I'm trying to create an account on steemit and seem to be unable to do so. Initially, I tried signing up through reddit, and it returned error: verified facebook account required. I then went back and signed up through my facebook account, and got the same error message. I assume this is something on your guys' end, but please let me know if there is a workaround so I can make an account, because I love the concept behind this project.
Yes, this was a bug on our end. It's fixed already, please try to create an account again, this is the link
https://steemit.com/create_accountDon't hesitate to send me PM if something doesn't work.
Cool. Just got an account set up and made. How exactly do I navigate the site? Having trouble finding some more niche or regular bloggers to follow or whatnot. The frontpage is nice but would like some genuine blogging/conversation.
Good question. Maybe a page showing various leaderboards such as most upvoted posters, categories, etc. or something would be interesting. For now you just have to find them by finding an interesting post and then clicking on the poster's name.
I think that would be a really cool addition.
Last question: How do withdrawals work? Is that what the 'power down' option is for? I tried messing around with it and it returned an error. I don't plan on withdrawing but it's hard to trust the legitimacy of the operation without a viable way to withdraw my steem.
"Power down" converts your Steem Power to liquid Steem. It takes place over 104 weekly payments. However, if you got free Steem Power, you can't withdraw that until you reach 10x.
Withdraws work like any other web wallet, but you can only withdraw liquid Steam or Steem Sollars (the latter doesn't exist yet but will be paid out starting July 4), not Steem Power. You could send it to your own wallet, an exchange, etc.
You can theoretically use use your password/private keys from the web site to do all this stuff via the CLI wallet and bypass the web site (you can even make blog posts from the CLI wallet, though it is somewhat painful; voting isn't too bad). I guess at some point there may be a GUI wallet, other web wallets, etc.
When you say '104 weekly payments' does that mean your Steem Power will take two years to fully withdraw? I have a hard time believing there is any practical reason to lock up earnings for such an insane amount of time...
There are actually many reasons for it, which you can read in the white paper. The system has a lot of complex interlocking pieces.
But in reality
earnings will not be locked up, because Steem Dollars are fully liquid, so that is the immediate earnings. The portion of rewards that goes toward increasing your Steem Power could also be viewed as karma or activity points or premium account status or whatever you want to call it, with the added option to liquidate that slowly if you plan to exit the system or just don't value your status that much.
Okay, that makes more sense.
Will Steem Dollar earnings be withdrawn as Steem? And if so, does that mean there is no difference between Steem Power and Steem Dollars once they are liquidated and removed from the site?
Steem Dollars will be able to be converted to Steem (there is a built in market on the blockchain, there are plans for the web site to support that as well), but they will also be able to be withdrawn directly as Steem Dollars, sending them to another crypto exchange, a merchant to pay for goods/services, to your own wallet, etc.
If you are familiar with BitUSD, Nubits, Tether, etc. then you can consider Steem Dollars to be in the same family (though each has somewhat different underlying properties). That is, a cryptocurrency that is designed to maintain a value close to $1 per token.
I'm not sure I understood your last question, but I think the answer is there is no difference.