Thanks for this thought-provoking piece of content! Shared for more attention since I'm pretty convinced that it's undervalued right now :-)
How much SBD would someone or a group of someone's need to buy to be able to have a serious influence on the prize? Currently the market cap is at $37.788.105 USD (bittrex.com). On the 1st of December 2017 (almost one month ago) it was below 5 million.
This means a raise of more than 700% in only one month.
This is definitely an unhealthy type of growth, and we can be pretty sure that the prize will drop down considerably sooner or later. It will then leave a huge gap in steemit's books, since - as you perfectly pointed out - people cash our SBD instead of holding SP.
It'd be interesting to know how much of the ones that cash out SBD simply turn it into BTC and then re-invest in Steem (contributing to the networks growth again), and how many exchange into other cryptos or even Fiat. I guess it'll be hard to find that out.
From my personal point of view this evolution is just a logical consequence of the changes that have happend during the past months. Since vote-trading became one of the most lucrative business on steemit (mostly for the vote-sellers and not the buyers), steemit has suffered a considerable decrease in value from a social point of view (your link to @dan's mission). The healthy development of the community and the conscientious distribution of rewards have become secondary. Rewards are given to those who know best how to drain the pool, not to the ones who know best how to support the common vision.
Posts like this one are great ways of reminding people that this is a long term project, and that everybody of us might have an interest in a healthy network that's going to prosper for many more years.
Again, thanks for the input!
Unfortunately it seems that way at times. Voting bots and delegation are cleaning up at the moment. If you upvote your own posts you get X times the value because of the price of SBD.
and @eroch - I'm new to all of this (well joined in August, but back at it due to being too busy elsewhere all Autumn but having just read the white paper, it seems pretty clear that 'community' is second and making money is the primary goal of the platform - I think the 'crab bucket analogy' sums up the authors' view of collectivism and there's also a base assumption that high levels of inequality are natural, and that this is good because it taps into people's desire to want more and keeps them posting.
My sneaky suspicion is that this platform is working just as its creators intended.
However, I'm also finding it quite conducive to meeting some nice people and hopefully community will out in the end!
That is an interesting perspective @revisesociology
Whatever the reasons and motivations there is a nice community here and it is something that is evolving on a daily basis. I am happy to be on the journey and looking forward to the road ahead. Nice to meet you by the way.
There are lot of well-meaning people on here and I'm trying to blinker myself to all of the economic injustice, the problem is the economics + the anonymity are a ticking time bomb - think of the damage one malicious billionaire could do!
While people with influence on here seem to be focusing on expansion and innovation before sorting the basics out (I believe there's a 'code first' mentality)
Then again that's the problem with economic justice I guess - Much like the man himself, Karl Marx, it ain't that sexy.
Nice to meet you too, happy new 2018!
But his beard is so magnificent! Oh, and I see yours is, too! Bearded, sexy socialists unite! (and we shall wrest Steem from the grip of the Steem millionaires somehow.)