Defenition of financial pyramid:
"A pyramid scheme is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products or services. As recruiting multiplies, recruiting becomes quickly impossible, and most members are unable to profit; as such, pyramid schemes are unsustainable and often illegal."
What it reminds me?)))
at what point have you been told you need to recruit people in order to earn money here? the site offers investments and a service (in much the same way as you tube does, by the way the vast majority of people posting to you tube are making very little as you need roughly 1000 veiws to make $1 )
And you can't make even that much if you are in some of the countries. Right now you can't make money on youtube if you are in Russia. Perhaps some day it will change, but that day is yet to come.
So far there is a big difference between youtube and steemit payments: youtube pays from successful sale of advertizing, steemit payments are provided only with sales of steem themselves. It is a pyramid scheme.
And so is every other crypto-currency out there. If you reach this conclusion regarding Steem, please be consistent and apply it to Bitcoin & Ethereum as well - all of them cover their expenses by "selling themselves".
Such schemes don't involve redistribution schemes that are based on the corporate shareholder model, as it is in Steem. The establishment and process of reaching the release candidate status will take money and time, and so naturally, this is a cost that investors will be bearing as part of their investment. The idea is that after the development phase is complete, from then on, the developers take a lighter touch to the system, and let it develop exactly how the users make it develop. There is nothing stopping individuals or groups forming to fund systems that interact with and add value to Steem, in fact, that's why I wrote this:
https://steemit.com/ascensionteam/@l0k1/steem-is-not-a-blogging-platform-steem-is-an-ad-hoc-public-and-transparent-corporation-let-me-explain
Steem is just the central component of an ecosystem that it aims to foster the development of. It is an accounting system and an investment system and a means for communication and marketing. Once the development phase is complete, this kind of activity will be far more important to the Steemosphere, and Steem itself will fade into the background as an infrastructure, not the core enterprise itself.