Excellent post and analysis m8. It's a shame curie don't look at, or reward, steem related posts because this surely deserves higher payout.... and in a steem world without bidbots this level of analytical post would have garnered much bigger reward simply because there would be much more manual curation. Lol, the irony being that you wouldn't have had to write this post in that hypothetical steem world 😂

So many have said it right in the comments here and particularly quillfire who obviously has massive experience and understanding of financial law. I haven't a clue about that type of stuff.

Here's a crazy thing though. I've been massively vocal about how bidbots have destroyed the reputation of steem. It's something I'm 100% sure about. Another thing I'm sure about us that people who run bidbots are watching! They hide in plain sight as 'so called' respected leaders of some communities. As has been pointed out in your article, they are some of the top witnesses, and they make a lot of money through what they do while depleting the value of steem both in reputation but also in regards to the reward pool. Some of them run legit curation bots, I assume to try and give back in some small way. But I would posit that it is more likely just pure PR. I have worked in marketing and PR in the past so I know exactly what reputational management is and what it looks like in action. Strangely, I have only ever been hit with one of these 'legit curation bots' once. But they are voting on some of my fellow twitter promotors every post. Hmnnn kinda seems like I was sent a message, 'here's what you could have if you just shut up'. Ha ha, maybe that's a little far fetched but ya get where I'm coming from.

Thing is, I've started using OCDB which is a none profit bidbot run by the ocd curation initiative. It promises a garunted small % ROI for the bidder after curation, I think it might be 9%. So why am I using it and going back on what I've been saying all this time? It's partly because this bot will only vote whitelisted authors, who've had an ocd vote/curation in the past. Each post is checked before the account votes it, so this garuntees no shit post will make it through. But the main reason is that I'm simply tired.

Tired of fighting and telling people what they are doing is destroying the promise of what has been advertised (steem as a platform that rewards quality engagement and content). Steem.com have changed there wording recently but the old strapline on the steem landing page said words to that effect for a long time. I'm tired of not having that extra few dollars reward on my post that OCDB will give me. Tired of not seeing my posts, which are all well crafted, on trending. I also see OCDB as the least damaging so I thought fck it.

Does it sit well with me? No, not really but that's just the way the cookie crumbles for me at the moment. If I somehow gain the notice of a friendly whale long term, so that my posts are hitting $10+ each time, I'll stop putting ocdb on my posts as I'm not greedy and I honestly don't think ocdb are the answer. I do know that the owner acidyo is trying to offer a better option than other bidbots which often return negative ROI. It is a genuine attempt by a decent community minded whale to make headway on solving the issue. But it also kind of legitimises the whole process of vote buying, which for me could be a can of worms. Imo, the only solution to end vote buying is to change the mechanism of delegation so that bots can't function... But that would cause a mass sell off of steem by the people who only want to delegate for passive income. So, I'll be the first to admit it is a very complex problem.

For me, at the moment, I am maximizing my rewards using this method while steem is so cheap as I want to get something substantial out of this when the market turns around again. Nearly 2 years and well over 500000 words written on steem and I've powered up at least 90% of what I've earned here.... I need to start taking some earnings into fiat soon to pay off debts etc. I guess this is why my shift in attitude a little.

Anyway, gr8 post as it makes people think and your maths is one hell of a lot better than mine m8 🤣