Steem pyramid scheme revealed

[iamnotback]

They just see all those illiquid STEEM POWER valued in $$$$$$ (which is possible only because almost no one is cashing out and instead are powering up, except the probably the whales).

No, they don't really pay attention to the dollar value of Steem Power or think about cashing it out. Only crypto nerds think that way.

It is impossible they don't notice it. Subconsciously it is in their eurphoria.

Their subconscious has been trained to know money makes people happy.

Maybe when the amounts get big (successful bloggers, stars, other pros, etc.). The successful bloggers do want to promote their posts though, so they seem to often value moderate amounts of SP for its utility at least at market value, so even then I'm not sure until the amounts get quite large.

But if someone builds up a $100-200 from modest rewards on comments and posts, then they're going to take the liquid Steem Dollars as their reward and not be interesting cashing out $1-2/week from their Steem Power for the next two years. That's just not how people think. The SP is not what they see as the cash reward, the SD is.

Hehe, you were sleepy also. Hope readers understand that is what happens when we work too many consecutive hours. I did several 24 hour work sessions over the past week. Was necessary because the several guys who wrote the Steem whitepaper didn't bother to explain all the metrics to us. So we had to go figure this out from scratch, what they had been thinking about for many months or year or more.

Tangent out (not addressed to smooth), I'll know I am getting healthy when I can do longer marathon sessions than the younger guys (not there yet). I'm awake 18 hours now and just finished an intense 2 hour gym workout about 2 hours earlier. I'm sleepy right now, but I also feel ... I better not say...

smooth, I think you are trying to argue here that there won't be a lot of SP stored up to dump later?

That question doesn't even make sense to me.

Some users will want to exit later. If it is successful others will want to enter. I don't know which will be the stronger force over which timescale. If it isn't successful it will go to zero.

What point were you trying to make in text I had quoted?

I think I had made the point upthread that eventually those who have powered up, will eventually want to start cashing out their weekly amount. The illusion of printing money out of thin air is possible while most everyone of significance is powering up.

I agree if there is a lot of demand to enter Steem at that juncture, then the selling pressure can be absorbed. I think my point was there would be shift at some point in the future to more selling whereas right now we have apparently mostly powering up.

Once you've started the powering down, you aren't likely to revert because you'd reset the 104 week delay.

[1714862835]

1714862835

[iamnotback]

Even if it is linked externally, Steemit serving the links could be liable for using copyrighted content in their business. Although it is on the Steem blockchain, Steemit doesn't have to serve the content. They should implement a copyright compliance team. Steemit is a centralized entity and thus is liable.

That is unless the user is downloading a client and the user is deciding which content from the blockchain the user wishes to request and view.

So that's why this guy made $40,000 on this one single post.

https://steemit.com/piston/@xeroc/piston-web-first-open-source-steem-gui---searching-for-alpha-testers

Can the blockchain handle every user downloading the content in real-time from the witness nodes  

That would explode the bandwidth requirements. Also probably open the witness nodes to DDoS attacks. You must have some replication nodes then are users going to pay them with per access fees?

[smooth]

Even if it is linked externally, Steemit serving the links could be liable for using copyrighted content in their business. Although it is on the Steem blockchain, Steemit doesn't have to serve the content. They should implement a copyright compliance team. Steemit is a centralized entity and thus is liable.

That is unless the user is downloading a client and the user is deciding which content from the blockchain the user wishes to request and view.

So that's why this guy made $40,000 on this one single post.

https://steemit.com/piston/@xeroc/piston-web-first-open-source-steem-gui---searching-for-alpha-testers

Can the blockchain handle every user downloading the content in real-time from the witness nodes 

Witness nodes don't serve data to users. They just sign blocks. They're run locked down without any user-facing services.

User data is provided by API servers, similar to Electrum nodes. Anyone can run one. Whether that becomes a paid service (or similarly one provided by app sellers to their users) remains to be seen.

Most of the content is pretty small anyway. As discussed a few comments back, it is just text and links. Embedded media is external. The bandwidth requirements for a full node will be high due to the size of the blockchain, but one such node will be able to serve many, many users with relatively little bandwidth per user.

[smooth]

What point were you trying to make in text I had quoted?

That users are not particularly interested in cashing out relatively small, retail if you will, amounts of SP. They may not be for many years or even decades (of course assuming the platform becomes very successful, otherwise it goes to zero and none of this matters).

Once you get into the long term, the 2 year window can be largely ignored. There is pressure to enter and pressure to exit, with price determined by the balance between them. There is no possible clarity about how that balance looks in distant future.

[Lairew]

this is so epic

Dan: Steem is one of the only platforms that isn’t a Ponzi Scam.

https://steemit.com/steem/@dan/response-to-coindesk-article-steem-provokes-doubt-of-market-observers

[r0ach]

You learn some strange psychological things going on with this Steem platform.  For instance, I had 165 upvotes for a post and 2 downvotes.  I decided to look up and investigate who the two downvoters were thinking it might be some crazed Eth shill like Minecache...nope, two bimbos.  I have a feeling they downvoted solely because it was content on the front page they weren't interested in and wanted it replaced by mindless things like pictures of rainbows, cats, American Idol, etc.

I typically don't downvote anything, I just upvote the things I think are interesting.  I would downvote if it was just a spam attack like ASDFAFDSF, but these bimbos basically use a hivemind approach to launch attacks against anyone who doesn't cater to their vapid desires.  I'd like to hear what Anonymint thinks about this.  People who only upvote on posts they like and never downvote versus people who attack vote and the game theory surrounding it.  I haven't done a thorough investigation of all the incentives yet to figure out the outcome of all this.  I seem to recall there being incentive to not down vote just for the hell of it to screw with people.

I imagine if this thing was actually big with tons and tons of users, getting paid for a post would be rare and I think huge attack voting would occur and everything would resemble a Youtube rap video with 5000 likes and 5000 dislikes, then the game theory might change to where everyone is forced to attack vote.  I definitely need to put more time in studying this system.

[smooth]

I seem to recall there being incentive to not down vote just for the hell of it to screw with people.

Downvotes effectively cost you money. Every vote (up or down) reduces your voting power which means when you downvote and then subsequently upvote something else, the positive effect of the upvote is weakened.

This mechanism is quite hidden so it may not have much effect on behavior.

[Dafar]

I decided to look up and investigate who the two downvoters were thinking it might be some crazed Eth shill like Minecache...nope, two bimbos.  I have a feeling they downvoted solely because it was content on the front page they weren't interested in and wanted it replaced by mindless things like pictures of rainbows, cats, American Idol, etc.

Or maybe because you made a thread attacking bimbos?  

The incentive structure is all about appealing to the delusion with the content that is written. There is no economic incentive to organize around different communities than the to-da-moon blockchains for everything delusion.

Steemit is trading real money and the bubble only lasts for as long as everyone continues to POWER UP everything.

Eventually people want to start cashing out.

The reality that is likely to hit before that is the realization that giving money away for free creates a lot of discord, jealousy, game theory, anger, etc.. That has already started and it will grow worse and worse. Guaranteed.

I actually completely agree with these points. No one gets overtly jealous or hateful when they see someone's post getting a high # of upvotes on Reddit.. but you can clearly see it happening on Steem. Money changes everything and it will be interesting to see how these dynamics evolve when there is emotion is involved. As smart as the Steemit devs are, I don't think they have thought about all these factors that iamnotback mentioned.

However getting paid to post/blog is not a new concept, there was Bubblnews back in the day which was incredibly popular in Asia. I'm just hoping it grows significantly over the year before it's deemed unsustainable so my SP grows and I can cash out.


Also, to smooth or anyone who may have a say in Steemit... please update how everything is organized and categorized. I actually kind of hate the layout right now. It's hard to find a specific community or like-minded people to discuss certain topics with. No matter where I navigate to I always end up at the trending posts, which are personal intros or blogs 90% of the time and have nothing to do with what I'm actually looking for. Which again leads me to question whether Steemit is meant to be a personal blog or something akin to Reddit... at the moment it seems like a personal blog, as these are the highest paid posts and these posts are giving incentive to others to post the same way.

There's also a Search option in Steemit but it's a generic google search, why would I want that? I want to be able to search "bitcoin" and see the threads about bitcoin that have been tagged "bitcoin". Right now if bitcoin is not one of the options in the select topic drop down then I'm out of luck. I'm guessing these are all works in progress

[smooth]

Also, to smooth or anyone who may have a say in Steemit... please update how everything is organized and categorized. I actually kind of hate the layout right now. It's hard to find a specific community or like-minded people to discuss certain topics with. No matter where I navigate to I always end up at the trending posts, which are personal intros or blogs 90% of the time and have nothing to do with what I'm actually looking for. Which again leads me to question whether Steemit is meant to be a personal blog or something akin to Reddit... at the moment it seems like a personal blog, as these are the highest paid posts and these posts are giving incentive to others to post the same way.

Organization features like that are in development, starting I think with a feed of users that you follow (you can add users to your folllow list now, but it doesn't actually do anything).

Right now it is really just a firehose.

[iamnotback]

Even if it is linked externally, Steemit serving the links could be liable for using copyrighted content in their business. Although it is on the Steem blockchain, Steemit doesn't have to serve the content. They should implement a copyright compliance team. Steemit is a centralized entity and thus is liable.

That is unless the user is downloading a client and the user is deciding which content from the blockchain the user wishes to request and view.

So that's why this guy made $40,000 on this one single post.

https://steemit.com/piston/@xeroc/piston-web-first-open-source-steem-gui---searching-for-alpha-testers

Can the blockchain handle every user downloading the content in real-time from the witness nodes  

Witness nodes don't serve data to users. They just sign blocks. They're run locked down without any user-facing services.

User data is provided by API servers, similar to Electrum nodes. Anyone can run one. Whether that becomes a paid service (or similarly one provided by app sellers to their users) remains to be seen.

Most of the content is pretty small anyway. As discussed a few comments back, it is just text and links. Embedded media is external. The bandwidth requirements for a full node will be high due to the size of the blockchain, but one such node will be able to serve many, many users with relatively little bandwidth per user.

So as of yet, there is no economic model for serving bandwidth directly from the blockchain, because the serving nodes are not paid.

This is a significant issue because how do you pay them? If you take it from debasement, then how many do you decide to pay? It wouldn't be a market. If they charge users fees, then the white paper needs to remove the lie¹ about 0 transaction fees (although these wouldn't be transfer transactions). Besides there are transfer transaction fees when you transfer in STEEM due to the much higher level of debasement while holding STEEM (even for a short interval of time).

The other problem is who pays for the bandwidth for sending the data for witnesses to send to all these serving nodes. If the witness nodes send only to one or two serving nodes, then those have a privileged position. Again who decides how many serving nodes there should be. It isn't a market.

The solution obviously is the users must pay fees to the serving nodes, who then pay the witnesses to serve to them. The witnesses would raise their fees as necessary to limit the number of serving nodes they serve to, in order to maintain their performance attributes.

So if users have to pay fees to use the network, then their SP balance needs to be transferable, which is impossible in the current business model of free signup providing from free SP that is locked up until they earn 30 SP from site activity.

See the insoluble dilemma now?

(Obviously you can tell I've been thinking about how to make a superior clone)

Obviously they can probably just go with adhoc volunteerism short-term, but to really scale to millions of free signups they need to solve this.

The only solution I have been able to think of is that Steemit has to be monetarily incentivized and it must pay for this network serving cost so that users don't need to. But then Steemit, must address copyright compliance. This is the solution I am thinking of implementing for a clone of Steem+Steemit. Note I would replace the dysfunctional voting system (which will prevent Steemit from crossing the chasm away from its circle-jerk blockfantasy demographic) with something that isn't voting and works correctly to incentivize the highest quality content with sub-communities demographic targeting. And of course others can create other serving sites to compete with the original one, but the users will have to pay on those. Eventually all users will have to pay for network bandwidth. There is no way around that but hopefully a revenue model can pay that such as some sublime (inconspicuous and unobtrusive) advertising. The main serving site can be funded by the blockchain during the initial phase of onboarding millions of free signup users.

Specifically I am contemplating a design with no debasement at all even if they are not locked up for 2 years. Much superior for investors. Superior for users also, but I will explain that later.

The irony that I had thought of in 2014 the concept of voting from debasement before (but not the 2 year lockup and STEEM vs. SP split) and dismissed it as dysfunctional (per my explanation yesterday). I had thought of in 2015 to incentivize free signups from Facebook and verifying they are real people. And I had thought of in 2015/16 this onboarding as necessary to create an ecosystem around my microtransactions blockchain design. But what I hadn't thought of until I saw Steemit in action was the ability to pull in new users because of the ease of creating blogging content and rewarding them monetarily. I hadn't thought of making the signed up users into content creators of that sort. I was thinking of them being more of sharers of content created by existing indie artists, e.g. music (which I still think is also a valid onboarding model as well).

Afaics (perhaps I am wrong?), Steemit is a copyright clusterfuck thus far. There are copyrighted images being used all over the site. The copyright holders will come extract blood from the Steemit Inc.

¹ That is another lie that I forgot to add to my recent blog posts "Lies about Steem and Steemit", with the word "lie" freaking out AlexGR.

[iamnotback]

this is so epic

Dan: Steem is one of the only platforms that isn’t a Ponzi Scam.

https://steemit.com/steem/@dan/response-to-coindesk-article-steem-provokes-doubt-of-market-observers

I was going to comment on that here, but decided to let someone else do it first since my post count has been so high. My specific comment said something about the 80% premine with something like 40% going to a few guys on the inside. As far as I know from smooth's posts, that only 40% of the 80 - 90% "pre"-mine was allocated to free signups (and if their dysfunctional voting system doesn't cross the chasm, they will never reach to 20 million signups allocated which thus increases the insiders' relative portion of the "pre"-mine to greater than 40%).

Also the apparent 80% attrition rate means most (32%) of that 40% of that initial "pre"-mine will be unspendable (lost) money, thus decreasing the effective money supply (and market capitalization but coinmarketcap.com doesn't appear to realize this) increasing the insiders' share of the "pre"-mine to greater than 50%.

AlexGR, I should have wrote about this "lie" on my "Lies about Steem and Steemit".

[iamnotback]

Your "FUD" are my facts. It will end just the same as all those Ethereum supporters who said similarly. And then I had the last Bruce Wanker laugh on them, and eventually on you too.

Can you see what you are doing? There is reason you are being "Judged"

Do you think I care? I am just pointing you to the mirror. I don't want to join your circle-jerk. If you had something really viable that wasn't going to hurt many people as The DAO did, then I would be enthusiastic. Steem's collapse will be more interesting than The DAO in that we will have the names of the victims. We'll be able to compile stories of mothers who handed money to insiders that they could have spent on their children. It will be the posterchild of blockchains used to explain to the masses why blockchains are predatory scams wrapped in fantastical delusions of grandeur.

I think this mother has abandoned and oh my she transferred money into Steem (a victim):

https://steemit.com/@danielaonsteem

You are equating (as equals) my analysis (some Judging, but it is largely Thinking and some iNtuition) of an inanimate object to which you happen to be apparently very attached to, with your Judging of a person (myself). Which btw, is another shard of evidence of the delusional helium in the air of those supporting Steemit.

Judging Others

7 “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2 For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Ethereum... The DAO....   quotes from the bible.... "inocent victims"....   all fit well in the "Steem pyramid scheme revealed" thread

tl;dr of your post is Leave the FUDer alone..

Upthread you attacked me claiming I didn't admit I was wrong and implying I had an orders-of-magnitude worse error than the person who I corrected and he corrected me as well.

I explained that I did admit my error but he didn't admit I had pointed him to his error, and I also showed our relative error rates were only a double +34% vs. -76%. So you had pie on your face.

Now you refuse to admit you are wrong by judging my person because you are emotionally offended when I do my analysis (which you call "FUD") on an inanimate object which you are in (what I think is delusional) love with.

Also I want to back up and explain something to you about when I am working 18 - 24 hour marathon sessions. I've have been battling a chronic illness for the past 4+ years after an acute eruption May 2012 (at least, actually started minor nagging symptoms in 2008 reaching remitting chronic by 2011). Although I can't be certain as to the cause (and it could possibly be an accumulation of effects, such as the steroid drops I took for most 2000 to save my blinded eye and other exposure in the Philippines such as being infected Dengue and the numerous bouts with dysentery and amoebas), I strongly suspect that my illness could have been precipitated when my ex-wife infected me with a high strain of HPV on one last ill fated rendezvous in 2006 (which was also in the same month was sister was allegedly murdered by her drug addict husband). I think that because I was horribly ill for 6 months after that, plus my ex was later diagnosed by her doctor as having a high strain of HPV; and I didn't even come out of the hotel room for a month and missed my sister's funeral. 2006 was a bad year for me and my life went downhill from there. 2000 was also a bad year because I was in 3 surgeries to save my eye after an incident 12/1/1999 which has blinded my right eye. In 2006, my coolpage.com was winding down in sales and I had planned to start a new career move, but everything got fucked up by that one ill fated decision to meet my ex-wife to empty a storage unit we had shared from when we last "lived together" in 2002 in Corpus Christi. TX. (Note I don't do drugs) Most of the time I am not feeling like a normal person feels. The brain doesn't have the energy it needs so it struggles. It is not quite a headache, but it is a feeling of lacking energy to roam with the mind. Every thought requires energy. Every action (even getting up from the chair) requires energy. Everything is struggle. Now before in 2014 and 2015 (and even first months of 2016), I was in such a bad condition that I couldn't even muster the energy to accomplish much of anything at all. I was struggling to find the energy to tie my shoes. I would sit in the sofa and stare at my shoes for a few minutes before pushing myself to put them on my feet. Putting on the socks was the most exhausting part of it. Also looping the laces. Inserting the foot into the shoe was easier. Any way, I have improved with some treatments I have described in other recent posts. I am now at the level where I have pretty good energy some of the time, but I also have this feeling in my brain like it is tired (as if my energy is competing against the damage that was done by the years of illness). I often wonder if I have Alzheimers because now sometimes I can't remember what I did a few moments earlier. This impacts my ability to do complex things in my head as I forget something I just thought about. But other times I feel more normal, but still not 100% turbo mind as I was accustomed to in my life before this chronic phase of my illness. Note I do think I am improving. My athletics are starting to get quite good lately and this will be shown if ever I post my recent videos. My illness is something tied into the gut and auto inflammation. I don't have access to the best medical facilities here in Mindanao, Philippines (and I can't afford to go any where) so the only thing they were able to diagnose thus far is fatty liver and roughed kidneys. But they don't know what is causing it. As soon as I have enough funds, I want to go outside the Philippines to get proper medical diagnosis. I suspect maybe a tumor. I really don't know. I think perhaps fungal infection or chronic viral infection. HPV is known to lead to other complications after 10 years. Also when I had the ruptured acute peptic ulcer in May 2012, the acid burned all my organs in my abdomen and perhaps the h.pylori bacteria leaked into my abdominal cavity. I have most of the time some baseline hum of pain in my gut too. And the gut is always my limiting factor when I exercise as it will start to get so aching or weak that I lost the ability to continue. Yesterday on the boxing I was in beast mode and really feeling it but at about he 6 round my gut brought me down to the ground. I got home though and I was feeling like I wanted to go more rounds, very intense feeling which makes me very happy because it is the former self and I really miss that competitive energy and strength. Thanks so much to the universe for letting me start to taste that again. Maybe I am not too old and can get back my extreme athletics that I love.

But I am at least fighting well now and seem to be making improvements every week gradually. I have much less downtime due to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) past weeks (or maybe it is 2 -3 months now). Again my head feels like it is spinning (round and round) and I can't remember everything (the brain is not 100% recovered and I am pretty sure I have Multiple Sclerosis-like scarring although I haven't done and can't afford to do an MRI, so got to hope that is improving now which i think maybe it is). Now I am just at the stage of not being able to go full blast, but at least I am not wallowing in bed with CFS as I did most of the latter half of 2015. And I am starting to get some of my fight back. I was able to run every single day. Yesterday I was boxing your face in the gym and if the contorted heavy bag and bits of glove all over the ground is any indication, you had no more face. For me (perhaps it is my Cherokee or perhaps the Welsh/Irish blood), it is important to release these frustrations. Much better on the bag right than on a real person. The attention to detail I guess my German blood. I don't know what traits I get from my French blood. Or perhaps that is nonsense and I get my personality from random mixing of the genes and my environmental upbringing (which is another story as Steemit exhibits we all have a back story). I think the "introduceyourself" story telling on Steemit would be a lot more authentic if it wasn't motivated by big payouts for sob or blocknerd-affiation stories, but then I guess it might shift to people boasting about their achievements. But bottom line is that what matters in terms of content is the goal of onboarding for the ultimate goal of microtransactions ecosystem.

Btw, I planning/hoping to use some of my earnings from Steemit to send my gf and her sister back to finish college (starting Oct 1, they will work outside until then). So they are extremely happy about that. And so I can get some quiet around here during the day so I can focus on marathon coding sessions.

I have no health insurance. And I prefer it that way. I hate to leech off the government. I will pull my own bootstraps if I can just have the energy to do so.

[iamnotback]

I seem to recall there being incentive to not down vote just for the hell of it to screw with people.

Downvotes effectively cost you money. Every vote (up or down) reduces your voting power which means when you downvote and then subsequently upvote something else, the positive effect of the upvote is weakened.

This mechanism is quite hidden so it may not have much effect on behavior.

It seems perhaps that downvotes have a disporportionate effect on ranking. I noticed that after the three downvotes on my blog post that had at the time 150+ votes and $900 of earnings (which ended up  later cratering to $400), it was farther down in trending than posts with less votes and less earnings, as if the 3 downvotes were weighted more by that trending ranking. In other words, it appeared that the downvotes impacted the trending rank more than the earnings.

[iamnotback]

What point were you trying to make in text I had quoted?

That users are not particularly interested in cashing out relatively small, retail if you will, amounts of SP. They may not be for many years or even decades (of course assuming the platform becomes very successful, otherwise it goes to zero and none of this matters).

Once you get into the long term, the 2 year window can be largely ignored. There is pressure to enter and pressure to exit, with price determined by the balance between them. There is no possible clarity about how that balance looks in distant future.

That is what I thought you were saying. And my point is that the tiny amounts don't matter due to the power-law distribution. I argue, where the 20% who accumulate 85% of the wealth, will need to start powering down at some apex point.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/11/occupy-movement-wealth-power-law-distribution
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7107-why-it-is-hard-to-share-the-wealth/
http://physics.umd.edu/~yakovenk/papers/PhysicaA-299-213-2001.pdf

[iamnotback]

r0ach and Dafar,

The voting and reward system is critical to both long-term sustainability and also to crossing the chasm from an initial grouping of minds to a diverse set of sub-communities.

I am putting thought now into how it could be done another way. Popularity contests (determined by those already on the site) are not necessarily correlated to the "quality" of content we want on a site like Steemit.

Yeah Steemit will ride a bubble at least and there is unlikely anything any of us can say which would stop that pumpy aspect. You've got a lot of blockchain fanboys (and their one degree removed relations) who want to believe. So the emotional fuel is there to drive it. And the large rewards are able to tap into the hindbrain without the user even realizing (admitting) it. Money can create an emotional of "we are giving love". The hindbrain changes this from "I am a greeding motherfucker who wants mine" to "I am spreading the love". This delusion will work for a while as pumpy before the dumpy.

Well written article ! Keep up the good work and I hope lots of Whales

Me too!

And the hindbrain also works with the other hindbrain aspects of the person such as the economic incentive to support "causes" such as feminism (which can be the bimbo brigade factor, not saying that is the case though):

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aesr.ibiblio.org+feminism

(That link doesn't make Eric nor myself a misogynist!)

This is why I am contemplating moving entirely away from voting as the metric of post quality and rewards.

Social networking needs to be fun and allowing people to join like-minded communities is probably a crucial aspect of that, so they can avoid the friction with those whom they will not agree.

The politics of the younger generation are not the same as my X gen. There were some blogs on Steemit explaining that from the female perspective. I shouldn't be required to commune with people who I have nothing in common with.

Edit: this comment post I think reflects the dreams of many blocknerds to retire rich on a beach with a sexy girl(s):

https://steemit.com/travel/@heiditravels/bom-dia-portugal#@benjiberigan/re-heiditravels-bom-dia-portugal-20160725t230223956z

Which explains the high vote counts for travel posts by pretty ladies.

(Btw, I am almost already living that life living in the tropics with a sexy babe, but I have other problems)

Perhaps I should have done my Kimdot.com impersonation video (although our body fat differential is extreme, and I'll need very short ladies to make me look tall) on a tropical beach sipping MaiThais with 6 sexy bimbos in bikinis before hacking my reputation on the site. Ah no problem, I'll save that for when I launch my competitor site.

[AlexGR]

this is so epic

Dan: Steem is one of the only platforms that isn’t a Ponzi Scam.

https://steemit.com/steem/@dan/response-to-coindesk-article-steem-provokes-doubt-of-market-observers

I was going to comment on that here, but decided to let someone else do it first since my post count has been so high. My specific comment said something about the 80% premine with something like 40% going to a few guys on the inside. As far as I know from smooth's posts, that only 40% of the 80 - 90% "pre"-mine was allocated to free signups (and if their dysfunctional voting system doesn't cross the chasm, they will never reach to 20 million signups allocated which thus increases the insiders' relative portion of the "pre"-mine to greater than 40%).

Also the apparent 80% attrition rate means most (32%) of that 40% of that initial "pre"-mine will be unspendable (lost) money, thus decreasing the effective money supply (and market capitalization but coinmarketcap.com doesn't appear to realize this) increasing the insiders' share of the "pre"-mine to greater than 50%.

AlexGR, I should have wrote about this "lie" on my "Lies about Steem and Steemit".

Let's see it this way: Do I get any FB, twitter, reddit shared for posting? No. Do I care who controls their shares? No. Why would I care about who owns steem? As a user it doesn't matter (I have never bought steem except as a trader, so I don't see it as an investor).

Only for investors do these things matter and even then, we know that they are backing projects with ICOs, premines, centralization etc etc. They'll do their due diligence and invest accordingly.

[iamnotback]

this is so epic

Dan: Steem is one of the only platforms that isn’t a Ponzi Scam.

https://steemit.com/steem/@dan/response-to-coindesk-article-steem-provokes-doubt-of-market-observers

I was going to comment on that here, but decided to let someone else do it first since my post count has been so high. My specific comment said something about the 80% premine with something like 40% going to a few guys on the inside. As far as I know from smooth's posts, that only 40% of the 80 - 90% "pre"-mine was allocated to free signups (and if their dysfunctional voting system doesn't cross the chasm, they will never reach to 20 million signups allocated which thus increases the insiders' relative portion of the "pre"-mine to greater than 40%).

Also the apparent 80% attrition rate means most (32%) of that 40% of that initial "pre"-mine will be unspendable (lost) money, thus decreasing the effective money supply (and market capitalization but coinmarketcap.com doesn't appear to realize this) increasing the insiders' share of the "pre"-mine to greater than 50%.

AlexGR, I should have wrote about this "lie" on my "Lies about Steem and Steemit".

Let's see it this way: Do I get any FB, twitter, reddit shared for posting? No. Do I care who controls their shares? No. Why would I care about who owns steem? As a user it doesn't matter (I have never bought steem except as a trader, so I don't see it as an investor).

Only for investors do these things matter and even then, we know that they are backing projects with ICOs, premines, centralization etc etc. They'll do their due diligence and invest accordingly.

You'll notice that a very significant portion of people joining Steemit mention the idealism of blockchains and how it could improve matters. They are planting some of their dreams (the hindbrain will tie this all together with "give me money!" and "we are speading love") in the idealism of "decentralization" (nevermind that they never study the fact that Graphene isn't so decentralized).

Eventually the realization will set in that "they got the yachts, islands, and dreams; and I only got this lousy Tshirt".

The insider percentage is very important because as r0ach points out, it prevents an aggregate market. When you have 50% on the sell side, it is difficult to have market. The insiders are either manipulating to the upside or they are selling pressure. It drastically reduces the chance for any other size to exit with liquidity. (You'll retort that they can't sell for 2 years, but I will say that no one else can either, so it is still 50% sell pressure every 104 weeks)

If this a was a corporation where a larger fish could come buy it, then it might be okay. You might be able to argue that Facebook will come buy the insiders' stake but then how do they run it as a blockchain without inhibiting competitors and open source.

You see eventually an open system will compete and win.

Closed system have inherent systemtic disadvantages.

I wouldn't be complaining if the insiders took maybe 5 - 10% and had it locked up until they issued the free signup  accounts (validated as real humans who did not abandon their accounts). But the insiders get theirs no matter what happens on the follow through.

P.S. I am not attacking smooth. His stake is very small compared to the Steemit Corp and major insiders. Smooth is apparently one of the largest whales who wasn't an insider. Afaik, smooth had no input into the mining launch method. He is a bystander who saw an opportunity to mine. If we the political hacket MOB steal from smooth by saying what he did was wrong, then it is analogous to forking Ethereum to bail out those who lost to the DAO cracker. Changing the rules ex post facto, is the antithesis of fairness. If smooth had made loud noises during the ninja launch, it probably would have just forced Dan and Ned to do a premine. I don't think they would have changed to fair mine in any case, because note they relaunched when they didn't get the percentage of the tokens they wanted (due to a crash on their servers or something).

I do feel Dan and Ned deserve to make some money on this. They have done an important experiment and are demonstrating some aspects we are all learning from. And they will earn money on this. So it will all work out the way it is supposed to. The free market will balance out the outcome.

My stance is smooth got his reward for being very active and aware in the community and also for being a miner and involved with exchanges and generally being informed about all aspects of the finance side of crypto, as well as having a very calm, methodical demeanor and a high reputation in the community. I ignored that mining/exchanges/finance/trading side of crypto, because I am more purely focused on R&D and marketing (and also because my energy bandwidth has been too limited to do physical things such as mining or even cloudmining). Each of us has our strengths and weaknesses (or focuses).

I had some initial bewilderment bordering on bad feeling because smooth had sort of talked me out of taking Bitshare's group seriously back in 2015, when I was thinking about aligning with them. So I was a big shocked when he got rich from mining on theirs. But after more reflection, I realize he was sincere in all his communications with me and he simply saw an opportunity and grabbed it. I also realized I have to think for myself and can't put too much weight into any one person's analysis. But I still will read smooth intently. Also the more I study the design of Steem, the more I realize I wouldn't have been able to work with Dan. We would have fought. I would certainly have been kicked out.

[AlexGR]

this is so epic

Dan: Steem is one of the only platforms that isn’t a Ponzi Scam.

https://steemit.com/steem/@dan/response-to-coindesk-article-steem-provokes-doubt-of-market-observers

I was going to comment on that here, but decided to let someone else do it first since my post count has been so high. My specific comment said something about the 80% premine with something like 40% going to a few guys on the inside. As far as I know from smooth's posts, that only 40% of the 80 - 90% "pre"-mine was allocated to free signups (and if their dysfunctional voting system doesn't cross the chasm, they will never reach to 20 million signups allocated which thus increases the insiders' relative portion of the "pre"-mine to greater than 40%).

Also the apparent 80% attrition rate means most (32%) of that 40% of that initial "pre"-mine will be unspendable (lost) money, thus decreasing the effective money supply (and market capitalization but coinmarketcap.com doesn't appear to realize this) increasing the insiders' share of the "pre"-mine to greater than 50%.

AlexGR, I should have wrote about this "lie" on my "Lies about Steem and Steemit".

Let's see it this way: Do I get any FB, twitter, reddit shares for posting? No. Do I care who controls their shares? No. Why would I care about who owns steem? As a user it doesn't matter (I have never bought steem except as a trader, so I don't see it as an investor).

Only for investors do these things matter and even then, we know that they are backing projects with ICOs, premines, centralization etc etc. They'll do their due diligence and invest accordingly.

You'll notice that a very significant portion of people joining Steemit mention the idealism of blockchains and how it could improve matters. They are planting some of their dreams (the hindbrain will tie this all together with "give me money!" and "we are speading love") in the idealism of "decentralization" (nevermind that they never study the fact that Graphene isn't so decentralized).

Blockchains are an inevitable outcome of technology. When large databases can fit inside a mobile phone storage cell, there's no reason why you would have only 1 central database to serve the world. That made sense in the 80's/90's and 00's but it will not always make sense.

Let's say we go to 2030 and storage capacities that are normal are in the range of 50-100k TBs for a hard-disk equivalent technology that'll exist then. This type of storage would be sufficient to hold a lot of data currently held in centralized storage. Then you start questioning why is central storage and processing necessary and why is the middle man necessary if the sizes involved in these databases are so "small" that they can replicated the world over, multiple times, with simple equipment. It's that simple.

So, naturally, text/number based records will be the first to be blockchained. Images and especially videos less so - but it could happen if there's a leap in storage and processing.

I wouldn't be complaining if the insiders took maybe 5 - 10% and had it locked up until they issued the free signup  accounts (validated as real humans who did not abandon their accounts). But the insiders get theirs no matter what happens on the follow through.

Even if it started with an equal distribution, the shares would quickly accumulate because the poorer shareholders would be lured to sell in prices that thought were "OK". They'd be trading what -to them- are useless tokens worthless for their day to day survival, with btc->$$$ which have tangible RL impact.

And then people would again complain about the distribution which is so heavily in favor of the big stakeholders etc etc. It's the same story repeating over and over. Why? Because of the reality of wealth inequality and the priorities of life between those who have less money, more money, and ...a shitload of money that can afford buying facebook apps or games for tens of billions of $$$.

Remember: People were selling their BTCs at 10-20-30-50-100$ and thought they were getting a great deal.

[iamnotback]

Even if it started with an equal distribution, the shares would quickly accumulate because the poorer shareholders would be lured to sell in prices that thought were "OK". They'd be trading what -to them- are useless tokens worthless for their day to day survival, with btc->$$$ which have tangible RL impact.

The difference is the power-law distribution would be derived from competition. So you would have a wider diversity of whales not just the insiders. The power-law distribution doesn't give 50% to the upper 0.1%. Rather it is 38% to the upper 1% (c.f. the references I cited earlier today upthread).

Also I think we can keep the n00bs accounts locked up 104 week withdrawals, so the power-law can't force liquidation so rapidly. Giving the n00bs a chance to partake of the upside appreciation. The power-law distribution will still form amongst the content creators earnings as well, but again in a competitive environment.

[AlexGR]

Even if it started with an equal distribution, the shares would quickly accumulate because the poorer shareholders would be lured to sell in prices that thought were "OK". They'd be trading what -to them- are useless tokens worthless for their day to day survival, with btc->$$$ which have tangible RL impact.

The difference is the power-law distribution would be derived from competition. So you would have a wider diversity of insiders.

Also I think we can keep the n00bs accounts locked up 104 week withdrawals, so the power-law can't force liquidation so rapidly. Giving the n00bs a chance to partake of the upside appreciation. The power-law distribution will still form amongst the content creators earnings as well, but again in a competitive environment.

From what I'm seeing, it's possible to sell or acquire loaded accounts with a discount. And many n00bs do just that. Hey I'm selling my acc for 0.1, 0.2, 0.4 btc...