I have not bought thousands of Steem and I have never really invested a lot of fiat. I would say that approximately 99% of my stake, past and present, since I joined in July 2016 comes from rewards. For those reasons, I have never really been able to see things from the same perspective as a real investor. I am and have been an investor in terms of time spent, contributions and effort.
That being said, it has been easy to argue and to be against certain propositions and changes due to my own standing on this platform. Today, in this post, I will go against that and my former position and I will look at this whole "Steem-thing" from an investors eyes instead.
Why should I invest my money in Steem?
Self-votes makes it relatively easy to get a nice and juicy ROI. If I have the energy to publish content... Spam and piss-poor quality posts would obviously make everything so much easier.
Why should I manually curate content?
With the potential of getting decent curation rewards, while supporting other people...? - Even though I personally love that exact reason, it's obviously not that interesting as I have zero, or at least very limited intentions of minimizing my own ROI.
Why should I sell votes?
A much better option to get a good ROI, especially as I earn both curation rewards and money for the vote I have sold.
30/70 Split-Suggestion.
30% for the creators and 70% for the curator. This would eliminate spam and encourage manual curation. High quality content would ultimately be rewarded more than garbage and junk-posts, and would also encourage creators to bring their "A-game" at all times.
This would eventually lead to a more pleasant time on Steem, as a user, as I will be able to read a lot of amazing stories and other outstanding contributions. This should also, hopefully, be beneficial for good contributors, as this might increase their chances of getting rewards from others too.
50/50 Split.
Basically the same as above, but less successful. Would not counter bid-bots, vote buying/selling, spam or encourage authors to bring their "A-game" as much as the 30/70 split.
Look, I am an investor. I don't really care about you, I care about myself and my own investment... But, if I can enjoy some of the stuff you write, I might actually give you something for it. But, I will obviously make sure that my ROI is as good as it literally can be before I do it.
Oh, I would ultimately get an even better ROI if the price of Steem would rise... So, I might actually be willing to sacrifice some of my own earnings, for now (very short term), to reward others for bringing in more investors and users, as that would ultimately increase the price. That would give me the chance to laugh all the way to the bank, while I'm driving there in my new lambo.
Honestly speaking...?
I don't really like or agree with any of this, but they are pretty dope reasons to be an investor. I can totally see why greed and selfishness has taken over Steem. < insert Nike's catch phrase: Just do it. >
The first condition of value creation is to create consensus among people, to get people to agree on objectives and common rules to observe toward those objectives. This is what every endeavor needs, including steem.
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If everyone is trying to get ROI, then curation makes zero sense. Each post gets one upvote from the curator trying to get ROI, and no one else upvotes that post because they don't want their curation to the leeched by previous votes.
Also, Steem doesn't curate posts. Steem is the backend. It is the frontend that is responsible for displaying content, therefore, forcing users to obey curation distributions makes no sense, and should be eliminated from the consensus layer.
Have you noticed how the new communities popping up don't award interest to stake holders like Steem does? Steem gives 15% inflation simply for having stake powered up. This mechanic should be removed and given to users looking for ROI. This is accomplished with SteemEngine coins via Virtual Mining, but there are many other ways to accomplish this goal as well. My suggestion was to allocate those gains to people who hold funds in the bank account (locked for 3 days rather than 3 months).
So, you don't agree with my point of that most investors are trying to squeeze out as much as possible, for their own benefit? It doesn't really matter how they do it, the thing is that they are.
Your suggestion sounds pretty neat, but I haven't looked into it at all actually. What I've written above, is basically what I see, and hear investors do. It's not my "usual" perspective, so to speak.
Yeah the new communities are some kind of sham, too hard to figure out what is going on underneath the hood there!
I came as an investor but have seen the potential of so much more. However, even as an investor, I now visualize how trying to optimize the protocol for oneself may be the short term viable option but not the long term one. I find myself trying to help in influence the areas where value can be created longer term for a more sustainable ecosystem instead of short term return (although I do diversify to get a return as well).
I know you do and I truly believe that more should do the same. Steem would be in a much better condition if everyone would. I don't have any problems with people seeking short term results... But I don't like when they only focus on short term gains.
This is why we cant have nice things,...
I'll never invest another penny into steem, sure I will power up the rewards, but I draw the line after realizing the truth about the centralization around the #bidbots and @ngc owning the whole place and penalizing me for months for doing what I want to do! I'm going to go flag some of his bid bot buyers for rest of #seem-ternity!!
I'm mad as hell and I can't take it anymore @ngc, & @berniesanders!
Flagged this post because I absolutely do not agree, I think steem is going to sub 10 pennies!(unless something drastic changes)
Sub 10cent steem will be a bargain.
Those sellers can only drive the price so low.
There are only 300m steem.
800k a month is 9.6m a year.
If stinc controls half, ~15 years and they are out of money.
Let's hope it doesn't take that long for them to pull their heads out of their asses.
Like I said in a previous comment:
That being said, I can't really see why you would be in disagreement with the post. Feel free to clarify that. Don't you think these points are truly great for investors?
I'm not saying that it's good for Steem... I am saying that it's great for investors who's eager to get a good ROI. I mean, even in a scenario where you are being "censored", you could just sell your votes to earn a ton as an investor... Right?
I know people who have invested thousands in Steem. Some of them do exploit vote sellers to get a return on that, but they also create good content and give out good votes to others so I don't mind too much. There are others who just take and there are ways to deal with them. How it all works seems likely to change again but the big players need to consider whether the masses will want to join Steem. We need some mix of investors and regular users for it to keep going and gain value.
Yeah, this is so true.
Seems to me that many of our "big players" wants investors more than anything... And I won't tell them that it would be a bad decision for Steem, but I totally agree with you that they need to consider if they want masses or not. I am all for masses, but many of the things I see and hear seems to counter that.
We need content to make the platform attractive and a lot of people who can provide that do not have funds to invest. They want to earn from what they do. If Steem becomes just about self votes and bots then it will lose value. I know it has been going that way, but there is still a lot of great stuff here.
I've seen a bunch of cool things going on lately, but I am still skeptical. Especially due to the sort of "mixed feelings" there seems to be about bringing in the masses or not. Everyone wants to profit, nothing wrong with that, but you can't eat the whole cake and expect the cake to magically just appear again.
People have to sacrifice something at some point.
I want to see far more people benefiting from Steem and not just a few who probably do okay anyway. For those in places like Venezuela or India a few extra dollars can make a real difference. For now it is a bit of a closed club. There are issues with usability and abuse, but things have improved a lot in the last year or so with far more options in how you can access Steem. For me the money is a bonus as I like being part of a community.
Exactly. How cool would it be to actually give a large portion of Steem there. Instead, we often see pretty much the opposite happening. Downvotes and flags for "disagreement of rewards" or whatever... It's weird.
This is and could potentially be a real game changer, but money is the first and most important reason for people to come here.
Steem has always been advertised like a place where you will earn a bunch of money for sharing whatever content you want. It has been advertised like a "clone" of Facebook, but decentralized, and with the money-factor. With each "like" you get, you earn money...
It's difficult for people to stay when they don't earn money, like they expected to do. If you have been promised hundreds of dollars per month extra or whatever, and you get only a small fraction of that, you're on to the next "big thing" out there instead. Many of the people don't get involved in any communities and they don't make friends or anything, because they only see $. When the money doesn't come their way, they leave before they've even started to engage.
@hitmeasap
i see you sometimes sell epic tokens to me and buy them again the same day. What are you doing with those tokens? Are they for gambling?
Like today for example you and kim0412 dumped the price to 0.00008 and now you and other people will start buying again probably. Makes no sense to me other than when you would need the coins for something.
Hey @niel96,
I would prefer having that discussion elsewhere as this is non-related to the article itself. You can easily chat with me or anyone else related to epicdice in their discord channel.
I will obviously answer your question either way, and while I can't speak for kim0412 or any other users out there, I will speak for myself. It's basically just one huge "experiment" from my side. I have sold large portions of my tokens on multiple occasions to see what happens more or less. If, how and when I have impact on the market, and for how long that impact will last. I am not done on epicdice and like you said, I will buy more tokens again. However, I want to do my "tests and experiments" while both the distribution rate and burnt amount is still low, as I will have a much easier time to collect tokens again compared to if the distribution rate and/or burnt amount had been over 10% for instance.
And yes, the amount of Steem I've gotten from any of the sales I've made have been used for gambling. Also much in an "experiment" to try and test things out. All in all, it's basically just one large experiment from my side, to do a large "testrun", but I lack the necessary funds to do the entire testrun without selling tokens.
I have managed to do about 7 out of 10 different things I have planned so far, so I will probably buy and sell more tokens during the next two weeks or so. After that, I plan to hold the majority of the tokens I acquire, and I will start to power up my dividends.
I have no idea why anyone would want to invest here from my personal perspective. I have been an investor here since 2016, bigger in the beginning, and little bits throughout, and then all that investing for nothing after that big asshole @gtg comes along and permanently censors me & greys out my posts, so now I will spend the rest of my time spreading the word! lol I was about to upvote your post until I realized I did not agree with point 1 about self votes??
Honestly it sounds greedy to me you big baby!
https://steemit.com/psychic/@coininstant/trump-using-my-words-again
As you can see (below) or not Steemit is just another centralized website just like IG or FB, you can't say whatever you want without repercussions!
However steemit is worse than FB because I never once got censored on FB! Not even for posting dick pics! lol Here I cannot do a thing, so I mad as Hell & wanna see it go down out of spite, just to watch @gtg go broke! down steem - don't buy, don't buy!
You are totally free to do whatever you want with you stake. Up- or downvote. I honestly appreciate it nevertheless. Regardless of whether you are in agreement with the post or the first point or not, it doesn't really matter because it's still true. It doesn't matter if I like it or agree with it either... But I think it fits perfectly with the overall behaviour and mindset of the majority of users on STEEM. Especially with the "investor"-type of users. Self-votes and selling votes are the best options to earn. I am not saying that it's the best for Steem, I am saying that those are the best things an investor can do for good ROI.
I have never posted dick picks on FB, so I wouldn't know about that... But I have been banned, on more than one occassion, on multiple accounts for far less "threatening" things, so that's what I would call censorship. On Steem on the other hand, I've never been banned, but I have received downvotes (flags), and some of my posts have been invisible at first glance because of that. However, they are not invisible, they are basically one click away, so I wouldn't call that real censorship... But I obviously understand what you mean by it.
That being said, "no censorship" is not the same as "no consequences". I personally would never pick a fight with a whale for instance. Just like I wouldn't pick a fight with Terminator. I know my place so to speak, and I'm cool with that.