RE: Do ALL BIDBOTS Actually Make You LOSE Money? Why Are 50/50 Payouts Not Paid In 50% SBD/50% SBD Worth Of STEEM?
Thanks for giving me the heads-up on this post @miss-j; it makes for very interesting reading - though it leaves me with more questions than answers.
Given the structure if the payouts, if what you say is correct, then the broken peg is indeed to of distinct benefit to bot-owners. But given that it essentially makes it harder to earn SP from post payouts, it's also beneficial to those who already hold a lot of SP, because it makes sure the ability of later adopters to amass SP is reduced.
Of course, with recent comments by @ned (I'm too tired to find the link right now, but if you can't track it down in the next 12 hours I'll find it for you), indicate that he might not be entirely happy how the whole stake-weighted voting thing. That's interesting because any hint of a move towards one account = one vote could mean all that SP that those whales are and bots are hoarding is suddenly worth a lot less. This is all speculative, but maybe there are interesting changes on the way.
I pointed this out a couple months ago when I first came here, and I suspect it has been left this way on purpose. I experimented briefly with the bots, losing money based on this calculation without eyes still seeing my work. The true beneficiaries of the bots are really the bot owners and their investors. Which is why larger stakeholders find it more profitable to invest in bots than their own accounts. I am guessing this was left this way to keep the larger stakeholders happy, banking on most not understanding the math.
the plot thickens... I tried to go back and analyze some older posts, but the information regarding transfer amounts is blank now, in the steemworld app, anyways.
Anything over a week or two old the data is removed. wonder why that is? I suppose there should still be the data in the wallet activity, but it will just be a bit more tedious to go back and collect the info that way.
Im going to try and see what the differences are using steem vs SBD for bids...
Everyone complaining about the bots, I bet even most of them dont realize that the supposed votes we are bidding on and buying, isnt actually profitting us either. Its kinda like the promoted tab, except instead of throwing the money away and burning it, they renamed a tab trending, and the profit goes to the bots.
... but the votes we thought we bought a portion of, even knowing some would go to curators and bot curators, we didnt buy at all! We just pay for the priveledge of pretending like we bought a portion of the vote... its kinda like telling a whale, hey, Ill give you 5o dollars if you upvote me 50 dollars. lol or worse, paying 50 for a 45 dollar vote, and still not get into the trending tab!
I guess it does guarantee one thing though, the reputation number goes up.... however the whale votes are basically removed from the steemit equation, as they are getting the profit, along with steemit when the payout conversion divides half the payout STU into steem.
Im having a hard time understanding what the rational of any of this is....
Yes, and where it is set to make the poor poorer and the rich richer is they (bot owners) get it all in SBD, undiluted with the heavy cut taking place in SP. Then they get gravy in curation rewards, lol. This is why it is so profitable for many to delegate their SP to the bots. I saw some breakdowns yesterday showing an average of 36% return on investing in some of the bots. Then they wonder why curation from high SP accounts keeps going down.
It is still not popular yet, but there is a new tag being used called nobidbot. I am hopeful it takes as it offers a way for us to bypass the Hot and Trending feeds to look for quality work not there just due to large votes purchased.
Also, the fact that any votes under .02 doesn't pay out is an important detail i didnt know about... until recently. :/ i would have waited to get back up to 100 percent voting power much sooner, if i had known that. It took me well over a month to finally get to 100 percent.
Yeah, about a month ago I was running as low as 45% and had to step away for a few days.
check this out
https://steemit.com/steemit/@kafkanarchy84/smts-oracles-and-account-based-voting-ned-s-asia-tour-easter-egg
My initial feeling on this is that it will exacerbate the already existing issues. It will create a secondary group that will be in charge of communities for the common user to contend with on top of the already existing whale votes. This will result in those who are in the in group to get the highest ratings within those communities, those who do not do the necessary ass kissing will likely more often than not be found of lesser quality or to have no quality.
I am going to write up a piece on all of this soon. Thanks for calling my attention to the video.
https://steemit.com/community/@dustsweeper/ann-introducing-dustsweeper-a-new-service-to-turn-dust-into-profit
That's an excellent idea! Maybe ill try that too. If its the way it seems to be, education is the answer. I guarantee most people using the bots, or even those not using, dont realize the full scope of this.
The flagging wars also eat up votes, so those are off the table. If i wanted to be conspiratorial, i might suggest haijen is a plant to make people think bidding on the bots are profitable. I won't go that far yet, but its interesting to me why he is doing it at all, or if he is doing it for far less profit than it looks like.
The circle jerk is by far the most profitable... besides being a bot investor or a bid bot.
I really wish they would make communities, as that would solve aot of issues i think, organize the clutter, so to speak.
I wish i knew what it was like before the bidbots. Was it almost impossible then for a plankton or minnows to get a whale vote, too?
and the payouts have got to be fixed... i could convert money straight to steem, or invest in my own post and lose a large portion of it.
so basically ... what it comes down to is, by investing my own money using the bid bots, I am paying steemit for the privilege of posting here, and not the other way around.
"it leaves me with more questions than answers"
me too! lol I'm about to sleep but yes, I'd be interested to see what @ned has to say about these things and more importantly what kinds of changes will be implemented on the next fork. I'll search for it, see if I can find it.
I kept thinking this has to be wrong, maybe I am just not adding it up correctly? i have another bigger payout coming in a day or so, so we will see how that one turns out.
This also makes me curious about the Haijen issue, because he is doing what he is doing for a reason, so he has to be gaining money, right? Except instead of one post a day he does a dozen and bets three times as much on each post. To what end though?
Maybe his payout is different due to his SP? I've yet to analyze his wallet and those kinds of things, maybe one of these days when I am bored enough I will, just to try and compare and see what the heck is going on. I'd be curious to see if there is any difference between the amount he transfers to the bidbots, and the amount the bid bot itself returns at payout.
I was shocked a bit, but remain hopeful. I am going to fiddle around a bit more, because that's the way I learn best, through trial and error and then analyzing things, but I am not that technical at all so alot of this is a learning curve as well.
the 100 percent steem payout thing is the most disturbing to me. I cannot believe how much I wasted that way. Why not just label the choices for payout more accurately and honestly, such as:
decline payout, 100 percent full payout (currently the 50/50 option), or decline half of your payout (currently the 100 percent steem power option)
:)
this is interesting : https://steemit.com/steemit/@kafkanarchy84/smts-oracles-and-account-based-voting-ned-s-asia-tour-easter-egg
It certainly is! Communities decide how rewards are allocated within them - great. But who decides who gets to be the 'oracles' of the communities, and by what mechanism? Because if it's stake-weighted voting, we'll just end up with whales in charge of everything, again. And then who decides how much of the reward pool a community gates to allocate (and how do they decide it)? Does every community need a whale to bankroll it? Or do we just run an SMT-enabled ico, and create our own reward pool? (thereby pumping more money into steem in the process - oh yeah, just in case you missed it, that's one of the main functions of SMTs - to drive money into steem).