RE: Its all about the Benjamins -- Or is it?
It's funny that you brought this up because I just made a similar comment earlier to another user regarding a misconception about something I had mentioned on my post. It was a question of "piling on."
I agree that the reason isn't necessarily related to curation rewards. In fact, I have stated many times that whales actually earn a generally lower percentage on their curation returns than most active curators. Too many people look at the total SP distributed via curation rather than the percentage of their stake that is earned.
For example: When I spend more time curating, I can typically earn anywhere between 0.05% and 0.1% in SP returns on any given day. Most of the whales are earning closer to 0.01%.
Of course, there are some exceptions. If you look at val-b, for instance, over the past month, he is earning percentages between 0.04% and 0.07% regularly. And the actual SP amounts are fairly large (over 1,000 per day, many times), which is why making these accounts more active in guilds isn't necessarily the best idea. They crowd out all other curators and further increase the disparity of stake while also lessening the influence of smaller stakeholders.
Im not sure if its an arrangement or he just got lucky, but val-b does well on curation, at least partially, because when he and berniesanders vote for curie posts, he always gets to go first (and also seems to go before most of the SP weight of the whole trail)
But yeah i agree with the rest.
Edit to add -- he mentioned in another thread that all the curation rewards he earns that way go back to curie.