I used to be a baby dolphin. At 19 million vests--7,600 Steem Power--with a 64 rep--I am back to being a minnow. This is a problem.
I used to be a baby dolphin.
(Image original link from the Miami Herald.)
At least that is how I was described by others here.
I was even described once in a comment as a part of the 1% of Steemit. And maybe I was.
I have been here since late June, a couple of weeks before the first payout. In July I made more money on Steemit than I did at my day job. That was amazing.
In July I was beginning to support others by being able to give out a few cents on a post that had nothing. My peak was with 17 cents, and that was right after we came back from the hack.
But today I posted a new post and got zero from my own upvote.
ZERO.
I am now back to minnow status.
Before you ask, I was at 94% voting power.
Ninety-Four Percent.
As of this writing I have 19.3 million vests and 7,687 Steem Power and 217 followers.
I am posting this share numbers with others. If you are new and can't wait for the day that your upvote will give out money. Well, look at my numbers.
I really liked being able to support posts with 5-10 cent upvotes, because when a post has money attached to it, it got noticed. I loved tossing nickels and dimes to others.
As of this moment, I don't think I'm leaving. But I am sharing this in hopes that someone in charge seems some cold hard numbers as to what is happening.
I have to admit, I'm not seeing a lot of leadership here. I see a lot of creative people trying new things.
But I am not seeing leadership from the top.
For example, we all now have a savings area in our wallets. I have yet to see any official explanation of what that is, or what it does. That's a problem.
Steem has dropped massively and therefore all of our votes are worth less. Yet, I've seen almosting nothing from the founders on a plan to fix it.
But let me say this, I want this to work. The money aspect here can change lives.
I thought about posting my ideas on how to fix this. But the ideas I wrote have been put up before on Steemit.
So I'll just leave my current numbers:
19.3 Million Vests. 7,687.672 STEEM. 64 Rep.
Status: Minnow
It's good to see you're back @mctiller and posting :) Thankfully the price of Steem has improved since 7 months ago
I'm with @cryptofiend
I am still minnow status and will be for a while but I post because I love the forum. Maybe I'm just blindly advocating for Steemit, but if I really listen to my gut, it's telling me to stay, invest, and build my following and reputation. Maybe I'm being foolish but my gut's rarely been wrong in guiding me (whether I listen is a completely different matter). But I digress - it would be nice to hear more from the upper echelon about the state of Steem instead of how much fun it's going to be in Amsterdam. Just sayin...
As I said in my post, I'm not leaving and I want this to work. But I would feel a lot better if I heard a little from the top.
A lesson could be learned from Facebook here, (GASP!) Mark Zuckerberg posts regularly about the future of Facebook, and when there are updates to Facebook I get a detailed explanation of the update.
That needs to happen here.
So sad for you and for us all. I've been here since July. It now really looks like a GHOST ship. As you say, I see no leadership from above either. Only groups that are trying their best to keep this boat on the wave.
The pains of an early adopter.
Even with beforehand knowledge of tribulations that are to be expected with the first wave of investors within new/ disruptive tech, the generally slow churning process of price discovery and move towards mass adoption can still be too much to stomach for investors, in the moment.
The way to survive this with your sanity is to remind yourself of what attracted you to Steemit in the first place, why you risked what you did at that time in this platform (even if you risked only your time), what future you foresaw for it, and to realize that that vision can still materialize.
If you need some stronger reinforcement, look to the charts of past disruptive tech that ended up being successful. You'll no doubt notice that they tend to undergo a series of "bubbles", moments of extreme euphoria within the investment community that causes quick and unsustainable prices, which, inevitably, fall just as fast, if not faster, to previous levels, if not lower (bitcoin is one recent example of this).
The psychology behind the bubble and "bubble pop" (from extreme euphoria to fear and on to apathy, or hatred, depending on one's disposition) and the tribulations that the developers of that tech experience tend to lock-step, and this is no coincidence. People tend to become overly demanding of the "people at the top" and begin to have unrealistic expectations of them when their former "pi in the ski" dreams are momentarily smashed - this presents the devs with a series of obstacles, some of them useful to improving/ refining the tech, but most of them serving no purpose other than to distract them (essentially disrupting the disruptive growth).
So, you see, the problem is one of unrealistic expectations, usually centered around the anticipated timeline of events, particularly the anticipation of the "mass adoption" phase of growth. Luckily for us, the devs were smart enough to force most of our investments into Steem Power, allowing them a 2-year window to make some things happen with this tech before the fickle, indecisive, overly emotionally-reactive investors can entirely cash out.
Hi @mctiller - I know the price situation is frustrating. I'll share my thoughts on it though. Before Steem/Steemit can shoot to the moon, we need to have a solid user base and investors who are interested. Right now we are missing two big components that are needed for those to occur. The site is still in Beta, and a lot of features are missing. There is also not a huge reason to invest in SP besides speculative investing. The dev team is hard at work on that. @ned has been talking a lot about how to solve the curation problem via curation guilds, and the investment problem via advertisements. A lot of things are in the works, but they are going to take time. Also, while the low price really sucks right now as far as upvoting and payouts, it is a healthy thing for the system right now. Too many people are unhappy with the early adopters holding all the power, and this dump phase is going to give new people a chance to buy up lots of Steem at low prices and move themselves to whale status. For those of us that are here, we are just going to have to wait it out. I think building the community and developing relationships is where the focus is right now.
This is a good response. And part of my post really was to show others just how much you have to have in order to spread any money.
What I think would help with some of the nervousness would be regular posts from Ned or Dan with their thoughts and plans. But I rarely see them post.
While on Facebook, Zuckerberg posts very regularly discussing the future of FB. I just don't see that here.
I do love @Steemsports what a super idea. I've earned several SP from that. I love the photography challenges from @jamtaylor there are definitely some creative ideas going on.
But in regards to being in "beta" how long is that plan? Is there a date to roll this out in a more public way? I see no plan there. That concerns me.
But again good response. I'm disappointed like a lot of people. But I wanted to share cold hard numbers for others to see.
In my opinion based on what I see in front of the dev team: 1-2 years.
There is a plan. They are just choosing to keep it mostly private. There is a lot of speculation as to why, and a lot of people feel this is damaging to the community, but I have talked with them and the dev team enough to trust that they have good reasons behind what they do. There are bits and pieces of it scattered around if you know where to look :)
|so we're kind of shooting for Sherlock Holmes investors and users? I don't get that. Transparency is THE NAME OF THE GAME! in blockchain, in honest business, etc. You're saying you need to have inside info and/or be a world class detective to know that smthsmth is coming or will go a certain way...come on, man.
I know they are planning to hire someone to handle communications. It won't be like this forever. They are just getting started.
If you are a minnow, then who I am ? :) I believe this situation will change when whales stop their power down and it will be very soon.
That's sort of the point of this post. The minnow group is growing because the dolphin group is shrinking. And I posted to show just how much you have to have now to make a difference.
Same here, wath happend with the 8 times more waluble vote @dan @dantheman was talking about? Now this days it is only does with over 50 k power who could vote some cents.
It is no point to truy live of whriting anymore. Only a couple of autors have stabile income.
Exactly, consequently I am going to start taking power downs again so I can get some money out of this.
I agree there ;)
I know it can be disheartening. I don't look at the dollar value of my upvote anymore. Once the price of Steem starts to go up which it hopefully will then the situation will reverse.
I agree, but at the moment I see very little communication from the top addressing this issue, and that concerns me.
Really important issues you are pointing out. Appreciated it. Thanks for upvoting my new photo of the leaf. Upvoted.
This explains the savings account. https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemitguide/guide-on-steemit-savings-account-everything-you-need-to-know-about-this-feature-that-helps-secure-your-steem-and-steem-dollar
Thanks for the heads up!