Why I Powered Down Half My Holdings, And Why I've Stopped
The first payout on Steemit was one year ago today, on July 4th 2016. That's when all of this became 'real'.
It was no longer just a number next to the post, it really actually ended up in your wallet, and it really actually had real value. Of course when it launched the value was quite low but it soon grew quite a lot — and has not hit that high since. But it will again, probably.
I started powering down a few months ago.
At first I was very strict about powering down, I just didn't do it. There was no real need, I wanted to build up my Steem Power.
Then the crash happened. Steem went to a few cents, but I kept on posting through it.
I started powering down because Steem is my largest holdings.
According to Steemwhales.com I am currently holding the #70 spot for highest posting rewards so far, at 41,983,620 vests.
That's pretty impressive, I would say, and I'm happy to have made it to the top 100.
I powered down about half of my holdings and spread it into other cryptos, to diversify. I made some bad trades and some good trades. I was selling Steem when it was 20 cents, and when it was $2.70. It's quite difficult to buy bitcoin out here, you have to get around some hurdles, and so going from Steem to Bitcoin to other currencies was the best way to go.
Steem is still my largest holding.
At the current price of Steem, it is still the largest part of my portfolio... but my portfolio is much more diversified now, and a bit more equal than before.
Today I cancelled my power down....
As hard as it is, I would like to keep my Steem Power and build it back up. There are things that I'd like to do with it, invest in other things, use it for travel, use it to fund other ventures.... but I've taken out enough. Now it's time to build again, as difficult as that might be — it's getting harder and harder to get noticed on the platform, you have to be extremely consistent, dedicated, and give a lot of your time (like @sweetsssj and @papa-pepper and @timsaid and @kingscrown! They are all really impressive to me.)
Moving forward...
I'd like to plan out my posts a bit more, dedicate a bit more time and energy (if that's possible! I feel like I spend a lot of time already!) and also focus more on curation. I would like to double or triple my SP holdings in order to spread rewards to, in my opinion, the best photographers on the platform. If you would like to delegate SP for this purpose, I would certainly not object :)
Moreover, I intend to sacrifice a little bit more sleep and a little bit more time to create content people want to view and want to share and interact with. Right now I work a full time job, a part time job afternoon/weekend, and Steemit! Living in Caribbean Paradise is expensive, and this month they increased a bunch of taxes so everything is 10%+ more expensive.
There have been people on Steemit who supported me and my work from early on, and there are people who I give my support to - however small or insignificant it is; through exposure; through facilitating the contests, through upvotes etc, — and I would like to increase my support and spread it widely.
If you have a good idea for a project on Steemit and you think I'll be interested in it, send me a message on steemit.chat
Reasons To Build Up Steem Power
These are more for myself than anything else....
Higher stake in the platform.
Since HF19 you no longer need to be a 'whale' to make a difference. A nice sized 'dolphin' account has a lot of spread nowadays, and if the price of Steem stays steady above $2, it can be pretty great for everyone involved.Contribute to increasing price
Holding your Steem Power instead of selling it makes it more valuable, it reduces the amount of Steem on the market and people will be willing to pay more if there's less being dumped. I say this after having sold more than half of my holdings. I know that we sell for various reasons, and I'm not saying it's wrong to do it... but it's also a positive to hold onto it.Steem will be more valuable in the future anyway
This is a hope and a prayer, to be honest. I am betting on it being more valuable. I have hedged against it to some extent (by diversifying my portfolio) and now I am planning to ride it out, to the moon or to the dumps — either way! I'm hoping for moon.Higher curation rewards
The incentive built into Steemit to look out for high quality posts is that you are rewarded for curation efforts multiplied by your amount of Steem Power. The higher your Steem Power, the higher your upvote is for others, and the higher your curation rewards will be. In other words, higher Steem Power grows faster, it's kind of like a high interest account.
What other reasons can you think of?
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Well I think you listed 4 solid reasons to power up but also the more people who have a good amount of steem power , helps attract more people of influence, which in turn keeps steemit growing as people come in and bring their following here from other platforms like facebook and youtube.
Yup, that's not a bad reason to keep growing SP.
You are still doing very well! I can't imagine powering down for some time as I am super bullish Steem!
What sort as % of your Steem do you make a week as a curator? For me if it covers the inflation I would be happy :)
I'm still doing relatively well — I'm not up there with the aforementioned but I can't complain too much!
My curation rewards probably average about 100 Steem a week, not a whole lot, but I'd like to focus a bit more. The HF19 has made me change my voting patterns a bit so I have to be more selective.
Ok that makes sense. 100 Steem a week for curating is pretty nice considering your balance.
I still haven't really got an idea on how I want to vote now. I have still been voting 100% on everything as I find it annoying to change the power % all the time. I have been voting every comment I post and others write back but I think I really need to change that approach now. Especially with this new HF increasing the power so much and it goes so fast (5 days to get back up from 0 -100%)...
If you change the slider to, say, 40%, it will stay like that during the session until you change it again so that way you can upvote everything at 40%. I upvote photographers at *100% and others usually between 20% and 80% depending on what it is. I upvote comments at 1% just to show some love.
*EDIT: I upvote from a list of photographers at 100% not 40%
Interesting, will have to give this some thought :)
Sorry, made a mistake. I upvote from a list of photographers at 100%, not 40%.
I've been here for about 12 months now, and was powering up everything I made until recently.
My wife's been in & out of hospital for the last 6 months, so we suddenly found ourselves in need of some extra cash to pay for everyday things, including hospital & doctors bills... I'll continue to power up once this is behind us.
Very good reason to power down for what's really important, and I hope that will be behind you very soon.
Hey Jam, you got an upvote and a new follower.
I recently re-started Steeming again and it seems a lot of things have changed since the upgrade. I couldn't really get anything with my posts before so I gave up, but it seems now even smaller accounts give you something when they upvote you.
Yeah that is one of the nicer consequences of HF19. It also means that people are more frugal with their voting power, however, so it may end up balancing it out from people (like myself) who vote 20+ times day! Low voting power constantly. Still gives about $1 or $2, so it's something.
Well it seems that you played it out pretty well and were able to diversify. I'm glad to see the platform in a lot healthier state right now and unfortunately I powered down a lot of my holdings when things weren't looking so hot in the winter.
Stay focused and Steemit On!
For me, I continue to believe that steemit is the future and I'm fortunate to be here at the beginning.
Great post! Good to hear the experience of a user who has been here through a bunch of ups and downs. I think all of your reasons for building up steem power are important. I would add that it will become much more difficult to accumulate steem power as Steemit grows. More users means more competition for rewards and attention. The growing value of steem power will make it much more expensive to accumulate by purchase. It is going to grow tougher to accomplish what you have done so far. Thanks for sharing with us.
Oh absolutely. Buying Steem is out of the question for me now, that time was at 10 cents / Steem to be worth it. Now you'll spend $1000 and get 500 Steem and I can't justify that for my pockets. It's pretty hard to accumulate already.
IMO the best way to accumulate is by earning which is time converted into profit, and not money converted. Spend money on experiences and document those experiences :D
Personally I'm using my mining earnings to buy more Steem.
I powered down for a while, and now I don't have much. However, I want to write, post photos and contribute more. I hope in some way that it will someday allow me freedom from my current job. I hope to invest into the platform sometime soon. Assuming I can convince the wife!
i have been here for about a month here, and i have dont have option to powering down. has a small SP at the moment.
hope that the steem price will rise again.
diversify into the other coin also seems a good thing, i might doing it also,
Yup. Having all your eggs in one basket can be either very good or very bad, depending on how it goes.