Not necessarily. Sometimes it is slower than syncing. It really depends on what causes the bottleneck. I can sync in 1-2 hours on a computer that is a few years old. YMMV.

In context it has a more specific meaning:

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dilution.asp

"Dilution is a reduction in the ownership percentage of a share of stock caused by the issuance of new shares."

Anyway, we agree that crypto investors don't like it and very few want to invest in it (though apparently some do and are). I don't think anyone ever suggested otherwise. I know I pointed that out as one of the biggest challenges early in this thread (or maybe another one like it).

One thing though -- this has been a constant as has never changed. It was always structurally unfriendly to crypto investors, so this can't explain a declining valuation. What has changed is that people have observed and are observing that the onboarding/growth strategy has failed and are looking for he developers to offer some improvements to the platform (or perhaps some organic growth coming from an unexpected source). As time goes on without any such improvements (or newly apparent growth), confidence that it will ever happen declines, and with that, the valuation declines too.

Something like 2-3 GB. It takes more disk space than that once stored in a database (was about 9 GB in the previous version, I think it might be less now).

@iamnotback

No one is making those speculators buy and hold all that liquid steem. They do it because they can speculate and are speculating. Either they believe there will be a price rise sufficient to justify the dilution they are incurring, or they are foolish and don't understand it. Either way, you are not being diluted (which is an actual word with an actual meaning: that your share of ownership of the platform is reduced) by inflation. Your investment may lose value because the platform as a whole does (dumb idea, poorly executed, etc.) but in that case, the liquid steem holders who are speculating by holding it will lose even more.

Also, it is very possible to sell your account at a discount. Posts are made to this effect on the Steemit thread semi-regularly. Many have done so. If you choose not to do so you are speculating on a smaller price decline than you would take by selling it (including the possibility of an increase of course), or you see value in the account name (which indicates and adds to platform value).

This is not a revelation and it is indeed a flaw. If you only want to appeal to math-oriented investors who think things through in that manner, then you are okay, but you won't appeal to investors who look at a price chart, see a declining trend and stop there.

Is this a fatal flaw? I don't know. In competitive markets small differences can lead to winner-take-all outcomes. A similar design that doesn't repulse less-math-oriented investors (and is neutral for math-oriented-investors) might do better. The higher cost of capital that results from narrowing the investor market is a disadvantage (likewise for cutting out medium-term investors as iamnotback has stated many times).


That's because these platforms are all complete failures in terms of adoption and use (doge maybe wasn't for a while, but it is now). So it becomes an empty shell that exists only for speculation purposes. As such it is worth more to a large holders who can manipulate the price than to small holders who can not (at least as long as foolish small investors are willing to keep funneling in outside money and losing it by being manipulated).

In a platform that were actually used for something, there would be degree of wealth concentration, as you say exists in everything, but it wouldn't parallel most useless altcoins.


There is currently no dilution of your share at all. It is being paid by liquid steem holders. SP is actually deflationary (or at least it was when I looked the other day; not a big chance since then).

If you earn via the blogging features, then you will gain share relative to both liquid steem holders and other SP holders, but if you don't you will lose relative to other active SP holder but gain relative to liquid steem holders, balancing out.

Fair enough, but he can't cash out 30% of a private business or real estate or many other investments in a week either.


I'm pretty sure it is. Just about everyone has been cashing out weekly (or close to it) including the Steemit account. I think the last number I saw was 35 out of the top 40 accounts or something. The Steemit account doesn't sell every single week but they do power down every single week and when they do sell they sell a lot (it seems often in negotiated deals). If anything the rate of cashouts is much higher now since nearly all devs and early miners are cashing out disproportionately (and own disproportionately approximately-100% of the coins, as you know).

BTW, my stake was closer to 2% than 1%, though it might be smaller now. You have to add a few accounts together.


I heard the interview too, and I'm not sure that's what he meant (I just logically think that makes the most sense). It was a very fast comment without a lot of explanation.

I do agree that there are clearly coin speculators who want to play a pump. Steem won't be for them. I don't agree that precludes there being long term investors who are not looking to play a pump if the investment looked otherwise attractive (which to many at the moment, Steem does not).

It is also entirely irrelevant if you read what I wrote which is that you would invest for >1-2 years if you believe the platform to actually have potential to succeed. Not to play a pump after a year of bottom fishing accumulation. As a candidate for a pump, it is a poor investment, but that doesn't necessarily make it a poor investment unconditionally, if it actually works (big if).


Well I can tell you from my personal experience as like the 10th largest stakeholder or so, that whenever I've powered down I've had NO problem selling the coins (tens of thousands) at close to the market price. The liquidity is perfectly sufficient. This has been true at every price level, before during and after the big July pump.

I think some people might confuse this because the trading volume and standing orders are relatively small, but this ignores the fact that demand for liquidity is also low (since people can't be selling too many coins at one time). So it just balances out, with a smaller market volume.

I think what McAfee didn't like is that he wouldn't be allowed to sell (similar to your point about not being able to exit on a pump), but it is hard to say. Possibly he just looked at the exchange volume saw a low number and dismissed it based on that.

That would require more than just changing advertising  (which they have never really done to any significant degree anyway). It would require greatly changing the UI and the entire web application which is currently very blogging-oriented

That said, there are other people working on different applications to work on the same blockchain, so maybe one or more of those will get it more right. That is my biggest hope for any kind of recovery at this point.


Pretty much agree, in principle, although the growth stalled even before the rewards had dropped much, if at all, so I don't think that is a major factor. Not having alternatives to blogging is a major factor. They are coming though, just not from Steemit Inc.

You could easily just simplify this to say that it is sticky nor appeals to almost no one at all!


Absolutely I would agree.


Can't agree with you here. The issue with locking up is not inflation. It might be that the application is a bad idea, execution is poor, competitors are stronger, etc, but none of those reasons for not wanting to invest in something for 1-2+ years have anything to do with inflation.

The liquidity factor is also negligible in those terms, where you are willing to invest for years because you view the prospects are very good. (Take AlexGR for example, he seems reasonably positive about it longer term, and likely doesn't care that he has to be locked in for at last 1-2 years.) Plenty of people invest in privately-held businesses, real estate, etc. without liquidity. Hell, even very large investments in highly-raded traded public companies aren't really liquid.

But whether we agree or disagree on this point doesn't really matter, since we clearly agree that the blogging model that is the focus of Steemit today is not a good model to want to invest in longer term (or at all). Frankly I'm disappointed that Steemit ended up going in that direction because the white paper wasn't really blogging oriented. I think that seems to be what they got done on the web development side in time for their (likely rushed) launch, so it ended up going that way.

Fair is a loaded word. I was using it in a sort of specialized but value-neutral way to mean that it isn't being inflated/diluted away the liquid STEEM is. With a position in SP, if the platform gains in value as a whole (market cap), you investment will gain in value as well. That is not true of STEEM, where you also have to beat inflation (not impossible that this ever happens, especially short term, but certainly a lot harder).

I agree that locking it up makes this a less attractive play for many traders. One of the real obstacles that Steem has always faced is being structurally investor-unfriendly. This is especially true because, even though as SP investor you have voting rights, the SP is so concentrated with insiders that the voting rights to a new investor, even a fairly large one, are all but meaningless.

Some made money, some lost money. Trading continues as always. Making blanket statements about "the forum" taking a bath is just trolling.

Also, cut out the insulting name calling. Personal attacks are not allowed

I agree with this. But, still, you don't suffer from the inflation. So you have a position that is basically a fair bet on the platform like any other crypto token that isn't hyper-inflationary. A forced long-term position, but still a viable position potentially.

I'll definitely bring your idees to the attention of the devs if I ever have the opportunity to discuss this sort of thing with them. Understandably there isn't generally a large appetite for major changes, but the more their ideas are apparently rejected by the markets the more there could be some receptivity. Maybe (in fact there is often a tendency to dismiss short term price movements as not indicative of much of anything, and there is a lot of validity to that).

The main reason is probably to incentivize locking up coins in SP, which is is needed for a variety of security reasons including reputation but even double voting (if you can instantly move your coins from one account to another you can vote again with the second account).

If you do lock up your coins you don't suffer from the crazy inflation, so as I commented to iamnotback above, you can't really count both as disadvantages. Pick one or the other.

A much shorter luckup period would probably still solve most of the problems. I didn't design the thing

That's basically nonsense and borderline trolling. "The forum" did not take a bath. Some people made money, some people lost money. I specifically remember a lot people posting near the top about taking profits. Trading continues as always.

These numbers can be misleading. I leave power down turned on all the time so I'm probably included (twice) in that 45, but decide what to do with the coins each time. For the past few weeks I've been powering them back up.

Many do indeed appear to be dumping though, including most of the founders and developers. I find that to be more concerning than what outsiders who bought or mined our coins decide to do either way.

Nothing happened. It was all FUD.

My personal theory is that the people behind it (I don't think BCX was working alone) did really think they had discovered a vulnerability in the crypto, but that was due to a misunderstanding of the math on their part. So it turned out to be a false alarm. But that could be wrong, and it may have just been speculators wanting to make money by shorting and FUDding. No way to know really.

I'd speculate that 2nd degree connections are a good portion of the population as a whole, and certainly a huge portion of the population with any money to spend.

Most people could count a few dozen to hundreds of "friends" and acquaintances to whom they could introduce a social platform if they wanted to (especially if doing so on existing social accounts). Square that and it is between 1000x and 50000x the number of directly involved crypto-heads. You don't really need to reach much beyond second degree, if the product is compelling enough to grab and hold interest once people are introduced to it (currently, Steem is not).

Even if these numbers are wrong (first degrees will have a lot of second degrees in common, for example; I don't know the numbers), reaching the second degree is a sort of proof-of-virality in a way that reaching the first degree is not.

I'd also speculate that Steem has not done very well in reaching the second degree, outside of some particular niche cases like professional bloggers recruiting each other to come and collect thousands of dollars per blog post when that was the case.


This is double counting. If you do lock up your investment then you don't have the massive inflation. Especially since liquid supply is now over 10%. SP are now effectively deflationary (though one risk is there is no guarantee that continues for any particular time into the future).

"Rube Goldberg", I kind of agree with and actual market remains questionable. I wouldn't say it is as clear from underlying principles that there is no market (as opposed to just a flawed/incomplete implementation and/or bad marketing), which in the case of Bitshares is something I argued with r0ach about way back in his Bitshares pumping days.

Maybe true, but it would be a lot more flawed if 30K free scammed accounts could have significant influence.

I agree with what you say, especially about the market decline killing the larger rewards, but there is a lot of confusion about number of upvotes. There are still posts with 100 or fewer real votes that get significant rewards ($100+)

There are an enormous number of bots with very low voting power. Some say that 50K or more of the registered accounts are just multiaccount farmers who harvested a lot of accounts with a good number of those finding their way to bot operators. (I don't know the actual number but I do know there are a lot,)

The system is designed to be sybil-resistant meaning getting ahold of 100 low-value accounts and upvoting a post should not really do much of anything. That's at least one part of the whole thing that actually works really well.

IMO the vote count should not be displayed at all, unless you decide to click through to vote details that show who actually voted and how much vote power each one has (the latter perhaps categorized into ranges). By displaying it, that creates a sort of vulnerability to sybil attacks where people are misled by a number that actually doesn't mean anything. Not my decision though, I can only make suggestions and in this case it has been ignored.

It isn't r0ach. First of all the thread isn't self moderated and second of all the message you quoted said that a forum moderator did it.