The Interview a Steem Stakeholder Series is a project to help inform the community about the views of the largest Steem stakeholders. The goal is to help "regular users" better understand the views of the largest stakeholders on the platform, so they can better align their actions with what the stakeholders are looking for.

In this post, @acidyo (a stakeholder with over 100,000 STEEM and additional 200,000 SP delegation) answered several questions about his views on the Steem platform and community. Below are the questions that were asked and responses from the interview.

Keep in mind that the stakeholders are individuals, and not all of them will share similar views. The views expressed in the interview are the views of the one stakeholder conducting the interview. They are not intended to represent the views of all stakeholders.

If you are a stakeholder with 100,000 or more STEEM and would like to participate in an interview, please reach out to me on steem.chat or Discord.

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The Interview with @acidyo

How did you become a part of the Steem project?

I joined quite early before the first payouts after I read about it on a crypto subreddit.

When did you join?

May 2016

How did you acquire a majority of your stake?

By curating, instead of posting in the beginning I focused on curation and commenting to increase engagement. When streemian was created I opened up my own trail there and some bigger investors followed my curation and when delegations came along they gave me more influence through that as well.

How many STEEM tokens do you currently hold?

Over 100,000

Do you have a large stake in any other tokens besides STEEM?

Not as large, no.

What Steem apps do you use on a regular basis?

Dlive, Steepshot and Steemit, but I'm trying to get into Busy more and more.

What would you say repels investors or otherwise discourages investment in the Steem blockchain and STEEM tokens?

Early accusations of it being a scam by people who don't understand what a blockchain is/can be. Early neglect and not being aware of changes. Big amount of stake mined early and due to old inflation model having become huge. The trending page has sure never helped.

What would you say attracts investors or otherwise encourages investment in the Steem blockchain and STEEM tokens?

Safety of funds, Steem has one of the best account recovery methods compared to other currencies and even if you get your key stolen you can recover it while having your SteemPower safe or liquids in Savings.

In addition to holding tokens, how else are you involved in the project?

A lot of manual curation. Created @ocd for quality but undervalued authors in multiple languages that haven't received the visibility they deserve (@ocd in a break right now as we are expanding some sideprojects). Curating a lot of introduction posts (thanks to @theaustrianguy for making that easier lately through @welcoming). Taking care of the r/steemit subreddit and lately changing how it operates (up to 7500 subscribers now) and a lot of other things, I try to be all-round with a lot of projects and curate where I see fit.

What types of things do you do specifically to get a ROI on your investment?

I haven't invested a lot in Steem early but I did power up about $100k in Steem at half the ATH. A big part of it is effective curation and staying powered up. :)

What are ways that "regular users" have potential to affect your investment in a positive way?

Seeing the larger picture, not falling for FUD or exchanging their SP for other tokens. Doing the best at what they are doing for the longetivity of the platform.

What type of contributions do you consider to be adding value to your investment?

Building communities, growing together and most importantly sharing their steem posts and stories outside of the platform, hopefully this will become a lot more active once we have faster account creations.

How do you discover and reward those types of contributions?

I try to reward users based on the quality and effort they put into the platform. Curating manually means that you often forget some now and then and move in waves of which your favorite users are at certain periods in time or my interests of what I like to read or watch (lately with Dlive). I believe to have a fair understanding of viral things on the internet and I try to curate similarly stuff that brings out the best content on Steem at any given time.

Do you delegate SP to any projects? If so, what types of projects do you support?

I used to delegate to the team members of @ocd for a long time, lately I am delegating to @steemgc which is a growing gaming community on Steem and @suomibotti which is a curation project for Finnish users. I also tend to randomly delegate to some new users from time to time to get them their vote slider.

How "hands on" do you expect to be in projects you support?

Not too hands on, if I trust the leaders of a project than I don't check up on them all that much. If complaints come forward I do make sure to get to the root of it.

What type of accountability reporting do you expect to see from a project that you support?

A few of those projects have done some good reporting, they have been @dlive and @steemhunt. I don't expect anything more than that.

What do you look for when casting witness votes?

Activity, dedication to the currency and what they are working on. Currently giving my witness vote to new witnesses.

Do you have strong views on any of issues that are frequently discussed, or any upcoming changes?

I don't like shortsightedness and entitlement and I see a lot of that on Steem. I have personally made the decision to trust the Steemit team and my beliefs in the platform have only grown since the first couple weeks I joined and read everything there was about it.

What would you like to see more/less of from "regular users"?

Working together as a community, not forgetting from where they came from and what they were making on those social media platforms and most importantly not going all in as to rely on Steem as income for daily expenses. Crypto markets are brutal and they will not make that possible for you in most cases.

What sort of profit margins do you hope to see for your investment?

Nothing is impossible, new tech, new advantages and borders. I remember people laughed at me in 2013 when I said Bitcoin can easily go to $10k (went to $20k) or that Eth can easily go to $100 (went to $1400) a few years later and there will probably be people laughing when I say that Steem can easily go to $100 as well.

Do you have a time frame for how long you plan to hold STEEM? Or a price target?

In my mind there is no particular price target for when I will sell Steem, I have a target of how much Steem Power I want to get to and hold for continued influence on the platform. People will hopefully realize the true power of it by then.

Do you believe that the delegating of SP to bid-bots as well as self-voting/circle-jerking is harmful to long-term ROI?

It depends of what the investor does with the gains. Right now it feels like a spiral where some are losing out by not growing as fast as others that do delegate to bid bots but I believe we can raise the bar of how bid bots operate and owners profit from it to make SP an even better investment. The best outcome would of course be for higher curation rewards and to incentivize delegation to curation projects for the same ROI.

What factors affect your decisions to go after short term returns that may hurt Steem in the long run vs. decisions to take a longer term strategy?

Trading it in for currencies that aren't continually being inflated to take profits back to SP after. Many times it has proven that due to this Steem was quite often lagging behind other gainers and allowing a window to double-profit, not sure if the next bull run will allow that considering the low liquidity Steem has had on the markets, many will probably not get the chance to buy back in the amount the planned to re-invest into Steem.

Are there other forms of obtaining a good ROI from STEEM that you think will be possible in the long-term?

Investing into SMT's through delegation/curation, some of them can become the next big thing and outperform Steem.

What do you think is the biggest disconnect between stakeholders and "regular users"?

Many early investors may not care a lot about their Steem stake as they've been around long enough to be invested in other currencies as well. They may not want the platform to succeed as much as other more active users in the same way as they may not care about the stake they've left and "forgotten" on their steem account on autovotes or delegated it to bid bots.

If you strike it rich from STEEM, what do you plan to do with your money?

Continue curating. :)

Is there anything else that you would like to add that wasn't covered by the questions above?

I think there are quite small changes that when applied right will make the demand for SP rise by a lot. I am glad the team is working on the backend even if it means that many might ignore Steem for the time being because of the lack in front-end/s. I am looking forward to how this ecosystem will develop in the next few years.