RE: The Virtue of Selfishness on Steem
I would not hold it against people if they need to power down to take out money that they need to live. I have withdrawn several thousand Steem at various points. I used it to buy a nice guitar and to pay for my two trips to Steemfest in Portugal and Poland. Part of the reason I have not powered down recently is the low Steem price as I feel it has more value powered up where I can use it to vote.
You will have missed the times when a Steem cost several dollars and numerous people were living from their earnings. I am not sure that was ever possible in the UK. I have a job to pay the bills anyway. I know Steem was making a big difference for people in Venezuela where they might otherwise only earn a few dollars per month.
I had a specific topic for my post and you have covered something else that I am happy to talk about. I do think we need to see a better distribution of rewards. Use of automated voting tends to mean a lot of rewards going to big accounts. This is partly trying to game the curation rewards, but I do not play that game. I send my votes where I think they are needed, even if it's just a few cents.
Steem is a big experiment and we get some influence on the results. With the current low price I think we need to concentrate on building and sustaining the wider community so we can reach critical mass. But if you need the money then take it. Those I featured in my post are doing this, but adding little value in the process and that harms the platform.
Yea, you didn't say that in your post -- You mentioned the give and take, and you were more focused on calling out abuses and such.
Portugal sounds fun.
I think my post was just coming from a place where I have looked around, and haven't seen anything about people being like "fuck yea, I took money out and it was great, here's what I did."
There's always this tone of regret when they share or something like that. Seems kind of silly.
Posts are finite and so is the attention span of readers ;)
I'm happy to see people benefit from their work as long as they are not abusing the system. Those I showed have zero interest in the community. Other cases are less black and white.
If someone in Venezuela posts some cool pictures and can pay their bills as a result then that is a win for Steem. They might not have that option otherwise. This is why I want this platform to succeed. I don't care all that much about buying myself more stuff, but should Steem go to $10 I can treat the family.
That's a cool attitude.
I also woke up and had some realizations - the whale / hodlers who have accumulated a fair amount of SP have likely done so during a Bear market -- and then during what can only be described as an economic depressing in STEEM. I imagine that would make people like yourself basically financially conservative.
Whereas myself, joining in the presumable bottom of the bear market don't have that experience of obtaining steem when it was worth crazy amounts.
For me steem started out being worth ~.13-.16 I think.
Different point of reference.
I didn't buy any Steem for a long time, so I was not losing anything if the price dropped. I cashed out when it was a fair bit higher than now, but not at the peak. Then my account was worth almost $100k, but I could not power down quickly enough to take full advantage.
I know some who bought when the price was high, but I think a lot have bought recently when you could be an orca for around $6000. That may seem a real bargain in time.
I want Steem to be open to all and for those who need it most to have a chance of earning. There are lots of business opportunities besides creating content. I'm excited to see what happens.
Yea, that's wild. 100k. That's like my entire ambition for a career. House costs 80k.
When / if they change the power down to 4 weeks, it will cause a sharper peak / decline during the next bull run.
Looks like Orca level is worth 10k now.
None of that really matters to me. I've chosen a career path with limited investment capital at the moment. So, for me Steemit is more about earning SP over time.
Seems unrealistic though -- Like to ever reach Orca level without investing.
Like 8-12 years worth of posting. By that time there will probably have been another bubble and collapse, No telling what the platform will look like at that time.
What's the financial advantage of being an orca?
You just get more people following you, cause they want to be on your good side, so you can offer significant upvotes, and then in turn receive a higher percentage of curation values?