Why Buy STEEM? And Why Buy STEEM!

in #steem6 years ago (edited)

I recently got done binge-watching the original Halloween series. And after finally getting to Halloween 6, I had two choices in terms of spending my free time. I could either:

  • Figure out ways to encourage and get people on this platform to buy more STEEM more regularly;
  • Or make sense of the goddamn clusterfuck that is Halloween 6 with two different cuts, both an equally jumbled mess.

Figuring out ways to get people to buy more STEEM seemed like the lighter task, by far.

I mean, seriously. Michael Myers was the father of Jamie's baby, what the fuck?

So anyway.

It's a bear market, right? Not just in STEEM land, but in the entire crypto sphere. It may be a long winter yet. Personally, I think the idea of a crypto downtrend is more than a little overblown, considering I have this rather vivid memory from rather recent times when BTC was worth no more than $500 a piece and we're still at $6,500, but I digress.

But STEEM is its own coin, so BTC shouldn't be the deciding factor of STEEM price, in my opinion.

The crypto slump has put us in this sort of holding pattern where we're kinda sitting around with our thumbs up our asses, waiting for a Korean whale or two to make a move.

That's what it seems like to me.

I've been thinking about this a lot the past few days, so I wanted to open a community discussion about the one thing that connects us all in this very dysfunctional community where no one gets along:

Buying STEEM

Why and why not?

I recently decided to start buying STEEM and building up my account.

I held up on the decision to buy STEEM due to waiting for it to go longer, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt it's silly to look at solely the current prices.

I figured that there's a lot about Steemit that I currently don't like. It's gone in a direction that isn't to my liking. However, some, if not most, of the things I understand. I don't need people explaining to me why A is A or B is B.

I probably know already.

The important thing here is that these things led to me deciding to build up my account again because even though there have been 20 hardforks, and the community and culture within the site have changed along the way, the one long-standing fact that still stands is the one that if you want influence, you need STEEM Power.

So, instead of whining, I figured it's better to start putting my money where my mouth is and gain that influence back.

In other words, I started to look at the amount of STEEM owned, as opposed to what it's worth in dollar amounts.

This lead to a wide arrange array of thoughts, and I'll try to convey most of them here as best I can.

I'll namedrop @whatsup as someone who I've probably had the most Steemit related discussions over the past few months. Highly enjoyable, too.

She and I look at Steemit from different angles, but both understand where the other is coming from. To @whatsup, this is a business endeavor. First and foremost.

I'm more old school where I still like and support the idea of content creators getting rewarded for their work just because.

However.

Both of us agree on the reality that content, in and of itself, holds little to no value. You can and I can dislike this as much we want, but that's like me disliking the fact that hot weather exists. Or Adam Sandler's movies. Not a whole lot I can do about it. It's a reality.

It's not a content funded reward pool, it's an investor funded reward pool.

In order for there to be a reward pool for us to enjoy, people to need to put their money into STEEM. In other words, buy it.

Buying and holding STEEM should be as attractive as possible. Now, there are some pitfalls, some avoidable, some maybe less so. But I have a positive vibe as a result of the Netcoins contest, so I'm interested in a community effort to try and solve this problem.

One major pitfall - pointed out by many - is that the amount of fiat value tied in STEEM Power that actually makes a difference is so huge, it's simply inaccessible to many.

And while this is true, I think it's a little short-sighted to think that if you can't buy all the STEEM you need right now, with one purchase, it's not worth it to buy it at all.

Let's say we have a person capable of purchasing 100 STEEM a month, for instance. That's 1,200 STEEM a year. And let's say we have another person like that. And a third one. And a fourth one. And a dozen. And a hundred And so on.

And let's say we now have a respectable amount of people capable of shilling out that 80 bucks to buy STEEM on a monthly basis. And this keeps going.

Then let's say that within these people there's a community who all like, say, fiction. They enjoy reading it, they want to reward it.

These people can gang up and put their collective SP to work together in order to reward fiction authors.

What I'm talking about is a formation of a middle class to where there currently isn't one.

Content creators trying to find their demographic within a large middle class - as opposed to within 12 or so whales - is more close to how a real economy works anyway.

Official communities aren't there yet, but there's nothing in the way of people forming ones. And there already are communities and cliques on Steemit anyway.

It's a pet peeve of mine that people here really seem to always be waiting for someone else to do everything. When, in fact, there's nothing in the way of the community itself organizing and accomplishing things. Like, hey, the Netcoins thing. That wasn't @ned, that wasn't Steemit, INC. It wasn't the whales. It was the community. Organizing. Getting shit done.

Gg, guys.

And speaking of "Gg". I spend a lot of time on Twitch. For those unaware, Twitch is a streaming platform where people stream their gaming runs. I mostly follow speedrunning, namely Mega Man speedrunning.

One day recently, I stopped to really spend time thinking why is it that I've spent more money donating to streamers than I've spent buying STEEM. Donated money is gone, wheras STEEM can be used to make more money.

For whatever reason, it's just been the more appealing option for me.

Just today, I donated money to a fund that is to be used to pay for the expenses of three people from different countries to travel to a speedrunning event in the US this January, to take part in a Mega Man race.

As soon as it was announced by a runner I respect that he was going to use his donation money to help these people out in their travel expense, I felt obligated to take part.

And the conclusion I came to was that it's the sense of community. The Mega Man X speedrunning community in general is extremely nice. At least it's been nothing but nice to me ever since I humbly joined it back in the day. People help each other out, want others to do well, succeed, and improve.

Even the world record holders find the time to help complete newbies out.

As I feel like I'm part of something nice, I'm inclined to do my part.

And now that you're all done yelling "But that's communism!" I'll continue.

Yes, self-interest is big on Steemit. Dare suggest altruistic strategies for any given situation, and you get laughed out of the room because altruism is dumb and you're a socialist.

But what if I told you that altruism can be a capitalistic strategy?

I have, in the past, powered down STEEM. And I don't really feel any sort of guilt about it. I also hold SCORUM coins, and I feel the urge to hold onto them and not power down. Much moreso even than my STEEM.

Why?

Again, a sense of community. It was an extremely warm welcome when I joined and made my first SCORUM posts. People read, engaged, rewarded. Just made me feel welcome. Much like the aforementioned speedrunning community, I was made to feel like I was a part of something.

In fact, my initial experiences on Steemit were quite similar back in the day of summer of 69. And by 69 I mean 2016.

The result? I regularly bought STEEM and powered it up.

Unfortunately, however, it started to change little by little. And as the community grew more and more antisocial, I started to care less and less.

Why shouldn't I just take what I can, right? This platform doesn't give two shits about me anyway.

Yeah, there's a tone of self-pity there, I know. But that was the feeling at the time. And I didn't think about things from the influence point of view yet at that time.

But while supporting users to make them feel like they're part of a community is something I would support, there's something else, and it has a lot to do with the price, coincidentally enough.

Something that is puzzling me is a number of users who I won't mention who have consistent, high-level support on the platform, day in day out, month in month out - and at this point already - year in and year out, who are also in constant dumping mode.

Large stakeholders use their voting power to allocate STEEM daily to people who regularly dump the STEEM on the markets - lowering the price.

That's actually quite bizarre.

Take that out of the Steemit context for a while and think of it as a different form of business. So, there's a business strategy that demonstrably and consistently, without fail, lowers the value of the business. Doing this has little to no benefits, while the negative effects are the exact opposite of what you're trying to do: maintaining value and increasing it.

Doesn't seem like a smart thing to do.

I know that the reason this happens is vote trading. The long-term effects on the price can be ignored because the vote trading allows for a lot of short-term profits.

But there are still some manual curators who do non-vote trading curation, so this me appealing to them, specifically:

Reward buyers and holders!

Holding and especially buying STEEM can easily be made more attractive if the culture of the community is changed to such that buying and holding puts you in good standing with the community.

Those who buy and hold increase the value of your stake, the dumpers decrease it. Why would you vote for a dumper? Why would you ever?

I'm disappointed that the 100% power up symbol next to the post never really made a huge difference in curation. Those posts should be treated as the golden posts on the platform, receiving preferential treatment.

The posters are making a short-term sacrifice in favour of the long-term game of the platform. It's a sin that this goes unnoticed so much. I know for a fact that it's why I've personally never really bothered.

Again, it's the strong sense of the community not giving two shits, which, in turn, makes me to not give two shits.

I also feel it'd be kinda cool to be able to earn "badges" that would show up next to a post's headline, indicating something like, I dunno, amount of SP held and stuff. It could work in tiers where a blue STEEM symbol would be 5,000 SP, then 10,000 SP would have a different color, and so on and so forth.

How about certain levels of SP held giving the user access to exclusive emojis?

Stuff like that.

You'd surprised by how much people are attracted to that sort of gamification. It works in environments much less serious than Steemit.

Things like this can be seen on Twitch, actually.

I'd see small, fun things like these being a good add in incentivizing STEEM purchasing for the smaller guys, too. In addition to the influence, etc.

TL;DR

  • The reward pool is funded by people who buy and hold STEEM

  • STEEM can be treated as its own thing, as opposed to a subservient of Bitcoin

  • A good community builds loyalty

  • A large enough group of people building their account allows for the creation of a true middle class

  • We need incentives to buy and hold STEEM instead of dumping

Steemit is not the endgame for STEEM. STEEM is. I've seen it thrown around a lot that "Steemit is not proof of content, it's just proof of brain" and whatnot, basically disregarding Steemit as a publishing platform entirely at this point because it's all about the apps now.

But Steemit still has an important job to fulfill as the onboarding app. It was designed to onboard people to STEEM.

And here's my big thought of the day:

What if Steemit was used to onboard buying STEEM?"

Not just to earn STEEM, but to buy it. I think there's a big missed opportunity here.

My question to you!

This is an open forum now.

I'd like to get as many comments as possible, preferably from people with all different sizes of stake.

What are the things, right now, standing between you buying more STEEM? This isn't to finger point or any of that nonsense. It's for research and discussion.

What things should change for you to be more willing to purchase more STEEM and power up your account? Be it 50 STEEM, 100 STEEM, 1,000 STEEM, whatever.

If you read this post, it'd be cool for you to answer that question. And just like the Netcoins contest, commenting here is not stake-based; all comments are now equal, as it's the idea to hear from accounts of all sizes.

This post will be botted for added visibility.

All resteems are also appreciated.

It seems like I don't have a cool picture and thumbnail to go along with the post, so, uhh. Here's Yobby, I guess:

Sort:  

One of the big reasons I don't buy more steem is because of the upvoted amount on posts like this one. It would take me 2 months of my best quality posts to get an upvote like this without the use of a bot combined with massive curie. It makes me fear that the platform has been hamstring'd due to the way its currently working out rewards..

Don't get me wrong this is a great post and it deserves a good payout - its just the way the mechanics have allowed it to be so high.

It really puts new users off, they come see this large upvote you have, put all their effort in and get nothing (unless they go for a bot).

I really like the point you make about people who withdraw Steem, why upvote them if they are gonna send the price down. I wonder if some how the payouts of people without SP locked in can be...dispersed towards helping new users, so they have a better experience. I think you have made a really good point on this, locking in to SP while not being a whale should have a higher reward point.

Cheers

This is a great article with a lot of talking points.

Let me answer your question: I do not put more money into buying Steem, because I do not feel the Large Investors will respect my investment and treat my money as carefully as I do. For example, not flagging Haejin and other coingrabbers. There are too many people who are stacking coins vs. working on the real investment which is the people who use the site.

Content does not hold value, the eyes that view the content is where the value is at. Not enough users care about that element at all.

Hence I feel like my investment will be liquidated by the large users.

People manage money, code does not.


I also want to comment on your thoughts about the community. There are some great people here, but we have a culture that leans towards everyone is on their own. This does not foster and create cooperation and as a result, we have not retained new users and I believe there is more to it than the money when it comes to retention. People seek pleasure and avoid pain, - Psychology tells us this. So, posting an article without getting any feedback is painful, while getting feedback creates a feeling of pleasure. Sounds dramatic, but emotions are really important in building and marketing a site.

People will stay when they feel more pleasure than pain by participating on the site.

And YES! Rewarding Interesting Content is absolutely capitalistic! Aulterism is to give without expecting returns. Capitalism would say building the site like a business is the correct course of action.

Great post! Thanks.

Without the content, the eyes cannot see. The value starts with the content. It's no secret; it's not like we have sit here wondering if the chicken came first, or was it the egg?

Eyes make content more valuable. There's no value in eyes alone.

In the two years I've been here, I've seen far too much neglect. Thousands of talented people producing their very best, wondering why so many fear embracing the local talent while they say things like, "We need big names."

Big names started at the bottom in this online entertainment world. Joe Rogan was already a celebrity; his podcast took a long time to gain traction. Alex Jones was a nobody and now he's notorious. Freakin' Justin Beiber started out singing on Youtube. I could name thousands more, but what's the point? The thing they all have in common was the fact they produced content on platforms that embraced 'local' talent. They weren't ignored by the eyes they worked in front of. Those eyes weren't snubbing the content producers with the hopes something 'better' would come along. The eyes made the content more valuable because they looked. They looked at virtual nobodies until they became somebodies, then continued to stare.

My blog started to take off awhile back. A lot of people loved seeing me take off. Then there's this crowd frowning upon it. "Why does he get something and I don't." Some folks won't even look at my blog if I earn something substantial. I get treated like a cheater, for no f'n reason. I've taken all kinds of flak for simply doing something I set out to do, and I'm not the only one; I read comments, I hear what people say behind our backs, out in the open.

Everywhere else, one must pay for valuable content. A long time ago, Metallica got all pissed off with Napster. Some people thought entertainment should be free and artists thought it wasn't fair to work for nothing. How many people here even remember downloading mp3's in the late 90's? I can. If you would have told me back then I could download music for free AND get paid for enjoying it, I would have laughed at you, called you a bullshitter. Now here we are. People could literally spend a few thousand today as a subscription to enjoy unlimited online content that pays them a return over the span of their lifetime. A fair system for both artists (content producers) and consumers. A free concert, and you walk out with more change in your pocket than you had when you arrived.

But since people can't seem to wrap their heads around why content is important, and how it generates billions upon billions of dollars and views annually, and why it's important to embrace the local talent, we might never see this place take off. Instead we can stick to a few people selling votes, pretending to be "promoters", so we can see the latest and greatest fucking Monkey Post nobody gives a shit about.

There's so much potential here. People simply don't understand the BUSINESS. Of course it's a business. This is the online entertainment industry. The artists hated the mp3's and leeching way back when, but over time they embraced the technology and found ways to make money using it. Now they make far more than they ever did and more of them earning as well. I'm a fucking artist, I see many others capable of producing quality content. I see a new business model and dammit I made it work! Imagine this place in five years. Nobodies that want to be somebodies.

I don't know why the hell I started this rant here. Most people don't even know what I'm trying to say half of the time.

Hope it makes you feel better, understood your full comment :)

The platform will become popular when there are unique talents (local talents), not really found elsewhere. However, as with most platforms, those who come first, reap the benefits. Sakimichan on Patreon, Shane Dawson on YT, being first and staying persistent matters. I think for those who come late, there needs to be more initiative, or multiple sources of income. 7 day payout for a post is not enough for those who make timeless posts. Also good old posts are still a pain to actually find, it's pure luck.

I guess the most painful part about Steemit is it's easy to get stuck at a specific rank and SP. A year later and got only 0.03$ vote to show for and I'm one of the lucky ones. I just can't recommend this to anyone, knowing the effort it took me to get here. I'm already too invested to simply quit. Annd off I am ranting..

Majority of my posts are timeless. We're allowed to recycle old material and remonetize it, within reason. For instance, once a month I'll put all of my recent artwork into one post and publish that has a highlight reel. I've republished two year old short humorous stories. I've probably done that three times. Nobody complains and chances are the people following today never saw that old work. I'll reformat it so it looks better than the original, produce a new cover. I've been thinking about possibly publishing three or more old classic posts into one 'greatest hits' style compilation post. There are ways to earn again, as long as it's within reason and not abusive spam.

Definitely :D I started reposting 3 months ago, my oldest content and people loved it, in fact! And I've encouraged others to try that as well, there are always posts that I miss even from Steemians who I follow regularly :) I haven't reposted anything lately as I've been doing Inktober and I try not to spam. Upgrading and updating an old post makes it fair and more interesting. I've also cut down unnecessary parts making posts easier to read.
I keep all of my posts' links and image previews in a word document, so it's really easy to find good old stuff ^^

Your content does matter that isn't what I am saying. I am saying people do not take dollars out of their pocket to reward content.

You are one of, if not my fav, content creator... But I wouldn't navigate to the site to view it. I navigate to the site, to invest and speculate on Crypto.

People spend billions on books, magazines, music, movies; they drop quarters in guitar cases. People reward content, daily. If this was Facebook, this conversation would be being rewarded, but the money that exists in this world goes to someone else, makes them rich.

So you walk up to the magazine rack and select the Crypto Column. That's the one you want to buy, but you'll flip through NoNames Show. Totally normal in this industry.

Excellent point.

No, thank you. :)

I totally agree with you. Thanks for the words of inspiration.

Hence I feel like my investment will be liquidated by the large users.

I think that, as things stand, the amount of Steem one would have to buy to have real influence is more than most people, or even a cooperating group of people, can afford or would like to risk.

ROI is about a penny for $500 bucks right now. ;) That's overly simplified but you get the point.

Very well articulated. I've made similar arguments in some of my previous posts and have postulated that much of the popularity surrounding the big social media sites is due in large part to recognition and feedback people receive for their participation. Indeed, I believe that Steemit's continued growth and success will depend largly on constructive engagement throughout all levels of the platform. I would even argue that for the everyday Steemian making money is just the icing on the cake. Just to make a quick analogy, look at the most popular and long-standing open source projects. What keeps the best talent around if monetary incentives are not a factor? Recognition and constructive engagement rule the day.

What are the things, right now, standing between you buying more STEEM?

1 - Steemit, Inc.

Their track record and the amount of stake that they hold. Their forced development plans and their gatekeeping of protocol changes...even the notion that any ideas ought to be “pitched” to them before anything else can happen.

2 - Steem Witnesses

The fact that so many of the witnesses have little to no understanding of Steem protocols and the social/behavioral and economic theories behind them. The fact that most witnesses either don’t understand or don’t care about managing the two tokens, STEEM and SBD. The fact that so many witnesses have zero respect for code review or feedback and irresponsibly move to the next version of Steem because Inc. tells them it’s all good.

3 - Lack of Vision

Let’s face it...most of the “big developments” in our ecosystem revolve around voting and delegation schemes. There is almost no actual business development and commerce taking place outside of that. It’s as if the only thing that matters is how much of the rewards pool one can capture. That’s the extent of most of the grand ideas around here for “apps.” It’s either voting and delegation schemes or yet another interface where we can see posts that can be seen on Steemit.com. If Steem is to legitimately grow, it needs much better use cases outside of posting and voting.

4 - The Crypto Ecosystem as a Whole

Too much noise. Too much moronic attacking of legitimate projects by popular “maximalists.” Too many scams. Not enough actual innovators and actual investors. Seems to me that most “investment” across different tokens comes from the same people/organizations that have already been in crypto and just recycle profits...a lot of pump-and-dumps or other manipulation from a relatively small amount of pockets. And the “mania” is hard to predict. It could resume at any time...and it could have peaked last winter.

Conclusion

Far too much risk for the potential rewards. I like the Steem blockchain’s capabilities, but everything surrounding it pushes it into the “too risky to invest” category for me. If we’re looking for investors, this is something that needs to be addressed at some point. It doesn’t matter how great the potential may be. If the risks are just as great or greater, investment will be minimal.

All that being said - I’m still not a seller at this point.

There is currently 30 million US$'s worth of Steem and SBD sitting in the Bittrex account, 8 million in the Poloniex account, and so on. I wonder if people would keep that Steem as Steem Power in their own wallets here if there were no power down period and all Steem would be immediately available for trading when wanted.

I would. I sold most of my modest amount of Steem when prices were high; of course I did, I was here to make useable money after all, and not to lock away Steem and look smiling at the amount of SP I had while prices plummeted. I think others who actually use Steem are also hesitant to lock it away for a longer period without much hope of revenue.

What if ...

Just wondering.

i was thinking about something in line with this thinking, but a skew so it's more rewarding for the long term SP holder and yet give liquidity and freedom for all other token holder

Let me give you an example:

  1. Power down should be just 3 days, then we don't need savings, all savins is powerup

  2. Let those who Vest earn 20% of the reward pool....but let the vesting accure geometrically to 20% over say 13 weeks or 1 month, or 13days

  3. Curation is dependent upvot vesting of powerup, the longer you powerup (or delegate, many of the top witness who runs bot will hate this....but it really makes sense)

Example for #3....SP start at inflation percentage so ~8% and grows to 100% (of whatever curation reward.....this will radically change behavior if you ask me.....could do a trending post on this but i'm too lazy.....so feel free to chat me up and I'll give you the economic details, there is a ton of benefits....including forcing (by temptation) the whales to liquidate at higher prices bringing greater decentralization to ownership, disrupting bot payout, increasing curation reward for long term curators, improving returning value to proof of brain, basically everyone will be powering up, averaging out the % of powerup will out way almost every other stake/vested coin if we go this route, etc,etc.

Yeah, but you and I never come up with solutions, as you very well know by now. We never make suggestions of any kind.

Oh, yeah. I forgot.

Boy, this was refreshing to read. I'll be honest, I wasn't a fan of yours after your "I'm Taking an Extended Break from This Shithole" post early in the year; especially being that the 'extended break' lasted like 8 hours before continuing to post again, getting like $40 payouts. There was a terrible diaper rash of shit-talk-on-steemit-and-receive-huge-rewards-for-doing-so going on around that time, and it was a shame to see these 70rep folks doing most of it.

I'm not a steemit nationalist or anything, but fuck, it was driving me nuts. I mean, it was just weird. Why all these people would spend time on Steemit just to bitch about how terrible Steemit is?? Oh, right... because they were getting like $200 per post for it. What you just wrote is the polar opposite of that. It's productive and it actually throws some solutions out onto the table. I agree on just about everything you said.

Based on my own experience here, I feel like mass adoption is what we need to achieve that community and middle-class you speak of. I'm a prime example of an everyday Joe getting on here. I'm not a tech guy, at all. I didn't know a single thing about steemit, twitch, bitcoin or cryptocurrency when I signed up. My brother just told me about this site where you make posts and get paid to do it. Over two years later, I'm still here and have accrued a bit over 10k STEEM power, which I'm still sitting on. I've withdrawn very little; really just early on as a test to see if this was all "real". I like having that small amount of influence on here, meager as it may be. Also, I know this will all go up eventually (look at your bitcoin digression). If I'm not in a hurry to cash out, why not keep in here in my SP where I can use it - both for influence and for earning more money? Like you said, it seems like a shitty business plan to dump it all the time. Again though, coming back to the mass adoption thing, maybe these people are crypto techies who are making a living off of crypto? If it's their job, then I guess I understand. I'm not that though. I have a pretty blue collar, full-time fabrication job; so I don't NEED the STEEM cash. It's been kinda this fun hobby thing that may pay off one day. If tons of other everyday Joe's got on here, they might behave in the same manor... especially if you add some of the incentives that you mentioned.

What are the things, right now, standing between you buying more STEEM? This isn't to finger point or any of that nonsense. It's for research and discussion.

Honestly, I can't think of a good reason. Numbers are down, it seems like a good time to buy. I guess I just never really think about buying. I'll do my part of this theoretical movement and buy some up. I just got paid anyway!

Sorry for that bit of 'real-talk' in the beginning, but it felt good to get that out and vent a bit. It makes a lot more sense now, reading about some of your reasoning and your feelings at the time. I mean, you're right... the sentiment was everywhere. Ironically, THAT'S what nearly drove me away from the platform. I've always just logged on and tried to post neat naturey stuff, but things were getting SO political. Anyway, kudos to you for this.

That post you're referring to is not my proudest hour. The things I was pissed off at actually nothing to do with anything that was said in that post. I was venting for completely different reasons, though Steemit ticked me off, as well.

I have no problem with real talk. That post sucks and it was a childish spur of the moment thing.

I was also drunk. It reminded me of why I don't drink.

Well you, sir, have a new follower. Stay off the sauce. You're way better without it. lol

Loading...

Okay, I’m new here. Buddy created account for me but now I cant even vote and post only 2 comments a day. Also he told me that this mechanics is a new here and back in his days you nedd to wait weeks and weeks in order to even take pleasure to have an account at all. Nice work what i have to say.

And to have a vote and an ability to post as much as you please (and maybe EVEN CREATE ACOUNTS for other ones) you need to buy STEEM.

It’s a nice concept actually as it makes a word here more valuable than on facebook or bitcointalk, but still. It looks and feels really ALIEN to a majority of internet dwellers.

I know that people have to power down at some points but I agree, it's a bit annoying to see regular dumpers of steem keep creaming in the rewards.

I wish there was more of a community of low/middle holders of steem. It just seems that the pump last year was too great a lure for lots of folk and they dumped all/half/three quarters of their holdings. I once swam (as it were) with a shoal of similar sp holders. I am the only one left after last year's pump.

I do wish that there wasn't such a contempt for content creators at times. The focus is all look at the dapps and how we (content creators) are fucked. I think content creators are just as important as a bunch of folk using different dapps.

Not sure if I have added anything or just whined, lol

And yeah, @whatsup is a lady? This is madness! :0)

I don't think that content creators and dapp developers have to be mutually exclusive.

I believe (or hope) that there is still a lot of overlap where everyone can still access a share of the rewards pool. I really don't think that content creators are going to be fucked.

Ultimately, popularity and social activity will always play a part in the rewards distribution. And there will always be people interested in the writing, photography, videos, etc, that are found here.

Especially if you can build a community among your followers.

I agree with that, I think there is room for all and for many an overlap because I know for one that I don't want to be stuck in just one niche.

It's jut not the first time I have read a post decrying content creators as if they are the enemy sometimes. Which is odd.

Building a cmmunity is important. What often counts though is them not fucking off at the first sign of Steem breaking two dollars :OD

I think it right time to buy steem and powerup.

I'm not buying anymore steem because in all honesty, I've lost that loving feeling here on steemit. I joined about a year and a half ago and have put my own money in the system and have never powered down, well, until today that is. I had a vision that steem/steemit would explode in popularity one day soon and anyone that had about 1,500 steem would be very well off.

Unfortunately I don't have that vision anymore and I'm also discouraged about how good content goes unrewarded. I'm seeing guys posting just regular posts that is basically like a memo with no valuable content, tons of mispelled words and is just fluff in my honest opinion. But these guys are pulling in very nice rewards. A lot of the rewards are from buddies scratching each others backs and bots, bots and more bots. Instead of a place where you can get rewarded for providing interesting or valuable content, it's a place where the popular kids with the bots reap the rewards and their main agenda is to line their own pockets instead of making this place great once again. It's a damn shame to see some of the great content providers that are leaving steemit now. With all of that being said, that's why I started to power down today. It's very sad because I had such high hopes here. Great article, resteemed.

don't completely give up, keep 1/2 that 1500 Steem ....and invest the rest if you really want out, i do hope you find some great investments that will give you 10K% return, someday Steem will come up again....but how high who knows, just keep some so you don't miss out completely incase something magical happens

STEEM has a bright future I think! Thanks for the info!