You are correct; sometimes I will just watch on steembottracker and see people at the very last minute place a huge bid and then basically ruin it for everyone because the return goes into the negative. I think people don't understand how it actually works. Or people placing bids when it's already in the negative! I do like your idea of a paid-for-system, and perhaps add a extra risk of some sort in the hopes of only the serious players engaging in it all. It's a tough one for sure; thanks for tackling it...and thank you for the response (I realised after the fact that I'd written a novella :)