Topic: Steem pyramid scheme revealed - page 6. (Read 107069 times)

Although i like steem platform, i always wondered how they generate revenue to pay content writers and bloggers because there is no visible ads anywhere on their website, only paid thing i see is sponsored or sticky posts but that does not seem to generate any considerable revenue, i hope they will start being more transparent and publish monthly or quarterly report about platform revenues and expenses.

Sorry if im opening an old thread, but ive been on steemit since march 2017, and since that time, ive noticed all the uos and downs, the schemes and whatnot.

I cant say its a pyramid scheme, @smooth is pretty much on track with all he has said, despite the seemingly large inflation rate and all that, the system operates below what i like to term "a crashing point".

I invested $0 into steemit, but through steemit, i have been able to earn enough to buy more SP, buy BTC, buy ETH and continue this awesome crypto journey.

Now for those that may be complaining about not getting votes,....... Steemit is a community, youll spend more of your days interacting with other people than actually writing articles.

Discord, steemit.chat, whatsapp, telegram, slack, Facebook, twitter..... You gotta have em all.

I believe any system can profit anyone, it all depends on how much youre willing to understand it.

Everyone is entitled to their opinions, but as for me, steemit is bae, it has its own problems, but like every system, proper maintenance is all it takes to keep things running smooth.

On the one hand, the post seems a bit like a rage without any real reason. On the other hand, the author has some point, I mean this really makes sense.

Anyway, I use steemit to read and gather info, so I don't care about Steem power's price. There're so much promising coins, so I'd rather not mess with Steem in terms of earning money

It is not finite in any meaningful sense since it is plausible that asteroid mining and then farther into the universe may become a thing, or transmutation, or whatever other technological improvements. And indeed the universe is still creating more due to neutron star collisions or whatever it is that makes gold.

The reason gold gets away with it is that it inflates slower than economic growth (which includes growth in productivity aka technological improvements so it isn't really finite). Asteroid mining probably won't break that as it appears it will just be very expensive and therefore similar to other sorts of high cost mining, but other technology could.

I agree that 10% was/is unsustainable. I was one of the people who pushed for that to be changed (or to be more precise, I wasn't one who pushed for changes, but when changes started being discussed, I argued against 10% being reasonable to continue).

However, to be clear it was never going to be the full 10% for long term holders because of the way vesting anti-dilution worked. A portion of the 10% was to be borne by liquid STEEM holders (for example, exchange traders) as a sort of alternative to transaction fees. In practice by the time it was changed, inflation on long term holders was actually close to zero. It was an unnecessarily complicated and hard-to-understand system, which was itself enough reason to get rid of it. There were plenty of people who actually thought the inflation rate was 100%. The confusion alone was a good reason to rework things (and there were others).

I am not interested in debating semantics. I succinctly explained why it is, in my opinion, a pyramid scheme. However, now that I've taken a second look... I did not realize that the inflation schedule has been altered since I've last read the whitepaper:

https://steemit.com/steem-inflation/@fyrstikken/what-is-the-inflation-rate-of-steem-here-is-the-supply-table-for-the-next-20-years

10% inflation per annum (what it used to be) is quite different from eventually 1% inflation per annum in the 20th year (what it is now). I would consider anything above a few percent inflation per annum in perpetuity unsustainable. Anything at or below that amount is still questionable IMO, but not what I would consider obviously unsustainable. FIAT gets away with it because it's backed by force. Gold gets away with it because there is actually a finite amount, but it is the available supply that is inflating- not the total supply. It is unclear whether cryptocurrencies can get away with it because there is no precedent.

I will retract my statement about it being a pyramid scheme based on me learning of the altered inflation schedule.

Anything Craig Grant, Trevon James, and Crypto Nick are recommending, then I'm going the other way. Steem is promoted heavily by these scammers and they are also some of the top receivers of SteemCash, or Steem, or Minnow, whatever all Steemit is selling. The quality content never sees more than a few bucks, while all the founders and promoters see thousands of Steem thrown there way on a stupid article on how to use Steem. It might not be a pyramid, but it's a scam with deceiving marketing.

I think in my own opinion there is nothing hidden under the sun. If the information you have giving us is true we will all know about it in the nearest future. But one thing I know about Steemit is that it's helping me do my blogging. I don't fucking care about steem and its power.

That's not a "pyramid scheme". It simply doesn't fit the definition (which is most certainly not "any business which is unsustainable"). A "pyramid scheme" means participants bringing in new participants below them in a hierarchy, with those higher up in the heirarchy profiting not from general growth of the population of participants, but from those structurally below them (the so-called downstream). There is no such structure in Steem; the terminology is completely misplaced.

It may be economically unsustainable, but then you will have to take that up with XMR, DOGE, ETH, and various other coins which also have perpetual inflation and no clear source of "business profit" (although to the extent that you consider coin creation a "cost", then lost coins due to various reasons might be considered a "profit" in which case it isn't clear that any of these, including STEEM, will have "costs" exceeding "profits", though they might). None of those are "pyramid schemes" either.

Incremental net inflation doesn't imply a "collapse" either, it could simply result in a slow rate of decline in the purchasing power of the token (say a fraction of a percent per year), essentially forever (it isn't like we're going to run out of numbers), which many would find perfectly acceptable, or even good.


You may call it assinie semantics but in fact it is important to explain clearly how the structure is going to fail. For example, pyramid scheme participants (except the very first) always buy in for some amount of money, and expect to profit by growing their downstream. This fails quickly because mostly because of the skim taken at the very top. For example, if 50% goes to those at the very top, then the scheme requires each level to double the number of participants below, which is obviously unsustainable.

But again, no such thing exists in Steem. That vast majority of the participants have not bought in anything at all. They don't have to recoup an investment (that they didn't make) by bringing in exponentially more participants below. People who do invest in the token face essentially the exact same economics as most other cryptocurrencies (requiring new investors to buy from them if they ever want to cash out). Over the long term, the perpetual inflation means that passive participants will on average lose a small amount (0.5% or less due to lost coins, potentially none at all) per year, which again many may find perfectly acceptable or even good. And that is assuming that the entire system doesn't continue to gain value due to economic and technological progress. In particular, 0.5% token inflation requires doubling total economic value once in 138 years for the tokens to not (slowly) lose purchasing power. It is highly questionable to assert with certainty that can't happen.

BTW, gold supply inflates by about 1-1.5% per year, has done so for thousands of years, and will likely continue to do so, perhaps for thousands more. Its value hasn't collapsed and likely won't ever collapse from that rate of inflation (although something like feasible transmutation, asteroid mining, etc. that drastically increases the rate from 1-1.5% per year might lead to a collapse). The premise that slow steady inflation of a monetary unit always implies collapse is refuted by history.

Now, if you want to talk about what is actually bad about Steem and reasons why it might not be a good investment I'm happy to do so, but they will be actual substantive reasons, not trolling about "pyramid schemes" and bizarre economic "theories" that contradict millennia of history. (I hesitate to even call them that because actual theories must have some credible grounding in reality and realistic possibility to actually be correct.)

Perpetual inflation outpacing the business' profit equals an unsustainable pyramid scheme.

Eventually, the token's value will collapse as people to buy the Steem token cease to exist (there are only so many people in the world).

Therefore, people that came in later by buying Steem tokens paid those that cashed out earlier by selling Steem tokens. Hence the similarities to a pyramid scheme (I only say similarities because of the asinine semantics involved with the exact definitions of terms such as ponzis or pyramid schemes).

There's a big difference in between Steem's permanently inflationary model, and most other cryptocurrencies that are inflation-neutral or deflationary.

It is very simple economic logic Smooth...

It will take a long time for the Steem token to collapse though because cryptocurrency adoption is at such a low percentage of the world's population. Steem has a chance to be the biggest pyramid scheme of all time. It will take years to decades to collapse. 3 years is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Guys, there is literally nothing about Steem that is an actual pyramid scheme, any more so than any other cryptocurrency (and they're not either, generally speaking with perhaps a few exceptions, even when they are premines, ICOs, and another scams). "Pyramid scheme" means a specific thing which is a structured system where later entrants pay those 'above' them on the pyramid. Nothing even remotely like that exists in Steem. There is no pyramid, no hierarchal structure of any kind, and no one pays anyone else.

The title of this thread was basically trolling and/or ignorance. If you like Steem, great, if you don't like it, that's fine too, but please let's forget about the 'pyramid scheme' nonsense already after almost 3 years. That doesn't mean there aren't legitimate criticisms, I have plenty. "Pyramid scheme" isn't one of them.

With good project and support I think being a pyramid scheme might still give investors chances to earn out from this project, Steem have its own way to be well developed people might find some negative side but still there's project which progressing and I guess that's the reason why there's still supports inside the exchange.

I don't really mind steem being pyramid ish scheme at all. All my life I have seen many pyramid schemes that hardly create any content, service. Steem is doing good creating blogging content and its useful.

Greetings to everyone!
There is a pretty new anonymous cryptocoin which has a huge potential and is currently at a low price.
Is called BitcoinZ and is inspired from ZCash. Here is a video about it and an interactive explanation of the zkSNARKS algorithm:

https://youtu.be/3hVG888tOpY

If you have some free time, please check it out.
Have a nice day!

That is impressive. Good job!

I agree most people posting ITT negatively are ones that are probably too lazy to profit off of Steem, and/or are looking to get rich quick and get frustrated.

One of the only ones posting recently that has valid criticisms is CornCube. It is most definitely a pyramid scheme that will eventually collapse, but it will probably get crazy big before that happens. It is possible that in that time they can create a profitable business model by leveraging their userbase that is growing rapidly, but I see that as kind of a "hail mary".

I didn't invest 1 cent into steemit, and I made around 12'000$ for blogging. Like I said, I never put money into it! You just have to create some content that people enjoy, and even if you do an amazing work, you could not get noticed if you don't make some contacts with people, you have to create a network of friends that will support each other. It's a lot of work and dedication, like in real life: If you do some amazing music or art, and you keep doing it without sharing it, nobody will notice you! Getting money is not easy, even on steemit. Most people saying it's a ponzi are just lazy people that didn't manage to make easy money. And if steemit is a scam, it means that all the concept of blockchain is a scam too. And therefor, banks are scam too. (I would more believe the last statement) Sorry if my english is bad. Haha.

Cheers!

Even if they do own a lot of coins that doesn't mean it's a scam. Steem is doing it's own part and as it is the blockchain, everyone can verify who owns what and that could be done from the very beggining. So coming out and saying that Steem is a scam because you figured out that the owners own a lot of it's coins, is just wrong. They already offer a quite good service and people seem to like getting paid for typing stuff, so if they are happy with it let them keep on doing it, and if you're not happy with it just don't get involved, you have nothing to lose if you don't any Steem coins so no worries.

I created account with them in last month, however making money from them was hard and now I am realizing from this thread they are scams. I also got suspected why they pay huge cash for such crappy posts on steemit and this thread made me everything to get understand.

Medium is 10X more popular. Reddit is 200X more. But Steem is gaining on them faster.

The bounce rate, pageviews, and time on site (aka stickiness) of Steemit is better than Medium but worse than Reddit.


I suspect most users do not realize its a scam:


It’s not surprising to me that a site where people can do something they do anyway, but have the chance of earning something, is growing. Medium actually sucks in many ways.

Additionally it’s associated with Bitcoin and blockchains, so this is a new phenomenon sweeping the world right now and (eventually) everybody will prefer to be a on blockchain version of every site, including “Facechain”.

Also the growth will tend to increase when the Steem price is higher, because blogging rewards will be higher.


You need STEEM to power it up and vote for your sock puppets and other ways of extracting the debasement of the system to yourself at a proportionally favorable rate compared to those with less STEEM.

A system which is extracting value and not generating value, eventually fails when the rate of influx of new participants slows. I doubt that will happen too soon unless some project effectively does everything better and siphons off the interest in Steem.

So who is still investing and buying this coin? All this time and problems and yet people still invest in it?

Steem shitcoin is a well crafted ponzi scheme,so dont invest or even try yo trade this shitcoin stay away if you can.