Your steem wealth - show or hide?
We all love the transparency brought to us by blockchain. It gives us trust.
In steemit you can see steem, steem power and SBD looking into their wallet. Conveniently all of that is also translated into a corresponding USD amount. Also all transactions are shown - transfers from and to exchanges.
Great transparency- everybody knows immediately how commited someone is to the steemit community. Even reports are done on top of these data (who are most invested accounts? who is recieving or sending most amount to an exchange? Who is powering down etc). All good things which can be used to the benefit of the steem community.
But lets look at the costs of this transparency for a moment?
Does the knowledge of the wealth of someone effects on how many upvotes one gets?
Do circles of whales are created who upvote themselves as it gibe them the most incentives?
For people who know themselves also offline - is this a problem knowing the gains someone makes in steem? Envy?
What does it mean for cultures being very conservative in showing their wealth?
At the end someone might start to wonder if there is a way to hide their wealth here in steem. For me it seems that is very real and I habe the feeling that whales and influential persons in the steem community operate with several accounts.
Is this a problem? I am not sure if it is a big one but it is for sure not ideal for the eco system.
What are your thoughts on this?
How are you handling this for yourself? Are you operating multiple account (you don‘t need to mention them if you like it to be anonymous)?
I would really love to here the thought process of some orca/whales here!
I think rich users get a lot of upvotes and attention anyway or just because of that. It is like having successful companies, these also get the most and highest investments. People always like to jump on moving trains
I don't consider myself as an orca/whale or even dolphin - But I know from a few ones that they operate multiple accounts for security reasons, not because they want to hide something.
Hacking one account with 300k SP is probably easier than hacking 10 Accounts with 30k SP - Especially if only one account is used on a daily basis and the others are just auto-following the main accounts vote. (F.e. @famunger posts and votes, @famunger2, @famunger3, etc. ... just vote the exact same things with the same VP as @famunger does.) Since the keys of the other accounts are not used on a regular basis, hackers will have a really hard time getting those ;)
Hiding something is in general a little contrary to what many see as the benefit of a blockchain I guess. Plus hiding such information would also make it way harder to discover abuse.
For sure since people hope to get the whale's attention and upvotes themselves
Well, those circles probably would be way worse if it wasn't transparent and they could operate without knowledge.
From the meetups I have been to so far, I don't see that as a big problem. Whales were talking to minnows on the same level. But when there is money there always will be envy closeby, true ;)
One the one hand it makes corruption possible way easier I suppose - on the other hand it can fight envy a little bit. But if you are wealthy and are not cocky but helpful I think you will fight envy more effective.
Great comment like always. Very interesting to read your opinion.
I don't see much of a problem with steemit community itself but more in the direction @s3rg3 is mentioning. Old friends you want to talk about steem immediately see how much you are invested. I mean you are not sharing your bank statements and investment portfolio with your friends regularly or do you?
Great comment @theaustrianguy!
That comment about security is definitely true. That how everybody should spread their crypto portfolio in general as well. Keep it safe.
This I think is a good point as well. I notice now at least bad/suspicious behaviour is addressed and can easily be checked and verified. It keeps more people in line (and gaming harder but even more sophisticated on the other hand as well).
I agree that this is probably true, but it's also a very silly behavior, because tens if not hundreds of people are upvoting those posts. After a while, people don't even pay attention to those upvotes anymore. If you want to get the attention of a whale, leave a comment that is worthy of attention, I'd say. Upvotes don't stand out at that level.
Very good answer! Without the transparency, the game can be rigged much easier.
That is true - transparency helps preventing or at least detecting "unfair" (whoever defines that) game.
I love the fact it's all out in the open as at least you can see those whales, the circles they swim in and spot bad behaviors. Sadly, bad behavior is innevitable. Wealth = power = corruption in any system setup.
I like the fridge pic, that's what I call a proper cold wallet.
I think openness is a good thing. But too much openness can lead to jealousy and oportunistic behavior by only giving an upvote if the other person can also give away enough.
I hope that people find interaction more important and reading blog posts.
I myself am not very big value so I have not thought about alternative accounts. Maybe I should do that.
The transparency does pose some issues. I recently read a post by a whale @fyrstikken, mostly focused on the safety part of people knowing how much money you have, an issue that will just become bigger the higher the Steem price goes. Here's a link :
https://steemit.com/serious-security/@fyrstikken/the-joy-of-flashing-the-steem-account-value
In my own opinion I think it's hard to hide the wealth on a platform that is built on transparency. Sure you can make other accounts and hide money there, but then you can't really use it for posting, so the money will kind of sit there, unless of course you delegate, that could be an option.
If a mechanism was developed where you can't see the amount in someone's Wallet that wouldn't stop people from figuring it out by counting backwards when you vote.
I've been on steemit just a short while, and I think it's mostly pay-to-win.
Big accounts getting bigger, small accounts stay small.
So yes, there's envy when you see a whale's wallet, but mostly a sense of disappointment knowing you will not be able to catch up.
You don't need to look up to the whales for the circles who upvote each other. The ROI of upvote abuse is the same on each level.
The advantage of small scale abuse is that those guys can operate under the radar and/or tolerated by the community. The problem is if you sum up all the small scale abuse, it might amount to whale level abuse. No one looks at this problem on Steemit.
This could indeed be a problem and personally, I'd prefer the income and account total to be private, but at the same time, I don't have much of an income at the moment.
I also see that the society is going to a direction of becoming more transparent. So, I don't think I have any other choice but accepting the Steemit standard.
Even if you operate with multiple accounts, you need a "brand" to make an income. And once the income flows through a single account, all the transactions, hence past income, is documented and you can't hide it anymore by splitting it into different accounts.
Very good post and questions. Similar questions made me think as well in the beginning. But now, I don't care that much about it to be honest.
Yes it is the save jone ..I like your thinking ..Really outstanding. Knowledge
I do not see a problem in transparency. poverte people who pour big money, do not cause me envy. I perfectly understand that these people have invested money in this platform for making money in the curatorship.
Your thoughts are very similar to mine. Although I am not a whale or anywhere near there, my 2 cents are these:
Hiding wealth does not solve things I guess. People will find ways to track wealth. I also kind of like the transparency because bad and suspicious behaviour will get spotted eventually.
This doesn't cover all the points you mention, I know, but these are the points that popped in my head first :-)
Sounds like pyramid scheme ;)