Steem whales are a joke. Look at the steem power this account has!! (it's a bought and sold account)
https://steemit.com/@ashleigh/transfers
this account seems a tad over powered?
Is the steem community really okay with accounts that don't have a real owner and exist for nothing but profit? These accounts carry huge amounts of power and influence on steem. Surely if money is used to buy them then they would be bought for the sole reason of money? rather than the better interest as a whole?
This post will be buried just like all the others, this sort of behavior (in my opinion) needs culling!
Sharing this post would help raise awareness againt's such ridiculous steem whales. we all deserve an equal chance, thats what i believe anyways.
I feel sometimes the only way to fix this is either become a whale yourself, hook a whale,, or pull your value out of it(Power down, cash out). Something tells me i wont be hooking a whale writing about them!! ^^
I think this is a reasonable topic of discussion so I upvoted it.
This logic (particularly the suggestion that someone having a financial interest is harmful) seems highly flawed to me. If someone buys into Steem, particularly in a big way, they are invested in the success of the system. The idea that people with an investment in the system would act to maintain and improve the system is very much built in to the design and discussed extensively in the white paper.
Why do you think this is a bad thing?
@smooth Ok I'll bite :)
My opinion is that PoS suffers from the mistaken belief that
all shareholders will work in the best interests of the company they hold shares in.
It's almost never true. Instead...
Stakeholders will work in the best interests of whatever they have stake in so long as it is more inline with their interests at the moment than some other action.
For example. I have some bitcoins. I see evidence that causes me to believe china will dump. I open a short position and I'll scream what's about to happen from the rafters if I have to. Not because I believe any less in bitcoin, but because I stand to make substantial gains from my short and I know I'm right.
In this case, what is being said is that reputation matters here. People are building accounts, building rep and then selling the account. This is exactly the same as buying a fully decked out World of Warcraft account from ebay. A nice high powered warrior with all the epic raid gear and a solid reputation.
The thing is that no one will sell a thing that they believe is going to make them more money if they hold. So there are two reasons to sell. Immediate cashflow is needed for some emergency, i.e. my car just died so I'll make a new alt and level up later. Or they have lost faith in the platform as a whole. They are "quitting the game" as it were.
Eitherway this is dangerous when combined with the new rules coming into effect because a whale selling out externally like this means that the guys who are serious about winning this can pick up an epic level character cheap and totally own or grief the game. They have a reason for doing this and it's not financial at all. The incentive is personal satisfaction.
So how about we get those kinds of players to do something much more useful and appreciated by the community. Because the financial incentives aren't the issue, personal satisfaction is.
But any potential sale of an account or reputation that comes along with it is recorded in the blockchain as an update of the keys to the account.
People change keys for all sorts of reasons. Seeing that on the blockchain means very little.
I agree ... a more complete observation is that a change of keys does not necessarily imply a change of ownership, but that the converse does (or one would hope).
Well if they actually change keys yes. But if they just sell the account for cash on ebay and hand over the username and password or the wallet file directly then no.
Now you and I might not be stupid enough to do that. But vanity bitcoin addresses are traded like pokemon.
could you have a look at my advertisement post i made? ambitious but it is a goal of mine!
Okay then, thank you for confirming that this isn't an issue worth being particularly concerned about. World of Warcraft is extremely successful.
@smooth Sorry wasn't trying to minimize it or play it off. Mind has been turning to old addictions lately, WoW being one of the hardest to break.
The point is that over all it's fine for the person selling, they get cash and they get to leave without powering down. The reputation and steem power travels with them. This is stake, but the person buying existing stake in this fashion is unlikely to have the best of intentions which was my actual point.
People buy things for personal reasons. If accounts become tradable commodities, then it is can be bad for the community. Some of the upcoming changes could make this much worse since someone could easily buy a miniwhale and then use it censor anyone they feel like.
I agree with you that Steemit is unlikely to implement an effective and useful reputation system that does more good than harm. Unlikely does not mean impossible though, so I'm willing to keep an open mind.
"Some of the upcoming changes could make this much worse since someone could easily buy a miniwhale and then use it censor anyone they feel like."
exactly what I'm also worried about! thanks for voicing this!
Exactly. Whales are as selfish as the next guy. Or as noble, same difference.
Time is money!- it is an old truth
Or time or money?
when people chase solely money they become greedy. That means you and i will suffer. (our posts and the community as a whole) Money is one think, selling and trading accounts for that purpous to me is worrying. (my own opinion though)
i like william. i hope you stay on steemit man!!! :P
@egjoshslim Thanks man, yeah I'll be staying! Here's hoping you stay too!!!
Turns out this is more relevant than ever before. 1% owning 90% of all SP? Steemit = the same as every other system
@egjoshslim
Sorry about the momentary upvote/downvote thing there. I have something I'm working on and it didn't quite work. I meant to upvote your post not your comment.
I'm upvoting for visibility because it directly reflects something I mentioned previously
I don't think anyone is going to flag you, but I doubt this posting will recieve the attention it deserves. In the posting I just linked I briefly discuss power and account selling and reputation / credibility selling.
I can tell you feel as passionately about this as I do, so if you want to hop over in my thread and mention this part of the discussion going on over here, I'll let folks know I upvoted you. For what it's worth. I don't have any real power, but it seems like people are beginning to listen to the problems and are open to hearing about solutions.
Thanks!
added a comment to the post you linked, thank you again!
You are very welcome! Feel free to keep the conversation going and now you're just about in trending, you should also hunt out others who are not getting the visibility they deserve. We'll start a revolution by getting the minnows, dolphins and whales to see what proper curation looks like. #payitforward see how many topics we can get into trending via network effects.
Imagine that using a social network to be social and network. Whodathunkit?
thats an awesome idea!! #payitforward in the form of promoting each others post when the relate to the same subject with the hashtag added ofcourse! about time people used the literal meaning ay ;)
Thank you buddy!! Power comes in many forms, influence being one. Having influence shouldn't be buyable, thats the problem with the world already. Steemit can be different. It requires us as a community though.
this thread died :( i feel i should repost at a later date? what do you think?
This isn't some kind of egalitarian hippie commune where everyone's voice is equal. It's a capitalist marketplace. Profit is a good thing, not something to be frowned upon. Besides, it's the only reason anyone is here at all instead of on the other, more established platforms out there that don't pay.
"The only reason anyone is here [etc]" - I disagree. I am not here because it pays but because I value decentralization. If people are here only to make money than I imagine that is going to make for a pretty poor quality community, and in the long run not be good for the platform as a whole. Which I think is sort of the point of the original post.
You just responded in disagreement to something I said on here two years ago? Okay then. Steemit was very different back then. It changed and I cashed out long ago. It's still a fine place to blog but if you're here because you think it's decentralized, I'd keep looking. The site goes down from time to time and almost nobody knows how to access their content on the blockchain when that happens. It was a great experiment and we learned a lot but I wouldn't invest in it as it is today. If anyone decides to fix it or make a better one, they'll have to make it much more stratified. It would have to be a collection of gated communities rather than a single giant city because once the floodgates are opened, you just end up with thousands of third-world panhandlers rushing in with nonsensical spam. It's why open borders spell doom for any country.
I might be missing something, but i don't see the problem here.
Lets say i buy the account from blocktrades. So asheigh has 66K steem, which is guess is $120K.
What have i really really obtained that i couldnt get by making a new account,, purchasing $120K worth of steem and powering up.
If he were offering steep discounts on SP, i would understand the concern (id probably be getting out the old checkbook too)
But the fact is anyone with money can already have an account this big, blocktrades' willingness to sell notwithstanding.
side note, if the concern is this whale has a bunch of whale mini accounts, the reason for this is most likely that theyre mostly old miners, and its no longer profitable to run them. Miners are rewarded with steem power, so its not like he can xfer the SP out after hes done using the miner.
Im pretty sure this guy had a ton of miner accounts... cause theres a whole family of them that are just girls first names... he should turn them into catfish
hahaha just seen this comment :P !!
i would personally like to see some tweaks in regards to normal users upvotes being worth abit more to counter balance. I actually agree with most of what you say!
Apparently I was oblivious to my powers as a "whale" all I can say is.. be careful what kind of whale you reel in.. cause you might catch a crazy mothafuka like me
https://steemit.com/disorder/@mrwang/episode-1-awareness
that gif hahaha :P soon we shall be blue whales >:D >:D (joking though i don't want whale status :O )"with great power comes great responsibility" - Sir Isac Newton 2716
i have another post aimed at TV advertisement for steemit hoping the increase in people using it would bring some level of balance? An idea.
I see nothing wrong with his account.
You'd be surprised what can hook a whale. Some might agree with you
i think a couple may have :O
there are some good whales, genuine ones. @mrwang is one!
@wang or @mrwang?
I'll accept either in my case. Just keep steeming !
I wasn't aware I was a whale till my buddy @egjoshslim brought it to my attention
you aren't a whale in the sense of a bought and sold account. you are a genuine whale if that makes sense? haha
@fuzzyvest is real good one too.
see! :P man i love the steemit community! i have seen fuzzy about! seems like a fantastic person!
I think there's 3 fuzzies lol, I've made contact with one so far!
@mrwang is not a whale...
One of the most important things in a crypto currency is decentralization. If we compromise that the currency will decline over time but if they are willing to help out the average user they would be benefited by the amount they hold being worth more. We just need to make sure the only way they can make more is by helping us out.
i have come to agree on some level tbh but i do feel the upvotes at rating level 2 and up should count for more! like i say though open discussing made me reconsider my stance! exactly how debates and issues should be raised and handled! I love mario :P
Yes upvotes should count for more but the problem is they don't have enough money to do that. You can send stuff directly or you could even make your own website like this one.
whales that power down now, make it so in 2 years their Mv is distributed to non-whales. Not sure this is necessarily a bad thing. currently there is over concentration with whales which means the only way for this distribution to improve is for whales to powerdown and sell their STEEM.