How many people here think Steemit Inc is incompetent in many ways, and through their action/inaction caused the monetary value of the network to crumble? There are quite a few, but how many of those people also think this is a good thing? Sometimes I feel like the only one.
Silver Lining.
When Stinc makes financial mistakes and has to dump coins on the market, decentralization increases. As the biggest stake holder on the platform by a huge margin, no matter who is buying up those coins ensures that the resources of the network are slowly being spread out. In the short term it looks like the network is dying, but in the long term action like this increases strength and trustworthiness.
Prototype for corporate ownership of community.
We've all heard the "Blockchain not Bitcoin" mantra. Of course, it's all propaganda, but it's still very important. If the powers that shouldn't be are running around saying stuff like this we shouldn't believe them, but it would be foolish not to listen.
DPOS provides a template; a bridge from decentralized idealism to centralized corporate totalitarianism. This is a good thing. While there are those out there who would argue that this is war and that no quarter should be given to the enemy, that is an uphill battle that could be avoided altogether.
At its core, what 'blockchain not bitcoin' really means is that 'we want to maintain control'. Not only does DPOS provide the bridge that bonds decentralized monetary policy to a centralized one, it also provides the bridge for the entire republic governance structure that they've already been so good at manipulating in the past.
DPOS is a republic just like the majority of other governments out there. These systems get manipulated in a way to make communities think they are in control with their vote, when nothing could be farther from the truth.
Steem and other DPOS projects providing this template for the establishment is a good thing. It means instead of trying to fight crypto directly they can clone a project that they like and tweak it to their desire. Rather than trying to stop other people from forming the communities they want to form they'll be busy brainwashing their own communities into thinking they are the best option.
The very interesting thing about DPOS is that the more corrupt/incompetent it becomes, the more power gets decentralized through the system. You can only sell your stake once, so even if one person started out with 100% ownership of everything, eventually they're going to cash out or be forked out by the network.
Compare this to fiat and we see a superior system. Not only does money buy you a bigger vote (obviously the elite loves this) but fiat can be corrupted almost indefinitely. How many fiat currencies around the world have hyper inflated but the citizens were still basically forced to keep using it? Crypto provides the healthy competition that prevents this from happening with borderless open-source solutions.
With a product like Steem, hyper-inflation is impossible. Even if the code was changed to generate 100% inflation per year every user with stake would still be able to curb that loss by simply upvoting themselves and doubling their stake by the end of the year. Because stake-holders control inflation this makes the devaluation and theft via hyper-inflation much more difficult, if not impossible.
Remember this the next time someone says that Steem's high inflation is devaluing the currency. No, it isn't. 10-20% inflation caused Steem to drop by a factor of 50? I know math is hard but GD. Come on now.
Steem lost 50 times its value because it never should have been valued that high in the first place. We need to stop looking at the spikes in price as a good thing. These are attacks against the network; speculative bubble attacks that are seeking to buy the network in a similar fashion of a hostile takeover.
The only way for the establishment to control these markets is to have skin in the game in the first place. They can't manipulate the price down without first manipulating the price up. The ultimate game is to cause a frenzy that allows you to sell at the top and then cause another frenzy that sends the price nose-diving so you can buy in even cheaper later. The elite has been playing this game for quite some time. The economy gets exploited exactly like this every time there is an economic crisis.
HF21
I was vehemently against the hardfork. I thought it was the worst idea ever. However, now I see that it wasn't that big of a deal, and it promotes the whole idea of bridging centralized architecture with DLT. Steemit Inc is just that: an incorporated entity. They aren't looking to attract a million red fish. They are going whale hunting. It's more the job of the dapp devs to cast those red fish nets. I still strongly believe that Trickle Down economic theory could work as intended when implemented in these new economic paradigms (cooperative capitalism).
You can't see the forest from the trees.
In one or two years we are going to be having a vastly different conversation accompanied by vastly different opinions than we have now. This is problematic considering how little fundamental developments will have actually changed. We desperately need to divorce ourselves from the concept of equating speculative volatility to fundamental value.
And you can't smell your own shit on your knees.
The irrational speculative market combined scarcity mindset blinds us from identifying and contemplating the real issues. The best advice I can give is try to fake it till you make it. Perhaps that push in the right direction will yield positive results sooner rather than later. My rule of thumb is that I'm living in scarcity until I can afford to support myself for a full Bitcoin cycle (~4 years) without any income. Until then I have to fake it.
Conclusion
DPOS is easily corruptible, but that corruption faces checks and balances when housed in a transparent system. In comparison, fiat is a dinosaur that can't evolve; sucking up all the resources until it eventually starves itself out of existence.
Steem has sacrificed some decentralization and immutability for speed and scalability. We shouldn't blind ourselves to this fact. We need to embrace it and build/invest in the projects that best fit this niche. To do anything less would be to cheat ourselves.
Stinc still has a ton of stake and influence on this platform. While some think this is a bad thing, it also gives them the most incentive out of anyone to bring value to the network. Who captures that value? Everyone. The old centralized systems take everything for themselves and more. This is where the real competition lies: not with blockchain vs blockchain but blockchain vs the established meta.
I love the hope in your posts as they offer it in a different perspective. Here I am going for the line of fans can now support content creators and get something in return vs spotify or Netflix subscriptions but trying to avoid the technical aspects of it, and there's the whole side of it that you bring which is years in the making.
I have taken this opportunity to buy some steem at what I think are quite low prices (I've been here since March 2018 and think it's the lowest I've seen). Could blow up in my face but there's still good things happening on the chain I feel.
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If you believe in a community that is bonded to a cryptocurrency it takes very little risk for possibly huge payoffs. $55 buys one millionth of all Steem in existence at this moment.
The problem most people have is that they are always trying to min/max and extract maximum value, then they get upset when their massively overextended position blows up in their own face. The trick is to throw down exactly as much as you believe in the product.
In that case, I have bought about 1/100,000th of all steem atm! And in the 18 months I've been floating around, I've seen other projects vanish, blow up (in a bad way) or turn back in to hobbies that doesn't listen to any feedback from its community.
Yet I see steem, still going, still with a core of witnesses coming together along with loads of development of dapps and now a new model of curation. It's here for the long haul I feel and I am too. Seems a lot of measures are being put in place for scalability.
I've bought as much as I'd like to now and we will see how it goes. The rest of my money is going towards other "more stable" long term investments (real estate)
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There is a silver lining for sure. That steem can only be sold once.
I just raised my stake to celebrate newsteem exceeding my expectations off start.
I like how you mentioned that the 50x higher price wasn't healthy. People weren't buying it with intention of using it. Now it is a more reasonable price to allow for mass adoption.
In your opinion what is a more reasonable price?
I like to think Steem should be worth around 50 cents to 2 dollars depending on it's stage in the cycle. Its not an 80th place crypto. But it's also not fun to speculate on.
I'm curious to read more about where you think the discussion is headed as I lole this topic and your ideas.
If we all learned to ride the bubbles better the currency would regulate itself. I have a theory that the bottom value of crypto is doubling on certain time frames. Steem's all time low was around 8 cents... and now it looks like we are experiencing another local low around 16 cents.
However, the time frame here is over two years, so we might actually be a bit oversold right now.
From this point forward, I'll be using a baseline for Steem of doubling every year. I think if the price of Steem is less than x5 the baseline it is safe to buy, but once you start getting x10-x100 above the baseline you're begging to get burned.
Doubling in value every year is an insane metric. For any other asset it would be ludicrous to expect this kind of return. However, with crypto it spikes up x2, x4, x8 and we don't even question it... we just want more. We need to start questioning it. Personally, I'll be doing the most analysis on Bitcoin because it is the most predictable and has ties to every other project under the sun.
If Bitcoin is bubbling it's about to lose 80-85% of its value while everything else is about to lose 90-99%. I believe that Bitcoin will bubble again between the end of 2020 and the end of 2021. Until then, I have plenty of time to build and not worry about the noise.
Thanks for honest perspectives as it really provides great insights as to how the changes are impacting us all and the part we all play. Surviving this all has been a great experience and achievement so looking forward to better days!
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I never got upset at the selling by Steemit Inc. You hit the nail on the head, many often cite the tokens being in the hands of a few people as one of the major problems. I agree with this assessment although I feel over time it changes.
Steemit Inc selling means someone else is buying leading to further distribution of the token.
Even if it is purchased by the 2000 Dolphins, it is spread out among more accounts.
This will all put STEEM in stronger hands.
I don't know who you are, but me either.
Been missing these posts man! Hope your back improves. Have you tried acupuncture? My wife uses it and raves about it, it’s helped her with a lot of ailments.
I too think that we are too used to overvalued everything. It’s nice that some prices are up for altcoins but I think in general we are inflated in the crypto environment right now. I’m not minding the lower Steem price either. It gives lots of people plenty of opportunity to buy in at rock bottom prices. One of these days I’ll work on getting up to dolphin, I’m just trying to see what bitcoin does and I can use my hedge.
I originally thought that STInc not selling their stake this month was great. Now I’m more in the court of damn that sucks, they aren’t spreading the pool out even just a little bit.
I've thought of acupuncture but I also hate needles.
I think I should try it at least once though.
😖 needles are intense. How's yoga going?
Missed the Sunday morning class due to a long night shift...
I feel like I need to start doing it on my own a lot more though.
The windy road to exceptional health is quite the adventure?!!
Wouldn't you say?
We've got this 🐢👣🐢👣🐢👣
#onestepatatime
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