@fraenk , Thanks for supporting @geekydad (and for supporting me when I was in the plankton).
I ended up buying HIVE so that I could start sweeping my own dust. I probably shouldn't discuss masterDUSTation in public. MasterDUSTation involves the nasty habit of upvoting one's own posts.
Users in the plankton should never upvote their own posts. Plankton votes are so small that a self vote is never worth it.
Now that I can get rid of my own dust, I drop an upvote on any of my own post with less $0.03 in rewards or less ... or when I can't find other good content to curate.
The upvote calculator says that it currently takes about 900 HP to have a two penny upvote. It is usually takes $500 worth of HIVE for a two penny upvote. The actual amount changes with the size of the reward pool and price of HIVE.
The math is as follows: Each upvote reduces voting power by 2 percent. Voting power regenerates at a rate of 20% a day. That means a person can upvote 10 times a day. A two penny upvote would be worth a little under $0.20 a day.
If a person upvoted every day of the year (and the price of HIVE stayed the same); then they would receive 0.2 * 365 = $73 in value for a $500 investment. NOTE: half of the value of an upvote goes to curators and half to the author. So, a dedicated upvoter will get roughly $36.50 in curation rewards and distribute $36.50 to other authors.
The risk is that the price of HIVE might fall. When I joined, the price of STEEM was $4.00. It fell to a dime. Who knows where it will go next?
The high interest rate is the reason why people are willing to buy thousands of dollars in HP. The risk is that the price might collapse in which case the investment would be lost.