Why would it be a scam just because of that?

As an investor, I like that feature. It creates more long term stakeholders. The more people that are vested in the success of the coin the better, and as you said... there is less downward pressure on the market which means it takes less new money to drive the price up. To me those are good things not bad things, but I do understand some people may not like being locked in for a year or more. That is how I invest in cryptocurrencies anyways... long term investments, so it doesn't bother me I guess.

sheesh...if true I call 'scam' as well or pyramid scheme is more apt...(new money drives price up because old money used and/or can't get spent)

The token system is a little convoluted.

I get leveraging your coins for a bigger future payout by powering them up.

I get cashing them out.

I don't get why I'm exchanging them for other steem brand coins to do these things? Seems there should be a more elegant way to do the same thing without burdening the user with excessive "what should I do? What is this? How do I do that?"

Good point, let me think about it.

(why not girls? https://chaturbate.com/female-cams/) Sooooo NSFW

They don't want to exit.  People have been exiting, and deep pocketed insiders are eating at their profit buying up coins to project the market is stable, and if they didn't it would plummet and it would be the end.  They want some hope to continue to exist.  It's the old crutch technique. 

It was mentioned above, but let's delve into a use case for advertisers.

So we assume the artist is established.

We assume that advertisers have trouble getting the attention of public.

Control features built into the steemit platform (who gets access, how much access, time of access, ect) allow the artist to offer materials for sale (membership, bounty, bid) and the advertiser can quickly get ad to public, and likely use the artist's userbase, to target population segment. Control features. This can be developed much deeper and further, but that's your expertise--I'm good at general strategy (know thyself).

Of course you refuted my argument (you left out control features--that's innovation, the new way).

I'm not really talking about tipping per-se--I'm more talking about paying for content.

Edit: but even that is irrelevant because bloggers won't force their customers to tip or pay only in STEEM...

You might be able to argue that they will allow users to buy things from bloggers, but users will prefer to use credit card and maybe BTC which they already have. They see no need to convert to STEEM first. Programmers will provide what the users demand. Bloggers don't want to burden their paying users with converting to STEEM first. Golden rule is never make it difficult for people to pay you. Always provide multiple payment options. Bloggers can accept STEEM from those who already have it (i.e. those bloggers who earned STEEM from blogging), but from users who have credit card but no CC or BTC but no STEEM, the blogger would prefer to make it easy for the user to pay otherwise user may not pay. We humans hate hassle points.

As long as the user can choose the amount to upvote, then they will be able to tip at their discretion. I'm assuming it will move to a more user defined experience (as it should). My guess is the current method is to distribute the rewards in a controlled manner--think slow burn for orbit.

I'm not saying that advertisers will pay for the entire reward. I'm saying that is part of the solution, but the major part will be followers rewarding a successful brand--whether that brand is a musician, a camgirl, or anonymint--content providers spend years building an audience and that audience will pay to reward them for the effort. It's followers who will buy steem, the same way they buy songs on amazon or tokens on chatterbate or gold on reddit (which is the dumbest thing ever since it doesn't go to the one who made the comment).

I would counter that content providers create demand. If I'm a musician, why would I stay on soundcloud and force my followers to listen to endless stop smoking adds if there was a place I could get a reward for my content and the adds are (here's a major question brewing)?

How will advertising be handled? A fee based on the option of choosing advertising (or not) would be an interesting proposition--though I'm just throwing out the first thing that comes to mind.

There is no funding model in Steemit that can work. Dan can build all the market places he want, but no one will buy STEEM to go use his market places, because those same merchants (or similar products) will also sell for fiat and BTC else where. Steemians will power down STEEM POWER to STEEM and use his market places sometimes, but the other times they will cash out. There won't be a net incoming demand for STEEM other than from speculators. But speculators don't keep coming in forever. The price can't go to infinity. Thus the cost of funding the bloggers will come from those who trade more often, or everyone powers up so it is paid by all investors. So why invest if there is no great transactional utility for the STEEM token and the cost of paying bloggers comes out of the investors pocket?

It is very difficult to create exclusive demand for a CC token. Bitcoin locked up large wire transfers and avoiding the banks' paperwork requirements. No one will have a reason to go buy STEEM to go make a transaction. No one has an incentive to buy STEEM to gain more voting power, because the whales drive the voting and you'd be crazy to invest $millions and lock it up for 2 years.

Looks like a new search function got added (might have missed earlier, not sure) and a follow button--now I can follow Shelby, smooth and few others without running all over the site.

Has anyone thought about the implications for monetizing constructive criticism yet?

I posted a few hours ago and got $390, how long until I can withdraw?

Cheers.

I saw it, was thinking, "Damn, they're fast!"

Looks like a new search function got added (might have missed earlier, not sure) and a follow button--now I can follow Shelby, smooth and few others without running all over the site.