Steemit Success: Whales Need To Stop Acting Like Bankers And Being Short-Sighted

This statement does not only apply to whales. Many are engaging in similar behavior. However, I wrote the title to capture their attention since they are the ones with most of the power (plus to lure people in with a catchy headline).

Much is written about the "unfair" rewards system and how the whales are only concerned about themselves while engaging in circle voting. I am not going to comment on this inane concept other than to say there are many whales who do not have this outlook. There is a group of them who want incredible success for steemit and those on here.

Many put forth ideas to get newer users active. It is no great secret that part of the appeal to coming to steemit for many is the opportunity to make some money. Let us call a spade a spade. This site is promoted on the idea of making money from your posting, commenting, and upvoting. Much of the steem whitepaper dealt with this. Therefore, we should not shy away from it by believing that most come here for any other reason than that.

The present challenge is the rewards system favors those with steem power. This is how the system is set up and the reasons are well explained in the white paper. Nevertheless, there are many who are calling for a change in the system. While this might be the ultimate end, I am not ready to make that proclamation at this point.

Before going any further, I want to make a couple points.

The first is that if you are a whale, in my opinion, you are already rich. I made my views very clear in a number of posts that STEEM is highly undervalued and going to explode. I foresee $100-$200 in STEEM's future if things unfold as anticipated. I will leave the math to you but if you are presently sitting on 500K, 750K, or 1M STEEM, that is a nice sum of money.

Now I am not one who believes that one can be "too" rich. That is up to the individual. If someone wants to amass more STEEM so he or she will be worth $500M at some point, who am I to argue with that?

That said, when I see the behavior of some of the whales, it is evident they fail to see the big picture. Short-sighted activities rarely work out well in the long run.

@transisto posted an article a little over a week ago calling out his fellow whales. In that post, he pointed out some of the absurd behavior that is taking place on here. Without using these words, basically he was calling those people short-sighted (his tone actually makes me think he looks at them a lot worse than that).

Here is the article if you missed it:

https://steemit.com/steem/@transisto/whales-witnesses-we-have-to-talk

To be blunt: Self upvoting in this manner is flat out naive and stupid. Anyone who believe in this method will be proven to be idiotic by what I write next. Those who engage in this behavior are acting just like bankers. They scrounge around trying to make every dime they can for themselves while also rewarding their buddies. Few from the outside share in the wealth. Isn't it ironic we see some on here who rail against the system doing the same thing?

In this example, I am going to use the presumption one has 1M SP worth $1.00 each (easy math).

Today we are starting with an account of $1M. Ignoring the numbers I first mentioned, if this person wants $10M, how does he or she get there? Obviously, rewarding oneself was created in the design of the system. Ergo, our account holder can use 10 votes a day on him or herself. Let us say that voting brought in $2,000 a day, that is roughly $750K a year. At this rate, it would take our whale 12 years to reach $10M (I realize the $2,000 would increase as the SP increase but let's keep it simple). Of course, being a banker means that one is living with a very healthy ROI.

Naturally, the second way that one can get this account to $10M is by having the price of STEEM go from $1-$10.

So which is more likely, our whale collecting $2,000 a day, everyday including holidays, for 8-10-12 years or STEEM going to $10?

Everyone can guess at what my answer is.

We see another tactic on here that people use to increase their ROI (a nice banker term). There are many who charge others "rent" to use their SP. Why isn't that nice and cuddly? Of course, the renter assumes all the risk that he or she will net more SP in return than is paid out in rent.

I find it interesting that the term "rent" is used. Do you know what "rent" on money is called? INTEREST. And who charges interest? BANKERS.

Hold crap Batman. There are a number of whales on here who are the STEEM bank. Now personally, I have not checked into the rates so perhaps others on here can tell me. Are these individuals charging rates that are close to the FED making them bankers or much higher resembling loan sharks?

It is often said that economic systems need credit to expand. I disagree. Economic systems need money to expand. Credit, in this instance, comes in the form of loans with interest attached to them. Again, a way for the banksters to fleece people.

Fortunately, there are many who see through this and are taking action. I personally experienced some of this generosity (and long term thinking) and it excites me to see it expanding.

It appears that @fulltimegeek and @stellabelle have their competitive juices going. They are competing to get as much money out there as they can. However, unlike the bankers, this comes no strings attached. They are not "renting" the SP but delegating it to those they feel are doing all they can to push this site forward. My view is they understand the long term view of this site and how to make it successful. This will also add to the value of the steem blockchain which, in time, should make STEEM appreciate.

To see what they are doing, here is an article @stellabelle put up:

https://steemit.com/voteselling/@stellabelle/dear-freedom-and-whales-here-s-a-sp-delegatee-menu-to-solve-the-vote-selling-problem#@taskmaster4450/re-stellabelle-dear-freedom-and-whales-here-s-a-sp-delegatee-menu-to-solve-the-vote-selling-problem-20171128t215531883z

Sadly I was not listed which is an epic, collasal oversight...well we can forgive that, nobody is perfect.

Once again we go to the numbers to see what happens. @fulltimegeek delegated 5,000 SP to me so I will use that as a basis. I will also state that I did not look at their wallets so I have no idea of the total SP each has. That said, let us presume they each give out 5,000 STEEM to 10 people (50K) on a 500K account. That means they delgated 10% of their SP which comes off their personal voting power.

The ten people who received the SP have 10 votes at 100% daily to maintain the VP. This means there are a total of 100 votes. This is a minimum total since we know few people vote at 100%. So what is the average vote? Let us say that it is 25% VP (which is still most likely too high); the 10 people delegated now have 400 votes each day. This means that they can positively affect 400 different people.

Please bear in mind, ten people is only one person's delegation. There are two of them which doubles the number to 20. Hence 800 people possibly can be positively affect by the SP these two whales delegated.

I realize that people do not vote for a person only once and it is common to give someone a few upvotes a day. My point is that no matter how you look at it, if @stellabelle and @fulltimegeek spent the day voting at 1%, they would not be able to reach as many people

The downside of all this is that their VP goes down by 10%. If each of their votes is worth $25, it is now $22.50. That means they are getting less per vote, something a banker would never allow. Squeezing every cent out of each deal is what bankers do. These two individuals are not operating out of that mindset. Instead, they realize they will make a lot more money by the value of STEEM appreciating. For this to happen, getting other people making money on steemit is paramount.

There it is folks, the solution to what people have been complaining about. Delegation of SP by those who have it enhances the entire ecosystem. One person cannot be in as many places as 10. There are a lot of articles and comments on here. The power is from many people participating and growing it. I used the example of 2 whales, what would the numbers look like if 10 of them did this? You would be looking at 100 people getting increased curation rewards while also positively affecting via upvotes up to 8,000 articles each day.

It is time we all stopped thinking like bankers and, instead, thought ecosystem. The holy grail here is the growth and expansion of the ecosystem, not putting as many SP in our wallets as we can. Truth be told, approaching it in this manner will ultimately make each person's wallet more valuable. These two whales understand that. I only hope many others are following suit.

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Pictures by google images.