PSA: Don't Power Up 100%

This Public Service Announcement is brought to you by HonestBot, the only bid-based voting bot on the market that can guarantee a positive return-on-investment to bidders.

The message is simple:

Don't do it. You can make a lot more money if you keep your post set to "Default (50% / 50%)". If you'll indulge me, I'd like to copy and paste some math from my last post about Apparent Value vs. Actual Value:

Steemit and other apps built on the Steem blockchain still show a reward value in USD, calculated based on an assumption that one SBD is still worth one USD.

Because of this, the actual value of a post payout is actually much greater than the apparent value as seen on the site.

Let's say a post has an apparent value of $1.00 at the time of payout. Curators take 25%. Of the remaining 75%, half is paid as Steem Power and the other half is paid as SBD assuming you have your post payout set to "Default (50%/50%)".

The remaining 75 cents would become 37.5 cents worth of Steem Power (0.084 Steem) and 0.375 SBD because the system assumes that one SBD is worth one dollar. That amount of SBD is currently worth $2.08 USD. Add the two together and you get the actual value of the post.

2.08 + 0.38 = 2.46

So the actual value of that one dollar post is $2.46.

The numbers may have fluctuated slightly since that post was made, but the concept remains: So long as SBD is worth more than $1.00 USD, your posts are more valuable than they appear.

But this is only true if you have your post rewards set to "Default (50% / 50%)".

If you set your rewards to "Power Up 100%", you will receive a value of Steem Power that is exactly equal to the post's apparent value at the time of payout. So your one dollar post will be paid one dollar worth of Steem minus curation, so 75 cents worth actually.

Because of the broken USD peg on SBD, HonestBot's guarantee of a positive return-on-investment (ROI) only applies to posts that are made with the rewards set to "Default (50% / 50%)". It's highly unlikely we'll see a bidding round that's low enough to make a "Power Up 100%" poster's bid profitable.

And if you're going to lose money with HonestBot, you'll certainly end up losing an even greater percentage with all the other bid-bots out there.

More often than not, you'll have a negative ROI with those bots no matter what, and your ROI will be even worse if you keep your posts set to "Power Up 100%."

There's a simple solution. Use Steemit's internal market to trade your SBD for Steem. Then all you have to do is power up that Steem. You'll get much more Steem Power that way than you would by powering up a post with the "100%" setting.

Thanks for reading! I hope this was helpful.