I have noticed that useful posts can't get seen by most of the users until a whale upvotes it:

https://steemit.com/steemit/@anonymint/get-33-more-steem-for-your-steem-dollars

The design choice to give whales quadratic (votes x votes) influence coupled with the huge "pre"mine, seems to have crippled the utility of the site (either alone might have been okay). And apparently they had to do that for another reason, which is otherwise the free signups could be Sybil attacked and then users could amass 10 SP per free signup.

And that same design choice and "pre"mine is what is I think preventing a funding model that will actually work.

I think I see a catastrophic design error on their part, but I am not sure yet. I need to think this through deeply and carefully.

To some extent, this is true, but there are some universal moral standards. Which society condones lying? Where is that accepted moral behavior? In my opinion Steem was born of lies and perpetuates them today. Whether you want to call it a sneaky mine, instamine, premine, fast mine, or whatever, Steem loudly proclaimed in their three or four announce threads, "Fair launch! No premine, instamine, or fast mine!", when of course nothing could be further from the truth - the founders mined 80% of the coins generated during the short PoW phase by their own admission.

They perpetuate the lie by advertising, "Welcome to Steemit, decentralized and incentivized social media.", and generally plastering the word 'decentralized' wherever they possibly can. Of course it's not decentralized, the founders just mined 80% of the mineable coins, making themselves able to elect the vast majority of delegates in the DPoS validation scheme, not too mention wield the vast majority of the influence about who gets paid out and how much. Steem is decentralized like Turkey is a democracy.

Ultimately I think this dishonesty will contribute to the failure of this venture, in conjunction with an overly complex system of tokens and a failure to generate enough users to keep the bubble from deflating, but I'm sure the founders and very early adopters will walk away with a nice stash of BTC. C'est la vie.

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

Cheers.

So the "Steem is a scam" threads have started. LOL. It must be making some good progress

You want to know why I hate Steem? Is it because I'm tired of seeing steemit links to blogs with just pennies in payment? Is it because quality plays a minimal factor in success of posts and authors? Is it because it is a blatant scam and bound to fail eventually? No. These are all reasons to dislike Steemit, but not why I hate it.

I've been involved in the crypto scene for a long time. For years, the general perception of Bitcoin was it was just another scam, a Ponzi. Over time, this perception has changed. Way back when, the idea that public would adopt crypto seemed like a shot in the dark. Every day, however, more and more people are looking into cryptocurrency seriously. The fabled "mass adoption" is still very far away, but it's also closer than it was before. Why? Because the community as a whole is working to shed the negative image that much of the public sees Bitcoin and crypto with.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for pump and dumps and other scamcoins. I make my Bitcoin trading shitcoins. I go on Yobit every day and I buy and sell coins I know have absolutely no purpose. I invest in ICOs knowing that the people who buy in after me are going to lose money. So what's the difference between a scam like Steem and a scam like the shitcoins I encourage?

Steem, like PayCoin, OneCoin, and other awful, awful past crypto scams, pray on the general public. When someone makes a shitcoin to list on Yobit, that's fine, because everyone involved is gambling against each other, they know what they are getting in to. But Steem doesn't do that. As many have mentioned, the BCT thread, twitter account, and other forms of common exposure are very small for the size of the coin. People are being manipulated into joining this system outside of the crypto community. Someone said their mom started using Steemit. This is absolutely unacceptable, because these unknowing individuals are wasting their time and money to contribute to a massive scheme.

It's counterintuitive to the positive image the crypto community has been trying to build for years. What do you think would happen if, rather than in a few weeks (which will probably be the case), Steem keeps growing at the same unsustainable rate for a few months? What if it doesn't finally collapse until hundreds of thousands of people buy in? That would be fucking awesome for you and others who are fully into it right now, but what about the rest of the crypto community? What about the long term? Steemit can kill the trust the public has in cryptocurrency, the trust that is an absolute requirement for "the moon", or whatever you want to call a prosperous future for all of us.

Steem is a scam, and every member in this forum worth their salt either recognizes it or is benefiting from it.

The people who are making money on Steemit have a combination of three benefits:
1) Got in at the start and built their presence organically Wrong. I just started 2 weeks ago and have made over $850.
2) Have large amounts of Steem Power to dictate the direction theirs and others posts go Wrong. I started with the amount of SP they give you when registering (I think $10 worth)
3) Have a reputation among the whales Wrong again. I am yet a lowly forum troll like you.

So as of now there are a couple of ways to earn "$250 for a simple comment". You can fight against the thousands of other posts making pennies per post (despite having content similar in quality to top posters) and hope you somehow break through to a larger audience/profit. You can engineer (beg, whore, etc) your way into favor of the whales. This is a nice strategy... one that has made me and others hundreds to thousands of dollars. If you want to cry about it not being easy to do, then simply don't use Steemit. Do you really need to cry about it on Bitcointalk for eternity?

You can buy in at the peak of a bubble to hopefully recover your investments before the bubble pops and you are left with nothing. You can't tell the future. Many people thought Eth was a bubble when it was much lower in market capitalization. Steemit has much more use than Ethereum at the moment, and is growing much quicker with a more broad userbase.

None of those scenarios sound enticing. I'm going to stick to doing what I'm doing where I'm making steady crypto profits. In the meantime, I'm also going to explain why Steemit is a bullshit scam so others don't waste their time with it only to perpetuate the profits of the dubious whales the top heavy economy favors. It is sad that you could be the reason someone doesn't try Steemit and make hundreds of dollars like I have. I hope you feel happy with yourself? Good job, you cost them money (assuming they gave it an honest effort and don't quit and cry after being unsuccessful for a day or two.)

Ultimately they are just going to make money until people wisen up and stop buying into this massive bubble.

The people making big bucks off of Steem don't want to fix the system. It's broken in their favor.

If whales are dumping, even if the fish are pumping, the price is not going to hold, and certainly won't appreciate 10x.

I'm as perplexed, trust no one.

soon this pyramid will collapse and everyone will look silly.

Morals are subjective. They are derived from religion and one's upbringing, and everyone forms their own version of morals as they experience life.

To some a "sneaky mine" is immoral. Others may liken it to starting a business, and equate it to the developers/organizers of a start up obtaining equity in their project. Are all start ups and corporations immoral? Is capitalism immoral? That is subjective...

To some 12% annual inflation is an unsustainable pyramid scheme. Others may liken it as a good way to gain a huge userbase quickly, then leverage that userbase in the form of profitable features that are yet to be implemented. Can a business not change its business plan, or never expand into other markets? To judge something based on exactly how it exists today instead of where it is headed in the future may be a mistake.

I had already pointed it out 5 times but let's do it again.  If we use Alexa Ranking, Steemit is nowhere as popular as Reddit clones like Voat.  How could anyone say Steemit is mainstream when it has less users than Voat and other Reddit knockoffs?  As well Steemit has not been providing information like user retention, user attrition, et al.  I imagine thousands of users have already left the website, realizing they can't make $10,000 a post like a hot chick.     Never mind this is a coin where less than 5% of the total supply is available for trading.    There's red flags everywhere for me.

That they've disabled most of the reporting functionality of this site:

https://steemle.com/charts.php

Hopefully my reply there will hint to you that I think you picked a great topic to write about and even some of your prose was catchy and clever, but I think you missed the opportunity to make the key point. IMHO, you've got to resonate with the reader on a key point(s), else the follow through on votes won't be driven.

IMO, you lost the punch line when you delivered conflicting definitions at the end.

Also I think the "BITCH PLEASE" superimposed on Obummer's likeness appeals here on BCT, but probably isn't going to work well for an international site targeted to the masses. Obummer is highly respected here in Asia. I noticed Asians joining Steemit.

any comment about this?