a few dollars. My posts have not consistently made a lot of money, but I strive to work even harder instead of giving up and claiming the whales don't like me.
Getting deep into the comment section is one of the best ways new people can establish themselves. Most likely you won't have anyone following you for your second post unless your #introduceyourself is really well done. Taking time to establish yourself is very important.
ok
VERY excellent reply!
This is a GREAT and valuable video to the Steemit Community!
There are many reasons for this but number one is because we have a relatively renowned naysayer and hater of Steemit arguing his point.
Based on his points I find it hard to believe that there are man people who agree with this hater. None of them really seem legit at all despite his knowledge of blockchains and cryptocurrencies.
For example: One of his main points is that only 10% of steem tokens are being traded and the rest is being held in SP.
As far as I can conclude this is part of the reason why Steemit is legit. If everyone including the Whales has their value in SP this means there is long term investment. EVERYONE in Steemit is in a long term investment just based on the platform it self. No one including big value accounts can just cash out all their SP and be gone.
The next reason why it seems so obvious that Steemit is legit and not a scam is that it COSTS nothing to get involved and you can actually make money. There are very few people if any who can attest to this better than Jeff (Dollar Vigalante) as he has made over 30,000 just by posting articles and as he very clearly points out he tried cashing it out into bitcoin and it worked.....So even if all of the sudden the big players were to start to cash out everything and the value of steel began to drop you could still cash out a nice chunk of change (obviously not all) of which cost nothing to begin with.
I have done a lot of research on Steemit and while it is not a perfect platform I have seen nothing with more potential than Steemit to really create a revolutionary and very profitable community based on freedom.
So I could go on and on as to WHY Steemit is awesome but this video just seems to prove it. I have already written an article as to why I feel Steemit is REVOLUTIONARY and I don't see anything here to make me think differently.
Grateful to be here with all you Stemians!!!
The issue is that without buying STEEM POWER for BTC there wont be rewards that Jeff is getting. If we all hope just to get rewards out of posting or curating there wont be STEEMIT. Someone needs to invest!
And they will invest in order to do what? Get your attention...or leverage their sp to pay people who work hard to help them on steemit.
Not judging your opinion: If an investor didn't buy STEEM on an exchange , the price of STEEM could be near ZERO. What rewards would people get by writing posts?? Tokens with promised value? Do you believe it could attract new users to the platform? IMO an investor here is a foundation of very promising social network based on (hopefully) decentralised blockchain.
Everyone is investing by using their valuable time here on the platform.
FB has made BILLIONS off our content as will Steemit. Steemit however is paying people a fair value for their content.
Even making .01 cents per post is a LOT more than FB does.
If people use and value this platform there WILL be money to compensate people.
New, contributing, reading, watching, learning and waiting to see as the future unfolds.
Wait vays or berwick? Maybe both? Regardless Jeff keeps bringing in great stuff to the platform. Healthy comment sections
Vays.
Jeff isn't critical of steemit.
He's giving it the chance it deserves.
He just have a personal problem with @dan, thats it. Dont listen to this no sayer.
funny
its simple: most people are emotional. Mainly same is attracted by same, so most people are attracted by emotional people....
Why do people assume it's one cryptocurrency to rule them all. Steem, BTC, ETC, bitshares can all live a great life together sat at the family table.
I appreciate the need to create an Us vs Them approach to posts, it's creates huge traction and curative awards. Everyone loves someone l/thing to hate.
Can we all move forward now and quit these types of posts?
Completely agree, many of these cryptocurrencies have much to offer and with different focuses, with each having the possibility to specialize within their focus. One has a blockchain that excels with cloudstorage, another as a payment transaction network, another with security....so once they catch on many cryptos will have different focuses and provide very relevant service platforms.
Where do you see this need? People call it a scam, Jeff finds it interesting, and takes up the subject. - Gotz nuthin to do with ze moneyz. (Otherwise he wouldn't throw them straight back into steem power...)
Bullshit, it's got evertlything to do with the money. How I made $10k on a post, how I made $5k on a post telling people I made $10k on a post, repeat until utterly bored.
Nothing against OP, the clue is in his name. Let's see him fade in to the background once there is a new celeb joining steemit.com and dominating those curating rewards.
Steemit isn't exactly at the bleeding edge of things as long as this cycle continues.
Lulz. When something new and really interesting shows up at your doorstep, most people will talk about it for a while. And there's only so much you can put in a headline, as well as when you have an audience that usualy go to you for investment advice, you'll use the subject at hand.
@kryptonite
They are telling people how much they've made mainly for proof as everyone is curious about this platform being real so, they are simple showing that it's real is all! Let's see you generate that amount of money and stay quiet :)
Being able to discuss steem critically & honestly is what will make steem succeed. Jeff is courageous & honest & intelligent. There are issues with steem whether you can admit that or not. If a few whales control the entire ecosystem, it's a problem. If the dollar value isn't accurate that needs to be fixed. Is steem a real blockchain or not. I've understood every cryptocoin I've examined. Steem doesn't seem to add up for me just yet. Let's hash this out & get some clarity.
Agreed, but Tone seemed a bit more coherent than I have seen in some of his other videos.
Wonderful interview, I enjoyed watching it very much.
One thing I don't think was mentioned was how the much the wealth gets redistributed from the voting system. I don't see it as just a 90% proof of stake system with so much new value getting created through the votes. From my part, my biggest concern at this point is how well the system can support possible increased growth in posting, it seems like it could become very computer resource intensive.
Graphene tech can handle well over reddits 225 tx per second. In fact it has already been tested to support upwards of 3000tx/sec which is over 10x the number of posts per second reddit has.
Additionally, if better witness equipment is used we are looking at far higher tx volume support. And by that i mean graphene chains can hypothetically handle 100s of thousanda of tx per second at scale. In short it is the fastest and most robust blockchain in existence today.
Nice! Thanks for the information.
i think he was rather balanced. Negative, yes, but I don't really see the arrogance.
Well said.
dubloon135
Beyond incoherent....
Jeff Berwick isnt technical at all.. he's just a guy who knows guys who are technical . Thats why I don't take anything he sais serious..
agreed
Honestly his talk at Anarchapulco (Jeff Berwick's event) this Feb was pretty good, going over the history of the bitcoin price and talking about the various factors in the upward/downward swings.
Seems to prey on those with beliefs in conspiracy theories
Great discussion. It is always entertaining to watch a civil debate! My only qualm is that Tone didn't sound like he had done enough homework on Steem to understand how it works by some of the comments he made.
Tone Vays = old ways
If anybody checks out the profiles of the whales, you can see where they're powering down to.
"smooth" has opened a buttload of other accounts: smooth-e, smooth-a... etc, they'll never post from these profiles, they'll just keep the account open for the interest. But this will make it APPEAR the've powered down.
Their main profile will show less power. That's all.
it all ends up being sold on bittrex
I opened every letter of the alphabet to keep any of them from being grabbed by a squatter (I did this after making a largeish transfer to smooth-e and then having a quick moment of panic when I realized I wasn't sure if I had created it or if I had stopped at smooth-d). The first few were for organizational and trading purposes. Most are totally unused. None of these accounts have anything to do with interest (I earn the same whether it is one account or ten) or powering down or posting.
did you grab i-m-smooth too? :)
also should get really-smooth, real-smooth and the-real-smooth
Ha.... it's you. Four words... and you got my money. Good on you! I watch your YouTube channel most days even though I think you're slightly nutty (in a way that I like though). -swapster- is my YT name.
Hey you rhymed! ;P
Great interview Jeff.
I think a point of confusion might have been around the proof of stake(PoS) aspect of mining. I believe Tone may be thinking that Steem's PoS is like traditional "stake mining" as you find in other PoS coins. Steem is actually a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS).
In traditional "stake mining" your mining rewards are based on the amount of stake you hold. So the larger stake holders(insiders) would earn more then anyone else. This seemed to be a primary point of concern for him. However, in DPoS the amount of stake you hold simply determines the weight of your vote for who you think should receive the mining rewards. (Top 20 Witnesses in this case) Having a large stake doesn't actually pay you anything. All SP holders are inflated at the exact same % rate and as you stated, the Steem supply is 100% inflated each year such that the value of your SP remains the same.
Lol..i was reading this without looking at the author. It is so perfectly stated that i was like "wow he this guy understands. "
Then i see it is you xeldal. Now it makes perfect sense. :D
Friend, thanks for sharing this comment. It clarified so much for me. You are awesome.
I have to say he lost me when he started to question if it's a blockchain or not. Has this guy actually done the lowest level of due diligence about something he is publicly criticizing? Well not my business at this point ;-)
It's blockchain, it's just not decentralised.
Actually that is not entirely correct either. It is meant to become less centralized over time because dan learned from his experiences that early on it is actually beneficial for a chain to start out a bit more centralized in ownership and slowly give that control to the communiver time.
It seems to me that Tone is more careful with statements lately.
especially here, he knows he's talking directly to people who are not his friends.
He probably actually respects Jeff ;)
absolutely, he gets to go to Acapulco every year.
Pretty sure Jeff is flipping that bill :)
lulz
Great debate, but Steemit is a great platform with room to grow; 60k users to just 1 million is nearly 17x.
Let the whales flash some big numbers to bring the talent in and grow the base.
Some of the whales don't care much about spreading upvotes equitably.
If they'd upvote more comments, shoot a couple hundred at more people, especially the ones with lots of posts and little attention, THOSE users would be the best way to bring in more people.
They'd tell their friends, they're friends will join once the see payout.
Not sure if the founders want steem to grow that quick. They're whales too.
Seems they'd be upvoting more actively if they cared to grow.
Could growing too much too fast devalue their stash? Probably.
That might explain it.
If the whales upvote, just for upvotings sake. - We might as well just call it Facebook.
You won't feel the same way when 0r if you ever become a whale - The more m0ney you have, the easier it is to make m0ney :)
Increasing the size of the platform does not devalue anyone's stash that is ridiculous. It is obvious to everyone that the way to make Steem/it successful is to grow the community. You could perhaps make an argument, as referenced in the video, that the most successful bloggers such as Jeff, if short-sighted, might want to reduce growth so they can continue to earn the very high early-adopter rewards they are getting now, but none of the whales with possible the exception of Dan fall in that category, nor do Jeff or most other successful bloggers appear to be that short-sighted.
He made all these allegations without even having an idea as to what Steemit is. Why not try it for himself before his bashed the system?
He is way too opinionated! If he read the whitepaper he would know that you can take the money out if he wished.
It's a lot of "I think" and a lot less of "I know."
Instead of talking and speculating about the platform, why doesn't he give it a shot himself?
@dollarvigilante is so much more intelligent in his arguments than Tone Vays
Also you can look at the wealth and how it is redistributed among others and it is shifting away from work.
Tone Vays doesn't know anything he is talking about. I couldn't stop laughing at how little he understands. While he may be deeper into cryptocurrency than I, I feel I know far more about it than he does.
I had trouble making it through his entire rant against steemit.
HAHAHAHAHAH EXACTLY!
Whats even funnier is that he DID read the white paper but once it got to the point where it said Dan was involved it stopped and just hated it.
Which PROVES his perspective is pretty much worthless as he is just stuck in an emotional judgment!
That's not true. Dan's name is on the first page and Tone has read a lot more of the white paper (he even posted some marked-up pages on his Twitter feed). I do agree that his bias against Dan probably colored his judgement in evaluating it, and that is not a good way to reach a well-reasoned conclusion about anything.
He's rather irrational in his criticisms.
He comes up with 1000s of reasons why each and ever crypto is a scam... other than BTC.
He was in favor of DASH until he found out Evan Duffield has the majority.
For some reason in Vays mind, that means Evan is a scam artist. ??
Yes he did read the whitepaper, but to really learn how the system works (The Steem, Steem Dollars and Steem Power really confused me as well) you need to immerse yourself in the platform. Even though he believes steemit to be some sort of long con, if he took the time to make a profile and play out some of his flawed guesses and actually educate himself by doing, he could then be far more qualified to speak to others.
The whitepaper does get quite technical, but at 44 pages, it covers far more than most other cryptocoins do.
I don't think anyone can dispute that there are some great intelligent minds that put a lot of man hours into formulating how steemit should work.
If @ned and @dan were to be trying to "scam" users out of money, I believe they could have done so in a much simpler way.
I don't know much about the reason POS is so much more represented than POW, but to be a hybrid system, it does not need to be 50% of each as he seemed to point to.
For the knowledge that Tone Vays has, I would have expected a more concrete fact based discussion, but instead found someone with deep seeded distrust trying to convince himself that because he didn't like someone's previous work and found the system confusing, that people should immediately throw up a caution flag and think this must be a trick.
Obviously those with larger platforms will receive so generosity from the whales, since the value of their steem power is dependent on quality writers and passionate people.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but sometimes those opinions seem so foolish that they are laughable.
Precisely @smooth
I'll be up voting this @dollarvigilante because I believe In what @dan and @ned built here with #steemit That's why I have converted some of my hard earned money into this platform.
Keep up the good work Jeff