RE: So who is actually paying the Steemit bill?
Upvoted because you raise some valid concerns. I too invested in July, and I also get frustrated at the "everything should be free" mentality or the "we need everything equal and fair" line of thinking when they don't even agree on equality of opportunity versus equality of outcome or what "fair" actually means.
My feeling is we should all be more patient. This isn't like other pump and dump currencies. It's currently in a hyper inflationary period and only for investors who see the long-term value. Those who watch the price each day aren't investors, they are day traders. I've been as excited about Steemit when it was at $0.28 (when I first purchased), when it was at $1.00 (when I purchased some more), when it went up to near $5 (and I didn't sell) as I am now.
Is it possible no one will buy in the future? Certainly. To me, the main concern to any investor should be user adoption as that will drive the social media side of the platform which will then drive the demand for the coming marketplace for SBD and the advertiser influence. You may see the Promoted tab as a failure, but I see it as a step in the right direction and, being open source, anyone can make suggestions. If people aren't exponentially signing up, there's very little chance Steemit will put a dent in Facebook/Twitter/Reddit/Medium. The network effect is too strong.
That said, $0.01 reward for posting is better than anything anyone gets on the other platforms. I'm thinking long term and I think the Steem Power vested share idea supports those who also think long term.
Thanks! I completely agree with that comment and should have read it first, before I replied to the other one.
"To me, the main concern to any investor should be user adoption as that will drive the social media side of the platform which will then drive the demand for the coming marketplace for SBD and the advertiser influence."
I can imagine that and as I said, I might just be impatient. Maybe Ned and Dan are completely aware of all of this . The challenge is still that you have to make both happy, investors and users, because users are also not very happy if their rewards keep falling.
But I completely agree that 0.01 is better than anything else. I was joking with some Ancap friends that the worst case scenario would be to have some kind of Anarcho-Facebook where we have a censorship free platform and can throw Steem at each other just for fun. So I'm not scared, but I'd like Steemit to be much more than that (and I'd really like if investors where taken as seriously as whales, authors and users...).