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  • At the blockchain level, there is a fee for creating a new account.
  • That fee is currently 3 STEEM.
  • The steemit.com website pays the registration fee for most users. In practice, the fee only applies to experts who create an account by interfacing directly with the blockchain.
  • The fee is retained by the newly created account as its initial Steem Power balance.

Some questions for you to consider:

  • Is it a scam if new users are paid to sign up?
  • How do you keep an abuser from registering a million accounts without a fee? We can't do what most other sites do (e.g. rate limiting new account creation per IP address, email verification, CAPTCHA) because those techniques can't be done on a blockchain.

We've tried very hard to minimize the number of fees in the system.

You paid $9 for training and mentoring and the rest. You did not pay $9 for a steemit account, that is 100% clear to anyone caring to actually read what they buy before during and after.

Thanks.

Your reply prompted me to find out more and I found the difference between the steemit service and steemcash here: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@marklyford/the-truth-about-mark-lyford-and-banx

Thanks.

Let's ask the blockchain.

>>> get_account_history chaching 0 0
#     BLOCK #    TRX ID          OPERATION            DETAILS                                           
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
0     3913394    0eaf6c4ecef6ee17e8e5b0b43773f4f1c1f8ced6 account_create       {"fee":"3.000 STEEM","creator":"steem","new_account_name":"chaching",...}

According to the blockchain, your account was created by the steemit.com faucet (aka @steem). Most user accounts are created by @steem.

The Wallet tab of your account is empty, except for 3.079 STEEM Power.

There's no record of any such payment anywhere in your account activity. Can you give some more details about this $9 payment -- what webpage instructed you to pay $9, and how did you actually make the payment (Steem, bitcoins, credit card, etc.)?

You can email contact at sign steemit.com if you don't want to discuss this publicly.

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