This is my opinion about all scam accusations I've heard.
We can see many people discussing about it: is it a ponzi scheme,or not?
This is a very hard question to answer, if we have this kind of data that most people talking about it has.
There are some ways, to investigate if it is a real company,a real business structure in which we can trust,and use it to monetize our content.But it is not easy to get useful data.
A good way to know more,to get little more insight,is looking for names of employees in the company we are talking about, another very important thing is a domain,and it's history.
For example: I know many HYIP's websites that claimed they can double you bitcoins in no-time, let's say 2 weeks.
When i was wondering if it is worth to invest anything (obviously it is not worth it) i was checking domain history. And i have found out in like 99% of cases,that this domain was freshly bought by some anonymous person,which have registered the organization, that made a purchase in Panama,or any other country where it is not hard to start a company which purpose is to scam people.
The thing i dont like here,is that you gain 50% of money you made on your content in something about 24 hours,and the rest later, via 104 equal weekly payments over the course of 2 years.
That thing may cause many people to claim that steemit is a scam,however it is not so easy i would say.
You should already notice there are advertises on steemit,which is probably the main source of income from this site.
I cannot expect you have ever worked for advertising company,but in most cases they dont pay off you daily,but weekly.So we got something that can explain why we dont get our whole money at one moment,it is just fair because (if it is true) steemit chairman pays us when they got the money,not before.
My conclusion would say there are not a ponzi-scheme website,however this is only my theory.You can feel free to argue with it, or discuss-maybe you can convince me to changing my opinion? :)