Is Steemit too good to be true?
(My response to a Youtuber)
After watching @dollarvigilante's interview with @dan and @ned, my eyes gazed upon the top comment from one of the Youtube viewers.
I thought I'd share the question and my response here (rather than replying on YouTube directly):
Question from MsFreedomforeveryone:
I still dont get it, where does this money (15.000$) coming from? and where does this 10% p.a. coming from? for me it sounds to good to be true. If there is someone who gets (win) money, there is always someone who pays (loose) money.
My response is this:
Everyday "new money" (Steem) is generated from the Steem blockchain (similar to how Bitcoin). Some of that "new money" is allocated to people that blog on Steemit. How that money is apportioned is based on how people vote. If your content is upvoted by people with a lot of influence (Steem Power) you get a bigger piece of the pie.
Authors share their rewards with the people that vote on their content. 'Curators' as they are called get 25%. The Author gets 75%. 50% of the Authors share is given in Steem dollars which is liquid and can be traded on exchanges for Bitcoin etc. 50% is in Steem power (thus giving the author influence when they vote).
Steem is "too good to be true" to bloggers in the same why that bitcoin is too good to be true for people that own industrial sized mining rigs.
The dollar value comes from how much Steem is worth on the open market (people are trading Steem for Bitcoin). My belief is that people are largely buying Steem now speculating on it's future value. It is easy to see how advertisers and media outlets would be falling over themselves to acquire Steem Power should Steemit gain a critical mass of users. If Steemit gains a fraction of the popularity of say Facebook, the value of holding Steem Power could be huge.
However nothing is guaranteed. As in all cryptocurrencies, the people that could lose out are those that over-invest in a coin that fails. Crypto-currencies fall into the category of high risk investment. So people should think carefully before buying any cryptocurrency. Seasoned investors and traders understand the risks involved so go in with their eyes wide open.
Luckily for bloggers and contributors to Steemit we don't have to worry about losing money as crucially we don't need to put any money in. The only thing we can lose is our time. Most likely time we would have spent posting similar things on other platforms (like YouTube). For me this makes posting on Steemit a no- brainer. Hence me responding here and not on YouTube!
I will post a link to this article in the Youtube reply to MsFreedomforeveryone's comment.
Message for MsFreedomforeveryone
I'd also like to extend an invitation to MsFreedomforeveryone... if you join Steemit and verify your Steemit account in a Youtube comment (from MsFreedomforeveryone) I will send you half of the Steem Dollars this post makes. Just as a thank you for inspiring it!
I also believe the best way for people to understand Steemit is to try it out. It's free with no obligation to buy anything! In fact I'd recommend most people not to spend a dime! I hope you take me up on this invite. There are plenty of us on this platform that are willing to answer questions you may have. You can put them in a post here or join https://steemit.chat,
Happy Steeming!
(NB: Special thanks to @klye for such a quick turnaround on the artwork!)
Wow! That is super generous of you @nanzo-scoop! I love this post! In fact I think it just inspired my next one! Thanks again and keep on Steeming!
Don't forget if you Power Up, as stated in the White Paper, you will never have less Steem than you put in. Because for every one (1) Steem that is created nine (9) Steem is moved to Steem Power and its stakeholders. This also means that long-term holders are almost completely protected from the dilution used to fund growth. I am very excited about the longer term growth and investment into Steemit.
And it's not to good to be true. Browse the White Paper and do your research.......
You keep telling yourself that. Steem price won't be sustainable much longer if only speculators and newcomers are buying it. You have to be a whale or a small internet star to make any kind of money here. That alone tells you you have to put money to win money. It's no wonder why a lot of developers are accusing it of being a ponzi, and when you look how it all work right now it starts to makes sense.
Whales crossvoting with their multiple accounts, upvoting each other, minnows getting nothing and a couple of newcomers that bring their mini star status to Steemit are upvoted to spread the word around...
I'm sorry but the writing is on the wall.
I'm a nobody and I deposited more into my checking account in July from Steemit than I did from my day job.
You are the 1%
ill just leave this here..... https://steemit.com/steemit/@egjoshslim/why-are-people-getting-butt-hurt-over-any-post-that-mention-any-issue-with-steemit if you speak out againts steemit in anyway you get no where. so i wrote my last post criticizing steemit. by last post i mean the last post i shall ever post. ^^ the fact my last post was down voted 3 times because they didnt read the actual post and one person disagreed with me so they down voted every post of mine...... :(
The key to Steemit's success is user adoption.
Once it hits critical mass advertisers & media outlets will have little choice but to invest in Steem Power and adopt strategies to meet their target audience.
Not everyone that comes to the platform will earn mega payouts. Not everyone that "deserves" a mega payouts will get it either. Sometimes people will get more than they "deserve". Thats kind of how life goes.
However Steemit offers content creators (even people that post casually on other sites) an opportunity to monetise content.
If Steemit fails the biggest losers will be the whales themselves. If they take the short term view of upvoting themselves then they do so at the expense of their long term interests. They have the most SP locked up in the system.
It's in the whales interest to find and upvote the best content. To develop a platform that retains users.
I fail to see how the 'writing can be on the wall' when the soft launch (with payouts) was barely a month ago and the platform is attracting 500- 1000 new users a day!
The story is barely unfolding for Steemit.
I agree, it's only been a few months, this is extremely early in its development. So many things are happening in the background you can't see.
Whales are not upvoting great content, who are they to know what's good content? Because they have money? They upvote posts that bring more people to Steemit, so they get more money. The wealth distribution is ridiculous. Some supporters are saying that whale's wealth is being dilluted, guess what, everyone's wealth is being dilluted!
But the whales won't lose, ever, they are safe. They upvote each others comments, cross vote with their multiple accounts. They upvote their own post and it's trending in a second so they are assured to get more votes. The game is rigged and the platform itself is far from unique compared to other options if money is taken out of the equation. Do you think all that money came because their own talent? Really? a 20k post about a guy who knows how to write code? That's an year salary in a country like mine. That money came from speculators and newcomers. They are now starting to realize there's actually no value here at all, at least no 10-20-30k post value.
Don't tell me life is not fair bs please, that's whale/rich talk. Common people who are not whales or unique content creators (the 99%) will get tired fast when they see their dreams shattered over and over again or are getting told to "power up" so you can "earn more". It's sounds like a joke but it isn't.
There's a button right there at the right, did you notice? I know, it's new.
Don't get me wrong, I didn't put one cent into this and already cashed out what little I have made. I will continually to do so as long as I can power down. But this is crypto and many people are in for a rude awakening.
There are only so many whales, yet there are many many post. Whales can't see every post and while it is true some primarily focus on those accounts that can bring in more users in the long run, everyone benefits from that exposure, not just the whales.
This platform is barely 4 months old. It's way too early to make these kinds of determinations. Within a year there will be many more people here, many more post and many more whales. Currently the system is spreading the money around from the whales to others as planned. With time that will be even more apparent and the voting should be more spread out.
Personally I like upvoting the unknowns and post no one else is upvoting. I'm sure there are others that do this same thing and as more people have more stake, things will even out. I reiterate, it's very early in the game. Give it some time.
Bottom line is, you kill the minnows, you kill people like me and you kill the ocean itself.
I think the Steemit devs are taking a page from the evolution of Facebook. Just throw the basic ideas at the wall, see what sticks, and start tweaking. Currently whales have too much influence, and popularity is trumping quality. I'll feel much better about powering-up down the line if I see serious effort put into getting the 'incentives balance' optimized.
This thought scares me. It really does.
Advertisers already control Facebook, Reddit, Twitter etc. At least this way we force them to be financial invested in the health of the network (If Facebook or Twitter fails they can freely migrate to the next big thing)
DUDE!!! steemit is on the rise, ignore the first few weeks with the boom thats people buying steem because it was new. it has dropped and it may drop a tad more but it has been rising in terms of people signing up!
Click here to check out the future potential investments by private equity firms into steemit!
@tuck-fheman "Currently the system is spreading the money around from the whales to others as planned" Spreading the money around? Dear god, it's becoming a nuthouse over here. Whales became whales because they were very early adopters (that's ok I guess, they are the owners basically) or completely unique content creators like I said. To get as big as your account alone right now you would have to be rich already or a minor celebrity basically.
And the whales get bigger, never smaller. Even if they contribute absolutely nothing they get richer. Like I said, vote your whale friends, upvote your own post so others instantly do the same, cross vote with your multiple accounts (smooth-a, smooth-b, smooth-x whatever) and powerdown in a different daily cycle with all of them. Rinse and repeat.
In a month when all the gimmicky payouts of 10-20k are out of the question we'll see how many minnows will be here earning cents for hours of work.
[Image Credit]
People just take it for granted that so much money goes to centralized website owners. Sure Steem's algorithm and how it works and stuff is complicated. But content creators, some way or another, being paid for what people like is too normal NOT to be true.
YouTube comments are cancer.
Did the math last night on the distributions over time, made a post. It's a rough draft I've actually put it into a graph and an actual chart on the computer. Did that today just gotta make that into a post so it's a lot prettier, this post didn't really get any exposure. But anyways here's some math I did on the future distributions and how awesome it looks if anyone cares. https://steemit.com/steemit/@will-zewe/times-look-bright-ahead-for-the-minnows-if-you-re-wondering-how-the-wealth-distribution-might-play-out-take-a-read
Excellent post @nanzo-scoop ! Upvoted and following, we have just released our first edition. Hope you can give it a read, we'd love some feedback so we can make sure the content we are bringing is nothing but quality :)