Your numbers scarily work out. Forget about the bidder, even if the bidbots were adjusted to guarantee a certain return (easily done by throttling bids and refunding bids after a certain amount), the bidbots are obviously profitable assuming all the SP is their own.
From my observation though, most (emerging) bidbots are purchasing delegation which gives a certain amount of risk, or they have a system that distributes the profits of the bid bots to individual delegators. So in some sense there is still a spreading out of value to multiple stakeholders. The whales that own their own bid bots or delegate further do rather cement their holdings further, though that's no different than them irresponsibly using their stake in many other ways. Something to pay attention to for sure.
Ah so my point before I derailed myself in the previous paragraph is that bid bots aren't necessarily a walk in the park either. But probably easier than other avenues, I am not certain.
The alternative viewpoint, however, is to recognize that bid bots are allowing others to extend their stake where as it was not possible before. Whether or not is used responsibly is the same old fight we always have about misappropriated value on posts.
I disagree with this unless they can not afford to purchase sufficient delegation.
The setup with delegators earning a return is a no-risk setup: only costs the bot operator a promise (and some development to include that feature). The bot operator still earns a commission from that as well.
Generally, when it comes to leasing SP, the more risk the operator takes (read: the more SP they lease), the more interesting and popular their bot becomes to the hungry masses. Some of the larger bots have had to implement minimum bids, or even launch additional bots with lower minimum thresholds because they didn't want to upvote too much and make it ultra interesting for their clients. Additionally, the curation rewards a bid bot earns go 100%, directly into their own wallet (SP), delegators earn nothing from that. So the bot (or Steemian) benefits increased curation rewards thanks to the leased SP/delegators, who get none of that.
What risk you talking about?
Being a poor bot operator who can not lease sufficient SP nor has the clout to gain sufficient delegators to become attractive an upvoter? Yeah, maybe I should cry a river for them. Or maybe, I couldn't care less about that risk tho.
Yeah wasn't focused too much on that risk, really. I didn't work out exactly how much delegations cost. It is a fair point not to care about them :P
You are right that the delegators setup is not risky at all. My point in bringing that up is that it doesn't all go to one place in that case (but it is proportional to delegators' stake.... So I guess it still favors the whale, no surprise there).
It is more than that as that scenario above is one bot servicing 10 people. even if they are all quality posts each day, that is a massive amount of value created for one account and only being distributed to 10 people. they could potentially not power up and convert 1000 SBD a day as well. at the moment, every 100 days that is 400K in value
I don't see how that's any different than 1 whale voting on 10 people though? Yes, the payment, but compared to the stake, I would say that's not as significant.
150 dollar whale vote (assume no other voters)
whale: 37.5 in curation
content provider: 112.50 payout
with 100 payment
whale: 137.50
content provider: 12.50
It is quite a significant difference considering distribution and spread of stake.
Right, I meant comparing to:
self-vote
whale: 150
That's really what I was getting at. I know, it seems like deflecting, because you might argue that the bid bot in between would hide it. But not really. That's why I chalk these issues to the same problem as misappropriated value. The bid bot is a distraction, but at least still distributes more than a self vote. I know, it's probably not much consolation.
it is a slight of hand trick isn't it?
Sort of. But I am angling it towards "blame the whale, not the bot" sort of thinking.