Topic: Steem pyramid scheme revealed - page 27. (Read 107059 times)

While I think changes will be coming at some point, to tune the economy, I also think that the rule which says "Simplicity is key" will again be overlooked. What they are trying to do is admittedly complex and trying to make it work while also making it simple (-if it's even a goal-) is not an easy task. However it's what will be required of them and whether they are up to it or not, may decide -in large part- the degree of success the platform has. As you say, small things can make a difference.


I was wondering what BTC does and googled it... If the link's data is accurate, I think RL wealth concentration affects even bitcoin to a very large degree.

https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html

~20% of BTC marketcap is in addresses with >10k+>100k coins.
~22% of the marketcap is in addresses with >1k coins.
~23% of the marketcap is in addresses with >100 coins
~26% of the marketcap is in addresses with >10 coins

So 100+ coin addresses get 64% of the total distribution and 10+ coins addresses get 91% of the total distribution. I was kind of expecting it, but I wasn't really expecting that the addresses would be so consolidated. I thought there would be a larger degree of obfuscation with people using more addresses.

And I can still eat and work on my projects because you did.

I would much prefer action than complaining. Some discussing is good, to both be sure I am aware of all viewpoints and also so others are aware of mine.


Strongly disagree. And I am very confident you are wrong about this.

The perpetual earnings will come from competitive commerce, not blockchain money supply dilution. That solves the quagmire that otherwise we must choose a design that is either vulnerable to Sybil attack otherwise must be controlled by whales.

I am very confident I have the correct design.


I think I have explained this many times already, so it frustrates me that you and others still think this about me.

I was hospitalized in May 2012 for a perforated ulcer. I want you to read about what normally happens:

http://www.meb.uni-bonn.de/dtc/primsurg/docbook/html/x3617.html

So all the organs in my abdominal cavity were bathing in stomach acid for roughly 2 - 3 days, until the hole closed (my hole did not close within 6 hours!). Burning alive is incredibly painful when you don't have painkillers. If you want to know the feeling, go put your hand in an open flame and hold it there for 3 days.

Any way, being that I am in the Philippines, I didn't receive proper out patient care, and thus apparently it healed with some problems, such as potentially deformities (e.g. a "blind loop") or bad microflora infection that can't be eradicated.

The reason I know this is the case now, is because I got a diagnosis of NAFLD from a full abdomen ultrasound a few months ago, wherein they say that my liver and kidneys were roughed (sign of damage) and my bile ducts was sludge. I have dark inset around the eyes (didn't have this before) and this is a sign of liver malfunction. The filipino doctors weren't aware of the recent research has highly correlated NAFLD with SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) which is explained because 70% of the liver's blood supply comes from the portal vein originating from the small intestine.

To give you further proof, I ate all-I-can-eat buffet on Sunday and I was in a lot of pain and discomfort (could barely stand up as we left the restaurant) because the food couldn't pass. I had extreme pressure. I have overeaten before this health ailment and didn't experience that level of pressure. (note I consider this yet another experiment to try every possible thing that might solve the problem, e.g. forcing food through).

My health issue is not imagined or caused by mental attitude. I do workouts and anything I can to try to restore my health, but there is a physical problem. And the symptoms are not just annoying but rather debilitating to cognition much of the time (reducing productivity to a fraction of the healthy cognition). And so that is why I am finally decided to go to a research university hospital in Singapore which specializes in this. I should have done this a long time ago, but for the longest time I was uncertain as to the nature of my illness (and that is another longer explanation). Recent events and awareness of certain information has homed in my understanding of my illness and made me confident to make such expenditures. I have no health insurance at all. I will be paying cash. I had hoped I would heal naturally as I am very athletic guy and had always been able to heal in the past from anything. But this one is physical and has to be dealt with physically by experts. No choice. After 4 years of trying every possible thing I could try naturally. Everything!


Yeah blah blah. I said the same too in the past. Just wait. Life will deal with your hubris and mind-over-matter delusion.

If anyone can will power themselves through something, I can. I can do grueling things such as an Ironman competition. Some things are beyond the capacity of just being tough.

And yes, I also tried just sleeping a lot and not being tough. That didn't solve the problem either.

If you didn't realize that some shitty blog-spam platform with 90% instamine would be a scam. Then you deserve to lose money.

Disagree. IMO, it is the positive reinforcement of the Millennials furball going on that keeps them pumped up with their self-delusion. Steemit does appeal to some faction of the ideological, spoiled Millennials (yet the retention rate is very low because Millennials like to get free money while spouting off nonsense).

There are some other egos being fulfilled in various ways I suppose.

I cannot take any credit for what you earned with your writing. I simply told you to register to bitch about Steem + get paid (unlike bitching in bitcointalk where you don't get paid ).

Speak your mind freely, I have no issue.

When I say the concept is valid, I mean the broader concept of people getting paid for their contribution.


Ok we'll have to disagree on that one.


My only investment so far has been time. Although I'm tempted to throw a few Bitcoins at it when the price is becoming attractive in order to multiply my SP, that would interfere with my experiment to see what I can do with that account without paying for it. Perhaps I might invest in another account so as to have it separate. Anyway I'll see what I'll do if the price goes towards the range I want.

What I'm often thinking is that one weekly power down revenue (in BTC) from a whale, in mid-July, would now buy them back all the SP they have powered down ever since. If, say, you sell 10.000 STEEM x 0.007 = 70 BTC. With 70 BTC you now buy back 233.333 SP. I mean the same applies to me as well - but obviously on a much lower scale in terms of numbers, but the analogies are similar.


I believe most disease is psycho-somatic. I have cured myself of things that I do not want to really expand, but anyway let's say they were extremely life threatening and 100% of the medical establishment would say that I required multi-thousand $$$ treatments.

I consider the human potential to be extremely high, but whether that potential is realized is contingent on what my conscious mind thinks and what myself does. If I accept medical help, my subconscious observes that act and registers that I am unable to self-cure myself. Thus I needed to prevent my subconscious from registering a subconscious admission of defeat. Let's say that I played multiple life & death gambles and I won. I trusted myself and I triumphed over my "problems".

What I can give you, is one tool that is extremely effective, even if it is deceptively simple: Focus on the word LIFE. Feel it. Repeat it. Feel it all the time. LIFE. LIFE. LIFE. Keep the concept of vitality in mind. "LIFE, LIFE, LIFE". Feel the words. Keep doing it. Close your eyes and do it for as long as you feel comfortable.

This is an extremely potent technique that can even deliver instant results.

Note there is another remote possibility. That is someone wanting to buy up enough stake to take control of the protocol, remove the inflation and somehow pump it. I find that to be very unlikely (for numerous reasons[1]), but I should mention it.

[1] They would need developers. They would upset the political applecart. Steemit controls 40%. Etc..

The following is not a logarithmically scaled chart, thus it appears the decline in the market cap is slowing down, but it is not:

http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/steem/

Move the slider to the right and you will see the decline continues.

AlexGR and smooth, I am sorry that I must speak so frankly to both of you. Because both of you were the key people that enabled me to avail of the opportunity to get $6500 from Steem. I am not ungrateful. But it doesn't help you, if I lie to you.

I was mostly quiet for ~1.5 months, not biasing speculators one way or the other with comments lately. I think it is time to speak frankly. Enough pain has already been inflicted on those who were fooled. Again I am interested in discussing the design, because I am interested in improving it (but that won't likely happen within Steem).


Edit: since Oct. 14, it appears the market cap has declined more slowly than the price, but this doesn't appear to be widening. Thus is probably one some "one time" event of some fool pouring money into Steem, probably that Chinese n00b bagholder whale. Perhaps there are some deals being made made behind the curtain. Any way, none of that can help them. It is fundamentally flawed. Radical changes to the Steem blockchain to remove voting, inflation only on liquid Steem holders, etc.. is IMO very unlikely. Even @smooth seemed to state in comment of the prior 2 pages that it is difficult to get radical changes:

I have already explained to you that I am talking about aggregate demand:


The aggregate demand for speculation is highly diluted by the inflation focused only on those who don't lockup for 1 year weighted average cashout, as proven by the fact the price is on a perpetual decline that is greater than what is offset by the increase in money supply, i.e. the market cap continues to fall.


Google says:

di·lu·tion
dīˈlo͞oSHn,diˈlo͞oSH(ə)n/
noun
the action of making something weaker in force, content, or value.
"he is resisting any dilution of dogma"


Just admit you didn't grasp the concept. Does @smooth ever admit when he is wrong? How could I work with someone like that. Producing great work is about being not obstinate to facts when they are put right in front of your face.

@iamnotback

No one is making those speculators buy and hold all that liquid steem. They do it because they can speculate and are speculating. Either they believe there will be a price rise sufficient to justify the dilution they are incurring, or they are foolish and don't understand it. Either way, you are not being diluted (which is an actual word with an actual meaning: that your share of ownership of the platform is reduced) by inflation. Your investment may lose value because the platform as a whole does (dumb idea, poorly executed, etc.) but in that case, the liquid steem holders who are speculating by holding it will lose even more.

Also, it is very possible to sell your account at a discount. Posts are made to this effect on the Steemit thread semi-regularly. Many have done so. If you choose not to do so you are speculating on a smaller price decline than you would take by selling it (including the possibility of an increase of course), or you see value in the account name (which indicates and adds to platform value).

You seem to entirely forget (fail to incorporate) the argument you and I had on the prior two pages of this thread.

I am diluted (speculation option removed is a dilution) because the speculators (liquid STEEM holders) are, thus they don't speculate (there isn't sufficient demand from them to hold to make the price rise).

You can't compartmentalize that which is not orthogonal. Nature routes around your imaginary Coasian barrier.

Apparently this concept is beyond your IQ, because I have by now stated this several times and you are apparently just are not getting it.

(It is ludicrous for you to presume I don't understand the math of the relative money supply dilution given I had very long technical discussion in the comments of my blogs about that, which I know you read)

Did I write "money supply dilution" above or "dilution" which is a general term? My share of all potential investment demand is diluted by the removal the speculation demand.


There no such "balancing out" holistically. It is an illusion you and Dan's other minions have formed as a delusion in their fooled minds.

Disagree. The only thing solid was that enough speculators could be fooled by the pump enabling the whales to cash out several $millions.

We bystanders were able to get some crumbs. I got about $6500 out of it, so I am grateful because I would have been entirely depleted of funds by now otherwise. Steem funded me to fight on longer. So I am very grateful. But that doesn't mean I should lie about the reality I see. All of my blogging activity on Steem was sincere.


Voting and perpetual rewards are 2 of the several fatal flaws.

Steem did point the way towards possible designs that could scale and be successful. It was a valid experiment that advanced our thinking.

This is not a revelation and it is indeed a flaw. If you only want to appeal to math-oriented investors who think things through in that manner, then you are okay, but you won't appeal to investors who look at a price chart, see a declining trend and stop there.

Is this a fatal flaw? I don't know. In competitive markets small differences can lead to winner-take-all outcomes. A similar design that doesn't repulse less-math-oriented investors (and is neutral for math-oriented-investors) might do better. The higher cost of capital that results from narrowing the investor market is a disadvantage (likewise for cutting out medium-term investors as iamnotback has stated many times).


That's because these platforms are all complete failures in terms of adoption and use (doge maybe wasn't for a while, but it is now). So it becomes an empty shell that exists only for speculation purposes. As such it is worth more to a large holders who can manipulate the price than to small holders who can not (at least as long as foolish small investors are willing to keep funneling in outside money and losing it by being manipulated).

In a platform that were actually used for something, there would be degree of wealth concentration, as you say exists in everything, but it wouldn't parallel most useless altcoins.


There is currently no dilution of your share at all. It is being paid by liquid steem holders. SP is actually deflationary (or at least it was when I looked the other day; not a big chance since then).

If you earn via the blogging features, then you will gain share relative to both liquid steem holders and other SP holders, but if you don't you will lose relative to other active SP holder but gain relative to liquid steem holders, balancing out.

Then take out 1 or 2 BTC and invest it in helping to fund me to Singapore to get cured. Get in on the ground floor instead of destroying your capital by invest-and-hold in a highly flawed design.

Speculation is about buying low and selling high. Not buying high on a flawed delusion and watching it decline perpetually.

It will be a problem for him as the price continues to decline while his SP remains locked up. Perhaps some early investors might be able to cashout before the price falls below their entry price, but that doesn't absolve my point.

Fundamentally there is no investment case. You are going to end up kicking yourself as all the others who invest-and-hold in SP.


Nope because there would be multitudes of them. The jealousy is due the 40 whales who control the money supply and the rewards.


Sorry you don't seem to understand the reason for the discontent.

People want to invest in something that is a level playing field, not a whale controlled "corruption".

The concept of perpetually paying rewards is entirely flawed. (Steem is fundamentally flawed in so many facets, and that is why I place 100-to-1 odds on its price ever rising again.)

The only point was onboarding and building a commerce driven ecosystem. The rewards are not needed after that, because a vibrant, profitable, decentralized commerce-driven ecosystem will trounce Facebook and everything else.

Eh, not from July 9th - you are talking somewhat later (say 10 days?) when price per STEEM and marketcap went 10x.


Perhaps if I see a real life example I might be convinced.


Yeah, and the trolling that goes like "ohhh the whales are powering down, O M G, they are dumping millionz", would now be about the powerdown of the ex-minnows that now cash out the same SP

The "wealth distribution" most are complaining about is how to get free SP and cash them out. They don't care about shares. And even if you give them 1/104th to power it down per week, they'll take it.

Agreed, but that doesn't mean control over the blockchain necessarily has to gravitate to centralized, yet for Steem and Bitcoin it does (and every blockchain designed thus far). So I hope you understand why I still think I (as a developer) have something very valuable to offer to the crypto-currency movement.

You need to unconflate the two in your analysis. That is one of my many epiphanies.


Except if you locked it up.  


That is not a mass market.

Yet my locked-in-a-jail SP has declined in value from $6000 to $1000 even though I blogged to earn more SP in addition to that gained from the inflation. This is because some of the inflation is being distributed as rewards which I am not getting a proportional share of (although I may have received more than my proportional share from blogging, I didn't calculate it).

And moreover because the rewards are not attaining sticky adoption and there is very little speculation incentive due to the lockin, thus the market price is not moving up enough to offset the dilution of my share.

What you apparently don't understand from what I wrote, is that in order to put control into the hands of those who transact, then transaction fees can't be 0, otherwise the whales control the most free credits for transactions and so nothing would change from what we have now where the ecosystem is beholden to 40 whales and their cronies.

You actually have to make transaction fees cost a non-zero amount and you must burn them (otherwise whales will mine them to themselves), so that only those who are willing to expend money on transaction fees are in control of the blockchain (protocol, rewards, forks, etc).

You won't get world investment in a blockchain that is under the control of 40 whales who have a profit incentive. They could hold the world hostage to their profit motives. We are right back to the system we have now where the banksters hold us hostage with their profit incentives, e.g. Facebook. Facebook is popular because the banksters used their ability to print money out-of-thin-air to subsidize it because they want the control to track us all. We can't compete against top-down driven, because the banksters have far more top-down control than we will have. To grow an ecosystem that no one is in top-down control over, so that it can compete against the top-down morass of the world, then no group of whales must be able to control the blockchain. Now even if you distribute control to those who transact, the banksters can probably still control the minds of the masses with propaganda and thus remain in control, but at least society is in control and not any just some arbitrary grab bag of whales. Those who will invest in the ecosystem are more likely to trust that society to produce a stable, unbiased protocol and design decisions (or better yet, to change nothing in the protocol[1] because it is politically impossible to get society-at-large to agree on changes, e.g. Bitcoin vs. Classic or Trump vs. Clinton).

In large part also the ecosystem investment will depend on the reputation of the developers, and a developer which is trying to make a block chain that only society can control, is likely to be more trustworthy than one who likes to be in control and make Rube Goldberg bizarre designs that do really stupid things such as lockin investors for 1 year weighted average and create a Millennials furball groupthink of 40 whales.

So although we won't attain 100% nirvana on a blockchain, this is to some extent about which lead developer(s) is (are) a seriously qualified businessmen. For that, I think i am qualified. But as of right now, I am not qualified, because I have liver and intestinal disease and need to go to Singapore (in December!) to get expert diagnosis and treatment. So therefor, at the moment I am just more talk than sufficient action.

[1] Ideally the blockchain protocol would be cast in stone and all improvements would occur on top of the protocol functionality in the blockchain. And that is what I am shooting for (say within 1 - 2 years after launch). So putting the control into society-at-large's hands is a design choice to foster no forks ever! (except by proof-of-burn)


Seriously dude, if you think I am a simpleton, then you've got some serious handicap with interpretation of reality. You'd be wiser to go contemplate that over the past years, I have probably thought about every design angle in great mathematical details far beyond anything you've contemplated.

Transaction fees are never free, not even on Steem. You pay it on Steem by (the protocol) enabling the 40 whales to rape the system.

All coin distribution will eventually gravitate towards a centralized distribution because that's the reality of the economic substrate (real life wealth distribution that affects holdings in the stock market, real estate, precious metals, even cryptocurrencies).

If Steemit Inc magically converted all Steem Power to Steem and gave it away to the users, most users would say "oh free money, let me cash them out" and that distribution wouldn't hold for more than a few days as investor-whales pick up the amounts dumped from the minnows.

There is some level of hypocrisy from the lower players when they are so concerned with the distribution but at the same time they are also concerned about price. They aren't *really* interested in having a bigger slice, but they complain nonetheless. What they are more concerned is dumping (which is ok) hence the price complaints. If you are looking to buy, or even cost average, you don't complain. Or you do (to create sentiment and buy even cheaper ).

The small guy is usually the guy with financial needs that are waiting to be covered by crypto-gains. This means he cannot risk exposure to anything that can lose its value. The safe strategy for him is to sell. So most of the distribution arguments are invalid. Most altcoins have developed a centralized pattern in terms of holdings over time, whether it is litecoin, dogecoin, etc. Small guys sell, big guys buy. It doesn't matter how these coins were launched, but the top wallets typically end up owning >50% of the currency.