In some of my last posts I have talked about the value of steem as a token, what gives steem value and why would you buy it.
There are only two things that would make someone buy steem and power up:
- Increasing their voting influence in the platform.
- Getting returns from curation rewards.
The problem
I currently hold around 17,200 SP, this gives me the ability to upvote content and give the author 0.20 USD. I believe that most people wouldn’t invest this amount of money for such little influence.
On the other hand, I can get up to 10 SP per day on curation, which means that to make back my 17,200 SP it would take 1,720 days or almost 5 years, in crypto time this is an infinity.
Because steem is highly inflationary there is no real reason to buy, hold and wait for a better price. So speculation is pretty much out of the picture.
These factors combined make steem very unappealing for large investors. If we consider that you could make money by posting then the probabilities of someone buying steem in the market gets even slimmer.
Possible Solution
One possible solution to this could be to give special perks to SP holders in Steemit.com. This would add an incentive to buy steem and power up.
These incentives could vary from trying new features first or being able to access private sections of the platform.
Applying this should be fairly simple, the platform would unlock some parts of the website to SP holders, just like it does now with the ability to tweak the % of whale's upvotes.
Well, I did "buy steem and power up", I think before I even made a post. I wanted to have some influence and help the community and Steemit's success because I viewed the platform as revolutionary and a great medium for content creators like myself.
I am a bit disappointed at the amount of, what I consider, "trash", as in low quality posts, that flood the "new" category. I only use Facebook for sharing the work I do on morality, truth, reality, consciousness, and the like. It has no other purpose for me other than an information market to get more people aware of the state of our planet and how to correct things. As such, seeing how much "entertainment", "photography, and the like that fills up the "new" section, is not something positive for quality content creators who want to get messages of truth to improve the over all quality of life by people becoming aware of issues and then being empowered to act upon them.
I hope to gain more and more SP by creating more content, and hoping "whales" and "dolphins" recognize its value and upvote it so I can convert SBD to SP. I will also continue curating, although that does not earn too much and takes time. I am still learning how that works. I was previously upvoting content ASAP, thinking that was good, but apparently the author gets 100% and I get hardly anything when that is done. So I still need to learn how to do this properly.
I will use my SP to upvote the quality information that matters in this world, and not the "filler" "entertainment", pictures, art, etc. that seems to get attention. I want things to change in this world, and the only way is for quality information that matters to get to more people.
With that said, I am into Steemit for the long haul. I put $150 into my first Bitcoin purchase for the sole purpose of buying STEEM, and putting it into the platform. All my SBD is converted to SP as well.
Well that's what I have to add. Take care. Peace.
Thank you for your comment,
I believe you should get more for your $150, this could incentive more people to buy and power up.
I like the idea, it gives the people with higher SP a reason to hold.
Yeah I think we need to give them a reason to BUY, then power up and hold... Steem is the central point of the whole system, it needs to have value for the upvotes to be worth something and for SBD to maintain the peg.
I currently hold around 17,200 SP, this gives me the ability to upvote content and give the author 0.20 USD.
Prove it!
Haha, but seriously, the problem is not SP, it's Steem, that's the real point of failure and the answer to the question of "where does the money comes from?"
Many here voiced our concerns for weeks and months but Steemit is not really a platform where criticism and dissent is highly valued. No smart trader or long term investor will keep Steem price up forever, it inflates no matter what you do (powering it up just make it dilute its value slower...).
The only possible solution I could think of is to monetize the site via ads and make companies "pay" by buying Steem to support daily/monthly payouts and Steem price.
There, 15 cents! not even 0.20! :(
I really wouldnt like to have ads, I prefer to give special features to people who buy steem and power up
The author reward is proportional to (number of votes)exp2, afaik.
I know.. I mean the value for people buying steem.. why would you buy steem on the market right now?
Hehe, but as I explained, the problem is not only SP, it's Steem. No one actually needs Steem or Steem Power if you think about it. Good content creators like yourself already generate plenty on their own. Neither Steem or SP are good long term investment (that's my opinion from my humble trading and investing experience) because both dilute over time (SP much slower than Steem). So there's not really an incentive to buy either currency.
My solution may have some perks but I can see how some companies (especially Bitcoin and Crypto oriented at first) would like to display ads here. Buying ads via Steem to support the price and payouts is the most logical move at this point IMO.
@moonjelly I like your critisism and I think the scam part is when people actually buy Steem with BTC, while the big Whales trade Steem for Bitcoins. They tell you invest, while they cash out.
By the way, what about plagiarism? I think someone stole my ideas, where I barely got votes on it. You change the text to be on the safe side. He got almost 50 bucks for it compared to my tiny 0.14 cents. Talking about ripping off someone ideas.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@conspiracynut/things-you-might-regret-having-done-on-steemit-an-instruction-on-how-not-to-fall-into-personal-traps
Here the post that came later . WTF?
https://steemit.com/steemit/@voltarius/how-to-maintain-a-flawless-steemit-reputation#@conspiracynut/re-voltarius-how-to-maintain-a-flawless-steemit-reputation-20160824t065438100z
Content here definitely have value if properly monetized. But by buying Steem or SP no one is actually gaining anything either on the short or the long term. The minute I see a proper business plan to monetize content created here that's when I would definitely consider throwing some money in the platform. I think most people with investing and trading experience are well aware of that by now, so that's why Steem's price is plummeting and will continue to do so unless that's addressed.
But actually, IMO its good it there is more smaller investors. This gives better distribution.
I posted it already here but I will post it here again:
The thing is, if you charge 1% on SBD then it wouldnt solve the lack of value of steem.. you would have to charge it in steem but that may be inconvenient since I believe the idea is to use a stable currency like SBD for buying and selling goods.
i think peopel with big SP should have extras vs peopel with small or almost none
@chitty, doesn't the value that you can add to a post increase beyond $.20 when you votes on more popular posts that have already gotten a lot of votes from whales and dolphins?
If you don't know this already, you can check out your stats here :
https://steemstats.com/#/
Find a post you want to up vote and vote on it. Then put the author's username into SteemStats.com and click on the button that looks like horizontal lines inside a circle to see the impact of different voters. You can see how much you increase the post value when it is already trending v.s. new.
Am I correct that you have a bigger impact on posts that already have made a lot of money, or am I miss understanding how this works?
Also, I think the bigger issue for getting people to purchase Steem is to show that doing so has real business value. Just investing in it in the hopes of the value increasing or to gain more influence here alone isn't enough. I've written a post that's at the top of my blog that explains this issue as well as how I think whales (and dolphins) can help to show there is real business value in investing in Steem Power.
The amount of value you
I could give anything from 15 cents to 2 dollars maybe, but my point is that the amount needed to have my SP is not proportional the influence I have... if more perks are added to large SP holders then more people will buy and power up.
Sure, I totally get what you are saying. Essentially your argument is that the cost of SP is to high. However, I'm not sure that's really true for businesses. Many businesses pay $10k-$50k a month for advertising via FB and doing other media buying. They can spend that same money here to get SP and they would get a reasonable amount of influence that they could use to promote posts that help build their brand and sales through this platform and the best part for them is they don't lose the money they spend as an immediate expense. They are buying equity that also gives them advertising benefit. This explains my thinking on this in more detail:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@nathanbrown/top-4-ways-whales-can-increase-market-capitalization-of-steem-by-local-currency-expert-and-online-marketer-consultant
Do you agree with my analysis, or do you still think SP is too expensive relative to the influence it gives overall (compared to your personal experience)?
Good post,
I also wrote a post about the viability of selling votes, I think that for a marketing company its easier and cheaper to buy votes from 1 big whale than to invest 500k on steem power. I say 500k because anything less than that wont get your post into the trending page.
Buying votes makes sense to me as well. As for needing $500k, I don't think that is necessary. Having enough to vote up your comments on active posts can help a lot I think to gain attention. Also, a post that hit the front page from one $500k up vote would die quickly with down vot if people thought the product or company involved sucks. On the flip side $50k might get enough attention to then get more votes that get you on the trending page for a company or product that the community thinks is cool.
This is precisely why ads aren't needed and would be detrimental. If businesses want influence here, they should pay for Steem and contribute in some manner like everyone else.
Advertising is a free ride. Steem can disintermediate the advertising industry.
I agree, but why do you say advertising is a free ride?
Also, the inflation you talk about isn't an issue in the way you think it is. People holding SP don't lose value. It is more like a stock split. They still have the same vested stake a year later, they just have more SP that represents that same vested stake.
It makes sense for big investors, and really any investor when you think about it. Most of the people that join today are only looking for blogging rewards, and arn't actually buying steem. I'm sure once Steem graduates from beta stage there will be a better reward system for whales and dolphins alike.
We can hope.
I've the same problem, due to hold a very low SP all my posts are moved in to trash........
I'm aligned with your post... I think a system of incentives for active members of the community working to foster the adoption and growth os Steemit, whether via perks or special "remuneration packs" or whatever should be thought upon. Those promoting multilingual content, apps, new features, plugins, platform enhancements, coding etc... should profit from the future growth of Steem and provide the basis to pave the road for the acquisition of large investors!
I don't have lots of money to invest. I have a child off to university soon, so my money is going there. Steemit does at least give some return on investment. You can't rely on bank accounts for that these days, but there are plenty of other options. I can see that the whole Steem infrastructure is designed to discourage speculators. You have to believe in it to put money in. I just paid in some bitcoin I'd accumulated, but that doesn't give me any real influence. I think they have to find the right balance so that anyone can feel they have some sort of influence here. By all means give some perks to the big players to encourage them to invest and then Steem may keep some value. If people just take it out as fast as they can then it will collapse.
I'm along for the ride as I like the technology and I'm finding interesting people here to talk to.