Steem pyramid scheme revealed

[smooth]

Nope. They were less willing then than they are now, or roughly the same. It was only the tinfoil hat nerds who were poised in the wake of subprime collapse. And we've already onboarded them. Mainstream nerds (the non-tinfoil hat variety) haven't gone all in yet on crypto, because the clear use case remains dubious.

Disagree and I wasn't even talking about nerds of any kind. Maybe you were out of touch being in the Philippines but in developed countries people were very willing to reexamine the status quo find an alternative to bankers and especially their bailouts. It was just colossally unpopular and very much at the front of mainstream financial desires for 2-3 years. Bitcoin wasn't ready to accommodate that demand, of course, or it may have actually happened.

Seems you are out of touch? The mainstream were not at all considering any of that. You might be thinking about your cohorts in the financial industry? That isn't the mainstream.

The mainstream have only heard of Bitcoin because it reached $1000. But it all happened too fast and was too crypto weird for them to jump into the bubble. And they were scared away from jumping into bubbles by the 2008/9 crash.

I think we are talking past each other and no I'm talking about Joe and Sally Sixpack, not traders or nerds.

They hadn't heard of Bitcoin of course, especially not in 2009 (most nerds hadn't either) so I obviously didn't mean that.

What I meant is that they were ready to try an alternative. Highly motivated and on a large scale in terms of numbers.

They did not have an alternative because they didn't know about Bitcoin, the technology wasn't ready even if they did, and cash in the mattress only goes so far. So they just kind of grumbled, a few protested, and mostly did nothing (what could they do, really?).

The difference is that now there is no interest to go even one millimeter out of ones way to stick it to the banks or get away from banks. People just don't care. Everything seems more or less okay. That is all too distant and attention spans don't span that far. Sticking with what you know is the path of least resistance without strong motivation to change, and there isn't one. Even outside of specifically banking, traditional bank-linked payment methods such as mobile payments and app stores do everything people in developed markets want to do. No need for anything else.

You have talked in the past about addressing adoption in developing markets and that may work. In (most) developed markets right now, it isn't going to happen.

If there is a bubble, (a larger group of) speculators will get excited and invest, probably in the form of ETFs or something else that fits within the existing system and makes it easy. It will do nothing to spread adoption beyond speculation.

[iamnotback]

r0ach, I agree the masses are out of speculation mode since the collapse of dot.com and subprime. Armstrong predicts they will come back in as the strong dollar ignites the US stock market bubble (capital fleeing Europe and other collapsing economies and the world being short the dollar due to the massive QE carry trade which must unwind pouring capital back into the US dollar).

What I meant is that they were ready to try an alternative. Highly motivated and on a large scale in terms of numbers.

They did not have an alternative because they didn't know about Bitcoin, the technology wasn't ready even if they did, and cash in the mattress only goes so far.

The difference is that now there is no interest to go even one millimeter out of ones way to stick it to the banks or get away from banks. People just don't care. Everything seems more or less okay. That is all too distant and attention spans don't span that far.

Can you cite for me any thing to back this up? Because I believe they were not seeking alternatives to mainstream financial options. Yes they may have considered opening a bank account at a local credit union, instead of a TBTF bank, or otherwise repositioning funds around, but they were not all interested in looking outside of preexisting financial options.

I had a friend who owns an Ace Hardware store in the USA (he was  fellow tinfoil hat as I was at that time), and he related to me that all his employees and everyone else he knew was entirely unwilling to consider gold and silver.

Also I think now if we are talking about mainstreaming crypto, we need to include the developing world also. Since Bitcoin was launched, so much has changed for example in the Philippines (and ditto Africa). People here own smartphones now. They are more and more connected.

[iamnotback]

The difference is that now there is no interest to go even one millimeter out of ones way to stick it to the banks or get away from banks. People just don't care. Everything seems more or less okay. That is all too distant and attention spans don't span that far. Sticking with what you know is the path of least resistance without strong motivation to change, and there isn't one. Even outside of specifically banking, traditional bank-linked payment methods such as mobile payments and app stores do everything people in developed markets want to do. No need for anything else.

You have talked in the past about addressing adoption in developing markets and that may work. In (most) developed markets right now, it isn't going to happen.

If there is a bubble, (a larger group of) speculators will get excited and invest, probably in the form of ETFs or something else that fits within the existing system and makes it easy. It will do nothing to spread adoption beyond speculation.

Seems to me you are talking potentials, and not what people actually did or if there was any indication that they would actually do. I might agree there was more potential then, but I don't think the potential to adopt Bitcoin was actually there (at least not where Bitcoin is in terms of crypto weirdness useablity even now), because they weren't willing to adopt gold and silver.

Also they were becoming more conservative switching from dot.com to real estate speculation. Now they've become even more conservative. Boomers are getting old. They don't want to change anything. My mom told me she has no time for anything. I can relate at 51, it is becoming more difficult for me to find energy/time for new things. I really need to focus.

If we are going to ignite anything we probably have to target the younger generations. Although I think we can find features that will reach up to all ages, but the most energy to adopt will come from the younger generations.

I think we need to move entirely outside the idea of an alternative store-of-value (not discarding speculation of course). For me that function of crypto-currency is not a selling point (it is tinfoil hat until we mainstream it). If we can end up with that feature as a side-effect of another onboarding method, then its icing.

Specifically I think we need to focus on aspects of medium-of-exchange and ability to raise funding from investors, as the key features that are unique. But we have to give the investors a solid business model. There is something we can do which I think will be very popular, which Facebook can't copy (at least not quickly).

My 17 year old daughter (with her 10,000 Facebook friends all over the globe) and my 20 year old son, are both asking me for online jobs. The youth are poised to try new things, especially if they are fun and lucrative. Do you think long-form blogging is fun for them! No way.

P.S. I am happy Rebit.ph exists. I've told them I might be working on something which would bring them a lot of business. I can sell Bitcoin directly to local pawnshop where I can pick up cash. So much more convenient and automated than localbitcoins.com (lower spreads too)

[smooth]

The difference is that now there is no interest to go even one millimeter out of ones way to stick it to the banks or get away from banks. People just don't care. Everything seems more or less okay. That is all too distant and attention spans don't span that far. Sticking with what you know is the path of least resistance without strong motivation to change, and there isn't one. Even outside of specifically banking, traditional bank-linked payment methods such as mobile payments and app stores do everything people in developed markets want to do. No need for anything else.

You have talked in the past about addressing adoption in developing markets and that may work. In (most) developed markets right now, it isn't going to happen.

If there is a bubble, (a larger group of) speculators will get excited and invest, probably in the form of ETFs or something else that fits within the existing system and makes it easy. It will do nothing to spread adoption beyond speculation.

Seems to me you are talking potentials, and not what people actually did or if there was any indication that they would actually do.

Again that should be pretty obvious with respect to Bitcoin as I included 2009 in my original statement, when essentially no one even know Bitcoin existed.

But there were hints of actual behavior somewhat later that support the idea. The concept and push for people buy coffee and do online shopping with Bitcoin (pre-VC) was not just tinfoils. There was an element of youthful enthusiasm there that came from seeing it as an alternative to traditional banks and payment systems. Now, no youth would pursue such a thing, because the enthusiasm would be directed elsewhere, to things people actually care about.

This is why the social media rewarding aspect of Steem has potential; because it is something people might actually care about. I don't think we know quite yet how that is going to turn out. I so don't like seeing little to no growth, but the potential for unexpected explosive growth due to some-unexpected-thing-that-has-unexpected-consequences is still there, I think.

There are probably other models of tying the distribution to something people care about, so people already have it and actually using it becomes the path of least resistance instead of a hurdle to overcome.

[iamnotback]

But there were hints of actual behavior somewhat later that support the idea. The concept and push for people buy coffee and do online shopping with Bitcoin (pre-VC) was not just tinfoils. There was an element of youthful enthusiasm there that came from seeing it as an alternative to traditional banks and payment systems. Now, no youth would pursue such a thing, because the enthusiasm would be directed elsewhere, to things people actually care about.

Okay this seems to be an ideological protest of banks, not a fleeing to a safer store-of-value. I thought you were advocating a financial crisis driving interest due to safety. Instead it seems you are pointing out the ideological desire to protest the evil of corruption.

Yeah that did seem to kinda come along with the sort of Occupy Wallstreet movements, but that seemed too frivolous to actually become substantial and sustained.

This is why the social media rewarding aspect of Steem has potential; because it is something people might actually care about. I don't think we know quite yet how that is going to turn out. I so don't like seeing little to no growth, but the potential for unexpected explosive growth due to some-unexpected-thing-that-has-unexpected-consequences is still there, I think.

I don't think we will get mass adoption with ideology for numerous reasons:

1. Ideological priorities are not unified all over the world. Philippines has acted forcefully on anti-corruption by electing Durterte! Westerners are apparently too divided to get it done (quickly, e.g. BREXIT an arduous process).
2. Ideology runs in short phases and not sustainable.
3. Humans are more self-interested and any ideological BS is usually when they are wasting time (and they eventually realize it).

I believe we only reach our goal by giving people something they selfishly need and want (and it must also be fun), which they can't get otherwise.

There are probably other models of tying the distribution to something people care about, so people already have it and actually using it becomes the path of least resistance instead of a hurdle to overcome.

The key is getting the token distributed so that we can build an ecosystem. But if you are thinking ebay commerce, then I think you are still stuck on the boomers and old dying shit.

And Steem doesn't appear to be distributing very well. We need millions of people with enough tokens to do some commerce, and not just dumping their tokens on exchanges as soon as they can.

[iamnotback]

To expound a bit, I think content producers are very interested in eliminating gatekeepers and parasite middle men. But content consumers don't have a consistent ideological stance.

So we can leverage ideology, but it can't be the driving force for the majority.

[smooth]

But there were hints of actual behavior somewhat later that support the idea. The concept and push for people buy coffee and do online shopping with Bitcoin (pre-VC) was not just tinfoils. There was an element of youthful enthusiasm there that came from seeing it as an alternative to traditional banks and payment systems. Now, no youth would pursue such a thing, because the enthusiasm would be directed elsewhere, to things people actually care about.

Okay this seems to be an ideological protest of banks, not a fleeing to a safer store-of-value.

Not driven by store of value, that part is correct. But it wasn't ideological. OWS was ideological and both OWS and grass-roots Bitcoin promotion pre-VC were both largely motivated by the same thing (response to corruption and systemic failure) but that doesn't mean the latter was also ideological. It wasn't. People were trying to actually implement a better mousetrap.

Instead it seems you are pointing out the ideological desire to protest the evil of corruption.

Not exactly. The obvious failures simply made people more open to trying new things that held some perceived promise to be better. It is a bit like being more willing to try a different job when you have been out of work for a while than when you are already employed but perhaps not in the ideal situation. It often takes some sort of disruption for people to break free of inertia.

But that break from inertia has a limited lifespan. By 2012-2013, the crisis and bank bailouts was old news and regular people stopped being open to "a better way" or interested in looking at it. Speculators, VC, and cryptos/tinfoils still were somewhere between open to it and highly interested, but not regular folk.

And Steem doesn't appear to be distributing very well. We need millions of people with enough tokens to do some commerce, and not just dumping their tokens on exchanges as soon as they can.

Some people dump their Steem tokens on exchanges, but not anywhere near all. I've looked at the transaction flows and I don't see that happening (my guess is that mostly the crypto-heads are the ones who dump and the people brought in from outside crypto don't dump as much if at all). However, the bigger problem is the stagnant growth at 5k-10k users.

[r0ach]

Out of all the Anonymint walls of text posted before, I don't think I've ever seen the hypothesis that the US released Bitcoin to try and take heat off the metals market.  As in, governments and bankers have multiple claims on the same bars of gold and have even gone so far as to sell gold that is still in the ground to people and call it "deep storage" years in advance, plus all the huge metals shorts and rumors of ETF silver being plated molybdenum, the 400 oz gold bars that were discovered to be tungsten inside of LBMA vaults, etc.

The US is in a somewhat bad position in metals compared to China and Russia who have been accumulating.  The Bitcoin premine was likely done by someone like DARPA and handed off to god knows who, then In-Q-Tel came in and bought up a bunch when it was single digits.  So the western governments/bankers are probably doing pretty well Bitcoin-wise, and all the Bitcoin China mines they just sell right back to us at almost cost.  This is why Russia isn't too fond of Bitcoin, they see it as some kind of trick to marginalize the metals market, of which they have accumulated.

Then you even have Ben Bernanke promoting Bitcoin and Hillary Clinton talking about how great "blockchain" is.  The Occam's razor solution seems to point in that direction.  They did things like kill Gaddafi and take the Libya gold, probably to extend the amount of time they have for how much physical they need to deliver to satisfy other countries.  Things like that were done to buy time for trying to create a digital currency replacement to fiat because going back to gold gives people power who they don't want to have it, like creating a bunch of billionaires in places like India overnight...

[niceman4you]

i recently joined steem but wondering why i am not earning anything there but this serves as a good revelation to me.

[iamnotback]

i recently joined steem but wondering why i am not earning anything there but this serves as a good revelation to me.

Thanks for giving us feedback. Feel free to tell us more, but since you are here, I'd assume you originated from crypto-currency realm and were not one of the mainstream from the outside?

Giving us feedback helps, since we are developers and there are other developers reading these discussions.

[Azael]

46 pages of this crap. Guys scams will always exist as long as people give money to them. Best you can do is warn and then report it to somebody who can bring justice if it is indeed a scam and move on instead of spending hours here debating since it solves nothing.. more people I know in real life have asked me about Onecoin than Bitcoin and I know friends-friends in the past who has tried to sell these energy drinks MLM stuff to everybody they know. Not bad people at all just stupid and blinded in the moment and they will never listen and only learn when they get burned.

[iamnotback]

Out of all the Anonymint walls of text posted before, I don't think I've ever seen the hypothesis that the US released Bitcoin to try and take heat off the metals market.

I did mention in my very first essay (also in comments that ensued) on this site March 2013, that Bitcoin's white paper appeared to be written to target gold enthusiasts.

But it is not clear to me if it was for the purpose you state, and/or for the purpose of helping to condition the world for the move digital currency and a global currency regime.

It appears to me that the real purpose of Bitcoin is to subvert the nation-state central banks and the banks that would try to create their own local electronic currency or otherwise resist the elite globalism hegemony. I would think of this as an elite thinktank doing creative destruction.

Also Bitcoin is helping to put the financial activities of those who would are awake on a blockchain so that when governements decide to start their wrecking ball with tax avoidance and money laundering prosecutions, they will have a nice list on the blockchain documented.

Then again, who knows. Bitcoin's development could have been funded by some rogue billionaire, or...

[iamnotback]

46 pages of this crap. ... and move on instead of spending hours here debating since it solves nothing..

You may not realize that some of us are very seriously commenting in this thread because we want to produce a winning strategy and project.

[Azael]

46 pages of this crap. ... and move on instead of spending hours here debating since it solves nothing..

You may not realize that some of us are very seriously commenting in this thread because we want to produce a winning strategy and project.

Alright you got me. Can you summarize it in less than 46 pages?

[xlilbearx]

So this is a scam?

[iamnotback]

Instead it seems you are pointing out the ideological desire to protest the evil of corruption.

Not exactly. The obvious failures simply made people more open to trying new things that held some perceived promise to be better. It is a bit like being more willing to try a different job when you have been out of work for a while than when you are already employed but perhaps not in the ideal situation. It often takes some sort of disruption for people to break free of inertia.

But that break from inertia has a limited lifespan. By 2012-2013, the crisis and bank bailouts was old news and regular people stopped being open to "a better way" or interested in looking at it. Speculators, VC, and cryptos/tinfoils still were somewhere between open to it and highly interested, but not regular folk.

I read that many tech startups had their garage genesis during the dot.com crash because many developers were unemployed and were fiddling around at home. So I do understand the concept.

Again the problem with ideologically driven motivation (their real reason was because they wanted to replace the corruption and banks which were the focus of the subprime debacle), is it it almost always unrealistic and has limited staying power, as you and I have both noted.

The best motivation is one that people need every day ongoing no matter what, and for which there is a solid economic business model. If some ideological motivation dovetails for some key users of the system, then great for the synergy of adoption. I believe we can do this now.

And Steem doesn't appear to be distributing very well. We need millions of people with enough tokens to do some commerce, and not just dumping their tokens on exchanges as soon as they can.

Some people dump their Steem tokens on exchanges, but not anywhere near all. I've looked at the transaction flows and I don't see that happening (my guess is that mostly the crypto-heads are the ones who dump and the people brought in from outside crypto don't dump as much if at all). However, the bigger problem is the stagnant growth at 5k-10k users.

Of course those buying in believe Steem is on the verge of changing the world and/or they believe they can milk more out of the system gaming curation rewards or some strategy, so they are not cashing out because of their beliefs.

Well I told you all last month in this thread that the usership would stagnate. And I told you why. I hope I am recognized for this. Because my plan is soon to tell us all how we achieve our goal.

The reason Steem is stagnating is because it a) really isn't a popular activity,  b) its main selling point is a lie, c) it has no viable economic model forward, d) it is competing against established sites in an activity with a small target market with no advantage of a viable unique selling point, and e) it has no viral engagement (for numerous reasons including crypto weirdness and the prior points in this sentence).

We need to correct all of those enumerated issues in order to succeed, and also we need to make the ecosystem has commerce the users want to spend their tokens on, so they are not inclined to just dump them on exchanges. Also we need the users invested into the system, and thus they have to feel that their are part of something extremely important which they want to support. And this needs to be popular which is something diverse people want to participate in, not just some weird demographics of gfs of crypto enthusiasts and those who want to blahblah philosophy and self-help melodrama.

I think most people tire quickly of wasting their entire day arguing in blog comments. I realize this is an addictive activity for unproductive people. Rather than having a site where the average person feels they wasted their time arguing, we'd rather have some activity where the users ends their day feeling very satisfied (even if it is another addiction, but at least a less contentious one that doesn't pigeon-hole people into activity which really isn't remembered as "fun").

Farmville was an addictive activity which was extremely popular on Facebook and people felt they were accomplishing something. The gamification worked to get them to spend money on it, because they became invested in accomplishing.

Deep argumentation is not a popular activity. That is not something that most people will be able to do well or feel accomplished. Many people would even be afraid of it.

[AlexGR]

b) its main selling point is a lie

People have paid bills with the money they made. Others are traveling the world and I think you said you'd be spending some of it for child support.

We can argue if that can continue indefinitely, but so far it is delivering.

Remember, even 1$ for a post, is 1$ more than what another network is paying you.

[iamnotback]

So this is a scam?

I don't think so. I mean it was heavily sneaky mined, and the concept of paying everyone for blogging doesn't work mathematically (they stated it was a designed onboarding gimmick), but it doesn't appear to be a scam although one could argue that it was consciously designed knowing it would fail, but afaik no one has proven that.

I think it is a very poor investment to make (but note my P.S. that follows in next reply to AlexGR), but that doesn't make it a scam. You go spend your effort blogging and the site pays you. As an investor you decide whether you think the design is viable.

The thread discussion has veered a long way from its thread title.

[iamnotback]

b) its main selling point is a lie

People have paid bills with the money they made. Others are traveling the world and I think you said you'd be spending some of it for child support.

We can argue if that can continue indefinitely, but so far it is delivering.

Remember, even 1$ for a post, is 1$ more than what another network is paying you.

The lie is for most people. And $1 is an insult (especially when we are asking people to do something which is time consuming, tedious, contentious, argumentative). Some of us made made money and I am grateful for it. I do hope @dan and @ned have made some money and gained valuable knowledge. I think they did an important experiment. Whether they knowingly created something to fail or not and whether some might fault them, it outside of my area of responsibility to comment on.

Another aspect of the "lie" is that we have to cowtail to whales on Steem in order to gain. It feels like we are not invested into something we can individually control, but rather we are subservient. It doesn't feel like we've escaped the gatekeepers and middle-men, so the ideological win has been diluted. What content producers want is to a level playing field and very large demographic reach.

There is a way to do this in a way that everyone is satisfied and invested. I will hopefully soon tell you.

P.S. there is another aspect of Steem which is that others may create new apps on top of it. So we can't be sure it will fail. Blogging may not be the only activity that will come to Steem. But the economics of rewards are unlikely to change much, so this lie will remain although with more popular activities perhaps no one will care about the $1 of earnings, but then what is the unique selling point?

There is more to come. r0ach might be correct that it settles at a lower price and then morphs into something else and comes raging back later. I dunno. I'm working on a different project.

[AlexGR]

b) its main selling point is a lie

People have paid bills with the money they made. Others are traveling the world and I think you said you'd be spending some of it for child support.

We can argue if that can continue indefinitely, but so far it is delivering.

Remember, even 1$ for a post, is 1$ more than what another network is paying you.

The lie is for most people. And $1 is an insult (especially when we are asking people to do something which is time consuming, tedious, contentious, argumentative). Some of us made made money and I am grateful for it. I do hope @dan and @ned have made some money and gained valuable knowledge. I think they did an important experiment. Whether they knowingly created something to fail or not and whether some might fault them, it outside of my area of responsibility to comment on.

There is a way to do this in a way that everyone is satisfied and invested. I will hopefully soon tell you.

P.S. there is another aspect of Steem which is that others may create new apps on top of it. So we can't be sure it will fail. Blogging may not be the only activity that will come to Steem. But the economics of rewards are unlikely to change much, so this lie will remain although with more popular activities perhaps no one will care about the $1 of earnings, but then what is the unique selling point?

I don't understand why you have this subconscious desire to create controversy or friction by being so aggressive in your labeling. "Lies". Yeah... ok... and I've been told I can sell my junk on ebay, I listed them and nobody bought them. Those fuckin liars - nobody bought my garbage

It's like what you said. Try to infer meaning from context. Obviously if you blog crap, you won't get paid. I will grant you that the process is not consistent (casino effect) and this creates confusion and an emotional roller coaster for the author who feels rejected. And it also creates feelings of inadequacy in terms of relative worth (why is X making more than me). But the subtleties of human psychology are difficult to tackle effectively in any kind of similar system.

As for the 1$, if you had 1$ / post in bitcointalk, you'd probably be making a living (by your asian country standards) by simply writing your opinions on crypto. Sure, it'd be below your pay-grade, but hey: while you can't do that at bitcointalk, you can do that at steem. Now, the rewards will obviously not be uniform or predictable (20 comments may generate 0.5$ and 1 comment may generate 100$) but on average they tend to accumulate. And you also have article writing which is more consuming in terms of time although it might hit the jackpot.

But I sense all these are simply distractions from what you need to design... so... I'll leave it there.