Good post @krnel.
I could go down the list of "Reasons not to invest?" and put a check mark next to every single one when it comes to Steem/it, and easily defend my reasons for doing so.
On the "Why invest in a company" side, it is more of complicated situation. Some could be viewed as favorable, some not.
(Nevertheless this does not guarantee failure. There are many well-known examples of businesses that were pitched to intelligent investors who made this sort of analysis and declined to invest, followed by the business becoming a success, sometimes a big one.)
I skimmed through the list but I don't recall seeing management on the reasons to or not to invest.
Steemit as a platform, as a concept, the code the way it functions is actually rock solid. It's great system for blogging. The steemit system works.
It's the organizations that have tricked people into thinking they control what happens. They decide what is worth rewards or not. New people think guilds own the platform, which they don't but it looks that way to many.
It markets its self as a great place for everybody but that is not the reality now is it?
I know what it is like to be in favour of the whales. I know what it is like to fallout of favour for criticizing how some things work here. I have even been mocked afterwards.
The devs can't really make huge changes if only a few users are being effected so certain individuals go and make bots that piss everyone off until the devs make changes for them.
Steemit looked promising but to be honest its the people that made it great.
Something just isn't right and everyone can feel it. Everyone feels it.
Best investment comes from gut feelings.
No one wants to spend 8k dollars just to have 1 cent upvotes. The distribution of tokens is what stinks, bad.
I absolutely understand that too.
"Belief in Management and Leadership"
Skim less, read more? ;) Thanks for the feedback.
Hehe, I didn't apply everything to Steemit, such as the "secret sauce" is not missing since chainbase is pretty unique, the fastest blockchain out there, no? Success can indeed and does happen without "passing" all of the above for sure! Thanks for the feedback and upvote.
The graphene blockchain code is open source and can easily be copied. At least one if not more than one other blockchain has been launched since Steem using that code. Moreover there are other blockchains out there that are close enough (for example lisk has 10 second blocks).
Furthermore 'secret' doesn't apply since the methods being used are all public and can be copied if there were a demand for it (the aforementioned Lisk being an example of something using similar methods)