Topic: Steem pyramid scheme revealed - page 36. (Read 107064 times)

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

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...

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.


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.


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.

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.

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.


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.


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.

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.

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)

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).


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.

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.

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 was very aware of what was going on in the USA, because I have contacts there and because I was writing weekly articles for goldbug sites, so I was doing a lot of reading on current events.

Never did any of the masses move their money any where but under the mattress. You could for example remember the Peter Schiff interviews at the Occupy Wallstreet, and there was no interest in seeking out alternative places to put money. All the focus was on protesting corruption and concentration of wealth. The mainstream was focused on fixing the system, not bailing out.


The mainstream will come in if it is bubble, they are back into dot.com speculation mode, and there is a super easy way for them to onboard that doesn't have any crypto weirdness. Or if there is some significant overlooked yet untapped use case for Bitcoin that comes along. Otherwise they will never come onboard Bitcoin. I don't think they will come onboard Bitcoin due to a financial crisis, because the last thing they'd want is what they perceive to be more weirdness and unsafety.

As for another way to onboard them (not Bitcoin), there is a way. Steem has demonstrated a core principle, but seems to me they didn't get it quite right. And you will hear it from me hopefully soon.

Agree with you r0ach. tldr people are happy with dollars. Disagree they know or even intuitively know about rough cnonsensus attacks and all that shit. Just happy with their Big 4 banks, credit/debit cards, and USD. Simple as that.

The public is not like apeshit level stupid.  It's not that Bitcoin is too hard to use or anything, it's that they don't see it as a store of value.  Due to things like rough consensus attacks (ETH vs ETC) and all the black swans that can send Bitcoin to zero, the only people putting money into Bitcoin instead of silver and gold are traders with a large appetite for risk, which is not a very large demographic.  Even with metals being a superior store of value, the general public doesn't even own any of those right now, so they're obviously not going to be buying tons of Bitcoin until the chart below begins to change:

(the other takeaway of the chart below is that everything else is in a bubble that will soon collapse while metals skyrocket)

Ads on the internet are a fact of life. FB, Youtube, everyone has them - except wikipedia which is begging for donations every year. And you can't get rid of these ads in all those large sites without hacks.

In this case you tell them sign up and make the ads vanish. It's an incentive to register. If they don't register fuck them and let them see the ads. I, as steemit, lost nothing. After all, a reddit-type site can only have so many registered users due to the issues you mentioned upthread. This is not FB to attract billions - blogging/foruming etc is a "niche" inside the social networks market that will only attract a limited audience. So all those free-riders (that would never register anyway) get to pay something indirectly.

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.

Nobody cares now, except of course the tinfoil types who always care. I don't believe Dan's innovations are enough to overcome the network effect of the legacy system unless there is another push to make mainstream people want to get away from it (i.e. another major crisis with deeply unpopular bailouts or some other obvious clusterfuck).

WTF  

I think you don't understand the English language. Try again to read what I wrote. In your proposal, the new users who come to the site and are not registered yet, will see ads, which will impact on their opinion of the site and (most likely) lead to a higher attrition rate. The revenue gained is so miniscule that is can't be argued to be worth the risk of attrition. Nobody is interested in $1 of revenue per blog. This is the reason everyone is excited about Steem, because ad-funded blogging is not worth it.

If you presume that "new users" means only signed in (registered) users, then you lack the ability to infer meaning from context. Obviously I am not stupid enough to have not understood your proposal. Do you think my IQ is that low.

You are answering on a misunderstanding you hold. The ads, in the proposal I wrote above, is not for registered users. It's only for visitors - the kind of traffic which I expect will dominate in the future - and which, to you, the web server, are "free riders".

Once a user registers and is logged in, pufff... all ads disappear. So there is no attrition. And the ads don't have to be invasive. I don't close every tab that has an ad. But I will close it if it throws me a few popups, if it is extremely spammy, etc etc. Only porn sites / casinos / illegal tv streams / torrent sites have that kind of spammy ads where you want to close the browser ASAP.

As for reddit, just because reddit sucks at monetizing their content doesn't mean it's not doable. You analyze the failures, improve and move on.

Yes same as what I wrote upthread. But the crypto weirdness (thefts, long passwords, hardware wallets, etc) also is a factor that will prevent mass adoption even if there is a compelling need for it, but it is not the first impediment as we agree.

Btw as you I assume know, @dan has already pointed the way to potential solutions and I have even suggested to him in a comment how to rectify one of the other aspects (which he read because he upvoted my comment).


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.


Nope and specifically on the word "mainstream". Perhaps they will jump on the next bubble, and if Coinbase, Paypal, etc have made onboarding easy as pie. I think more likely we are waiting for the US stock market to skyrocket, which may reignite mass participation in speculation. The masses have been on the sidelines of bubbles since 2008. They've been hoarding cash, which is evident in the plummeting velocity of money.


Agreed except I don't agree very large ones potentially, until the second impediment is rectified.

Are you blind?


You gain < $1 per blog in revenue (which no one is interested in!) and then you impact the new users experience with the site by showing them ads. You will lose more in cost of attrition of news users due to being bombarded with ads, than you will gain from revenue that isn't even compelling to anyone.

Why do you force me to write the same points over and over again. You are going to put me in a position where I am compelled to never converse with you due to the very low S/N ratio.

You don't seem to contemplate that adding features is not free. There are ramifications which can be worse than anything gained from the feature.

It's additional income, not exclusive income.

Plus, even as additional income, a steem-like platform can do something that is not ordinarily possible by typical ad schemes: Decentralize the ad-buying / ad-placing process and allow 100% of the revenue to go to the author, instead of 30-50-70%.

You create an interface in steemit for advertisers, they login, buy SDs or STEEM, and then spend it on ads in selected content / topics or selected authors they want to sponsor. It'll have some failsafe to ensure the ads are not abusive/porn/etc etc, and off you go with 100% revenue to the author (almost unheard of).

Medium is only surviving on venture funding. There is no significant business model for blogging sites. The revenue math does not work. Medium is frantically trying to find a revenue model now, and they will of course fail (see the link below for why).

Reddit is a very low cost operation that generates a measly $8 million of revenue which is perhaps significant enough for the people who run it, but would amount to nothing for the bloggers if it was distributed to them.

Btw, make sure you read this, so you can understand the background on my guesstimate of why your idea was a waste:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/snapchats-valuation-based-single-flawed-assumption-dare-obasanjo


You don't compete with Facebook by attacking its strengths, i.e. that everyone is already there. Instead you leverage Facebook's strengths.

You need some compelling activity that Facebook can't quickly replicate, which is also extremely popular.

And that activity needs to have a business model. If you are going ad-funded, then make sure you read the link I provided above.