RE: The end of the War - Haejin & FulltimeGeek
Haejin has always been an easy scapegoat. easy to point the finger and say look at all the self voting. When the majority of whales on this platform have delegated the majority of their stake to bidbots, which takes more out of the reward pool than just self voting, and adds nothing of value. At least haejin has a huge following and posts regularly - posts that could be considered to add value. I know some people think technical analysis is crap - but in that field, the more people who follow you, the more value your analysis has. A thousand nobodies posting technical analysis adds nothing to Steem blockchain. A single account with a huge following posting technical analysis adds value, IMO. So, could haejin have given back more to the community? Of course. But it is beyond hypocritical for many of the big names who go after him to do so considering they rape the reward pool in their own way through bid bot delegations. (obviously, not talking about ftg here).
I'm confident, maybe naively so, that an actual content driven platform can be built on an SMT. However, as we currently have STEEM, it simply can't happen.
I'm not against bidbots per say, because those are people making choices. So to me, it's like arguing against people's right to choose. However, your point is right on, when a whale like freedom delegates millions of SP out to bots, he is just self voting and "nobody" knows he is.
Who can blame them for using bidbots. I was delegating to smartsteem. Why? Well, when the STEEM and SBD prices were way higher, did you ever do a ROI calculation? It was H U G E. There is no other way that I know of to make even close to the return it provided. Since prices are low again though, I've removed my delegation to better support my friends. I didn't put my money into SP though to lose it. It was an investment, and I want it to grow. Good content does get rewarded on here too. If someone isn't being rewarded, they are not doing something right. Either they can't write well, or no one cares about their content enough to support it.
Right, that is what I am saying - the ROI from bidbots is indeed H U G E and is actually greater than self voting. I am not blaming people for making the decision that is in their own financial self interest. I am just calling many of them hypocrites for pointing the finger at Haejin for self-voting his own content, when they were/are taking even more from the reward pool (relative to their SP stake) through delegation to bid bots. Delegating to a bid bot is functionally equivalent to self-voting, only it actually takes even more from the reward pool, and exposes you to no risks of flagging. Haejin is and always has been the easy scapegoat to distract people - it is easier to see his posts with large self votes and conceptualize the amounts, while the ROI from bidbot delegation is more or less invisible. But it still comes from the reward pool. And it adds nothing of value to the blockchain.
It's not entirely invisible. People can look at my wallet and see my smartsteem payouts. Sure, I could create another account, and use it to receive rewards, and then transfer the money back to myself off steemit. Some certainly do it.