What drives a sustainable revenue stream? If we adopt Facebook's business model - where does that leave us?
DISCLAIMER:
I'm just a humble Aussie who swears like a pirate. It's a big part of my culture so please leave your prejudices against words at the door. I'm also here to offer a blunt opinion in order to stoke the flames of discussion. I understand that some of you will be tempted to react emotionally to what you're reading but please, keep it together and give me something real to chew on in the comments section. xD
White paper
"STEEM is constantly increasing in supply by 100% per year due to non-SMD incentives. Someone who holds STEEM without converting it to SP is diluted by approximately 0.19%
per day." (Page 8)
"Because Steem wants to encourage long-term growth, it is hardwired to allocate 9 STEEM to Steem Power (SP) stakeholders for every 1 STEEM it creates to fund growth through contribution incentives." (Page 9)
"There are two items a community can offer to attract capital: debt and ownership. Those who buy ownership profit when the community grows but lose if the community shrinks.
Those who buy debt are guaranteed a certain amount of interest but do not get to participate in any profits realized by the growth of the community." (Page 8)
The platform literally doubles the STEEM supply every year out of thin air which forces people to either dive into long term holdings aka SP which is rewarded with STEEM (air) in a 9:1 ratio vs STEEM holders or cash out.
Tulips are red, money is free
They are basically admitting in the whitepaper that the platform is designed to lock people into rampant asset speculation. "community grows" implies a future revenue stream where as the only revenue stream anyone can think about at the moment it seems is their own, mostly denominated in SP/SD of course and never mind the fact that Dan / Ned's pre-mined pre-allocated pre-(what ever the fuck you want to call it) stake (@steemit) is powering down at a princely sum of $359,002.77 per week while we all ponder the topic. :P
Any sane investor wants to know how the company they are investing in makes money. As far as I'm concerned, even from an anarcho-capitalist point of view - the fundamentals look awful. Rapidly declining market cap, no income stream aside from speculation. We're talking about tulips here.
Future Growth
The future explosive growth in some kind of revenue stream that would actually make this platform sustainable has been speculated on ;) but not yet demonstrated. Perhaps it will turn out to be a good investment but Steemit has a lot of work to do. I've seen the raging debate about the issue with flagging and the potential forking of the platform because of the already quick formation of a feudal like society. In fact 91.2% of the wealth is already concentrated in the top 1% with the next 9% taking an 8.08% share and the final 90% you say? Just 0.73% of the wealth. Not only is this proving my point of the fundamental flaw in tying social power to money but it's only going to get worse.
We don't actually live in a truly free market, you all should be well aware of the various 'government regulatory agencies' around the world that closely monitor and tweak financial law in order to prevent corruption, monopolies from forming etc (let me just have a moment here ha ha ha). True anarcho-capitalism is actually a terrible idea IMHO and would speed up the formation of monopolies like we already see in both the real world as well as steemit.
If it quacks like a duck
I'm just going to go ahead and lock it in Eddie, option a) Ponzi scheme and hats off to you Ned and Dan, it's not a bad one.
Besides, even if this place took off can you really call it innovation? If money is directly correlated with power, aren't we just recreating a little microcosm of capitalism? Haha Zuckerburg could come here and buy all the STEEM and fuck with this place to no end simply because to him the entire market capitalisation of steem is probably chump change right now.
Essentially only a noble leader (democratically elected?) resistant to the corrupting influence of wealth who refused to sell out on his/her majority stake (that's right @steemit, I'm looking at you) could lead us to the online social media revolution I see everyone on here so desperately seeking. Otherwise we just have another Zuckerburg on the throne.
In conclusion: right now as the community grows it is diluting an already disappearing market capitalisation which is being bled out by less than 1% of the total user base who are profiting from a mechanism that looks alot like a ponzi scheme. I like to remind myself that one should not immediately "assign malice to that which is adequately explained by ignorance" so lets be optimistic.
I am watching keenly to see signs of a sustainable revenue stream, until then I will remain the skeptic. :)
STEEMIT hasn't even scratched the surface yet. Happy to upvote. I recently posted a couple of articles about STEEMIT, the future of BLOCKCHAIN, Social Media CryptoCurrencies, and how Dan & Ned have just opened Pandora's Box on Mainstream Media. You may find them interesting to read. STEEMIT hasn't even started yet. Happy to follow and read more of your posts. You can also catch us on Twitter Twitter✔. Cheers. stephen
I've been watching with great interest and anticipation! Believe me when I say that I want for this platform to succeed, but I'm always reminded of Huxley's "The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."
I'm sure others will confuse my motivation with a destructive one and react emotionally but I'm a firm believer not only in the obvious that a hypothesis must survive intellectual attack but that the aforementioned attack is always a noble pursuit and both attack and defense should always be conducted in good taste haha. Of course this is the fucking human race we're talking about here though, my expectations are never set too high.
:)
" Of course this is the fucking human race we're talking about here though, my expectations are never set too high." I get that. I have been Investing for over 30 years and have picked some good stuff and of course some not so good stuff..!! It's all about understand the vision. I have no doubt that STEEMIT will go on my "good stuff" pile and I will look back in 6 years and think, well that was so obvious..!! Cheers. Stephen
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