RE: Was the Launch of Steem a Scam or the Only Legal Way? - Thoughts on Steem by Charlie Shrem a Week Later
I have been getting lots of incoherant arguments about Steem also from various people. The more I dig into their arguments with them the more they come down to 'feelings' instead of 'thinking'. Most come down to ad hominmem arguments which, even if they were completely as argued, would still be irrelevant and not useful.
So far I have found Steem to operate, more or less, exactly as the whitepaper represents and it is a far superior content distribution platform to Seeking Alpha, where I am a gold standard contributor, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and so many others.
I am really at a loss for why people make the Steem is a scam argument but then I am a Steem noob and have not thoroughly researched it yet. But at least based on reading the whitepaper and the practical experience I have gained with it I do not find it to be a scam.
You and I are still very new and I'm also learning. We've both made a nice sum of SBD and SP writing here, and I agree thats because we are both good content writers and popular figures. However you and I have personally gone out in the past week and signed tons of people up to Steem, this is the point! We are not only being paid for our content, we are being paid to help further Steem.
I'm staying open minded and objective right now.
The only thing which is a pity is that they seem not to believe too much in the current valuation and are powering down, then dumping the received tokens each week. It seems that the consensus of the development team and whales is that a 150 mil. valuation is too high... Many people would like to see them not selling their tokens, even though it furthers the distribution of the SP's. It just shows a lack of faith that a 50 bil. valuation can be reached or existing social media be replaced. (This obviously does not change the fact that they are free to do what they want with their property for sure).
Many whales have to much of their wealth concentrated on steem !!! So even if they are bullish they are not comfortable to have for example 90% of their wealth on a single project... It is for them like a "one point of failure" ... I assume many of them want only to put some of their eggs on other baskets just in case the project fails...It is just a proper bankroll management, poker players out there can understand me ;)
PS BTW steemit whales could be good poker players ...
moved up ...
Not just this -- i know some "users" with larger stake and they starting to transfer to new users, friends - business partners - on the other side:
I was reading many complaints about the centralization on this game here - now look at the "POWER downs" - This also means - Whales won't have so much influence - From what i can observe - slowly but steady we will see by far more new larger stakeholders and it will get much more fairer "holding" distribution - not that i'm thinking the current distribution is "unfair".
Even u may should take into consideration, that on STEEM u are able to see all the "wealth" a user is [HODL] – ( Hold On for Dear Life ) not like facebook & Co. !
Is this essentially good or bad?
I can just speak for myself but i love the transparent way
of how things are going here ;) - my 2 SBD
Maybe the miserable negative trolls should just be recognized for who and what they are (not you @cass; you are pointing out the inconsistency, and rightly so).
If they held onto their steem how would they pay their developers and do things to grow the network. They are hiring like crazy, Devs can cost 120k+ per year. They need easily a million dollar a year developer budget.
In the case of Dan this is a reason I am aware of and which I respect, but out of 30 whales 28 were powering down, the last time I looked... many of whom are not going to pay any developers.
This is a reply to mexbit's comment below (the system wont let me reply to it). I'm not sure what their motives are, but powering down doesn't necessarily mean they are getting out long term. Perhaps they think the current price downtrend will continue for a bit and want to buy back in and power up even more. Or maybe they want to pay off their debts. I dont think powering down gives a clear indication of motives.
Good point here, can't rely forever on angel investors and volunteer hours - if the developers know the founders have been successful, they'll want to get paid!
Read the disclaimer, Steemitco has a disclamier that they have to do NOTHING!
Nothing zero, and are cashing out every week.
To me the real question is can we demonstrate that Steem Power is a good business investment and not just a potentially good speculative investment? I think we can with the right focus from whales, which I explain in my most recent post about 4 ways whales can help grow the market cap.
Whales almost make up most of what is the market cap. Whaledom is not about getting voted up, but having lots of SP, they are investors. They are the biggest content moderators and behaviour police. It is not about what the whale says but what they vote on that matters. Their effect on the ecosystem is big, and has an impact on engagement with the readers, with the interest that spreads from here to the internet. Fortunately the hard-working would-be dolphins and aspiring minnows who are out there marketing (see @xeroc's comment just above). Marketing people, we need them too.
Really Steem is a DAO, our product is media, but mostly textual, everyone here is not just an employee but to some degree a stakeholder. The Whales and the Devs are the two most important groups, but they need us little guys, and the competition that drives the creation of content.
I actually think, that to some extent the blogging/social media networking is largely and primarily marketing. The mechanisms of vesting are what makes Steem an investment. We minnows and dolphins, we are producing the material that helps get Steem noticed. The Whales mostly try to pick the best stuff we make, and as they do this, they distribute SP towards good content creators whose votes gradually increase in influence. If the mechanism works to elevate content that brings new users and triggers discussion, it also brings in investors. People need to understand that as an investor you get to add your influence to the marketing itself.
This is also where developers using the system to create more ways to access and interact with the data is so important, and why developers are amongst the highest voted single category of users posting. By enhancing the ability to access the material, we increase the chances of gaining more interest in the platform. Developers also can help with scaling issues relating to curation, like the filter and grouping systems I am working on.
I understand everything you've stated and agree, but nothing you've explained relates to my question, can we make Steem Power an obvious good investment?
This is the post I mentioned above that explains how I think we can make Steem Power business investment that will be highly desirable: https://steemit.com/steemit/@nathanbrown/top-4-ways-whales-can-increase-market-capitalization-of-steem-by-local-currency-expert-and-online-marketer-consultant#@wingz/re-nathanbrown-re-wingz-re-nathanbrown-top-4-ways-whales-can-increase-market-capitalization-of-steem-by-local-currency-expert-and-online-marketer-consultant-20160824t092235415z
The issues is "traction", I think. We still don't have the required traction so that marketing SteemPower as "ranking weight" on Steemit.com makes any sense. Holding SteemPower and voting on particular posts is like chaning the ranking algorithm (rather the weights) of the google search engine. Except that the search engine is a crowd of people and the weights are the SteemPower of those people.
Astutely put, Charlie.
I also see the same thing happen with people who release new tools, development libraries, and similar, they get paid a LOT for doing this work. @xeroc made 45k out of his piston platform, on a 'changelog' post. Anyone who is adding value seems to be voted up. Obviously this is an example of the incentives for the Whales to keep their fat balances from slimming down.
Please name them so we can fix this. You need to understand that there are alot of posts on steem and just because a post is good doesn't make the whales become aware of it. If you have good content, you need to market it to people and not just hope for a whale to drop in by accident.
Yes, I am quite aware of the deluge that is content and I am sure that it will probably get worse, this is why I talk so much about developing mechanisms for creating filters and grouping. I try to gather the lists of people, whose work I like, and who like my work, and check on the feed.
Well, I'm only little at this point but I try to remember to vote on things that stand out also. What I think is good is not any indicator for other people necessarily. When I am particularly proud of a piece I try to drop a link to the story, when I can see some angle to introduce it in the discussion. I am by no means any kind of sales genius. I can only sell things that are already very convincingly good by thesmelves. I also don't like to butt into other people's scenes too much.
Are you telling me that nobody, I mean zero people told either one of you something like the following. "hey post over at steem , I will make sure you get 10k$ in steem on your post" or somthing roundabout that? I am sure that this has happened with some other "famous" people. No in itself there is nothing wrong with that, just that it should be noted upfront that the post was payed in order to promote steemit.
I think I'd have more faith in steemit if the devs weren't seeming to power down and sell 2m USD worth of steem a week :/.
oh but it isnt a scam, and you are just crying because it isnt fair wahh , but satoshi has a lot of bitcoin , wahaha
Lol luckily dey making 2m a week and have already lost half their coins value and a majority of its support on exchanges
I think its largely people pinning their hopes and dreams at financial success on things like this and after seeing folks like you, @charlieshrem, @dollarvigilante, etc making tons of cash, and the inevitable emotional backlash when they sober up and realize "nope, this ain't a get rich quick scheme either". I can understand this, as your comment here has cleared the sum of all my content combined lol... but I'm here for shits and giggles at the moment so the money aspect doesn't factor in for me as much.
I think this is a great point. Ironically the fact that it is not a get rich quick scheme seems to be part of the problem!
You mean how upvoting by Dan and his buddies shows that it is not a get rich scheme, got it.
@tracemayer @charlieshrem would love your thoughts on XMR - is it really more anon that BTC - @charlieshrem your insight would be wicked good too on this
why? you dont earn steemit by commenting on anything non pro steemit or pro bitshares
There exists no other solution on the internet that allows for any user to get heavily rewarded for great content - and this user does not even have to invest a penny or has to be a celebrity. How can this be a scam if you do not invest anything except content!?
because of steem envy
damnit jl777, you really need to join us at our hangouts. Just so you know @inboundinken this guy is a very well known person in the cryptosphere. At least to those who see merit in not being in the cult of "only bitcoin"
still a bit busy finalizing iguana and helping with btcfork project, and have an upcoming one too.. I guess I will be a bit busy for a while, hopefully someone here can get me C code for local signing steemit tx so I can integrate it into iguana
Yea as long as you help the founders cash out by providing content, you are in!
There are the accusations that the mining start was intentionally restarted several times (I think it was three) to confuse or trick "outsiders". If that can be proven, then that would be wrongdoing right? Still reminds me a lot of the Dash Instamine Saga where I still think it was a honest mistake by the Devs. I'm still waiting for the XMR Steemit whales to display that level of scrutiny here. Thanks for your insights!
The Dash instamine has been proved many times NOT to be a honest mistake. You really think these "smart" people fucked up something as important as mining clients at the launch, well very well knowing that is a critial time, yea Im sure it was just a woopsie
@tracemayer That's Where I know your from, Seeking Alpha. I used to read their articles every once in a while. Anyways, welcome to STEEMIT and up vote and follow.
full $teem ahead!
@streetstyle