Steem is crashing hard and the only hope is a dead cat bounce for an exit. At first Steemit seemed like a great idea, where people can paid for creating quality content. But after being on the platform for almost a month, I realized nobody cares about content. The only thing anybody on this platform really cares about is making money, and I don't necessarily blame them.
There are so many good content on this platform that goes unnoticed because members only care about voting for whatever they feel like would be profitable. In order to get noticed, the only route is to pay for the votes from delegators on steembottraker. I'm not sure if people realized by now but all bids on SBT is unprofitable where some bids end up at almost -80 return on investment meaning you can spend a few hundreds dollars and only get in return 40 dollars in value all while the price of steem and steem dollar is crashing. Even if roi states positive, if you look at the vote value compared to your bid, it is still at a loss and in addition you have to deduct another 25% for curation from the vote value. Sounds like a pretty bad investment and eventually your initial investment will be at near zero but not quite zero. A good analogy is the "half the distance to the goal line in the NFL", where you'll never score in the end zone just on penalties but the yardage left is becoming ever so small and insignificant. Nobody wins from steembottracker except for the steem power delegating whales, and even they will lose in the long run by participating in this system. And to add fuel to the fire, some bots added max roi capped at 10% although the math doesn't add up anyway. If there should be any cap, it should be a limit on how much bidder can lose on a bid, not gain.
So is it a good idea to dump hundreds of thousands or millions onto this platform just to get some central bank-esque printed money in return? The answer lies on how successful you think steemit will be in the future. If you invested 2 million in steem power at 3 dollars, you're already stuck for over a million. One can create a second account and only vote for their own contents but the rewards do not outweigh the diminishing marginal return of steem price. As more steem dollars are printed everyday out of thin air, it is constantly devaluing the value of each steem dollar. Eventually, all the members on the steemit platform will just be from countries where a dollar goes a long way because that's where value can survive.
I doubt steemit's initial prospect was suppose to end up this way. I believe where things went south is when the whales decided to no longer vote for quality content. They just vote for their own content, or friends and family, and probably just share the profit. After creating new content got tedious, they created an automated system, which is steembottracker. Bidding on Steembottraker is the worst investment anyone can make because it pretty much guarantees a huge negative return on investment, but is the only way to get votes. SBT rats hang around the website and wait for content with big bids and vote on those when curation reward is most optimal. 1 out of 100 people may actually read the content, and the other 99 will scroll down as fast as possible in search of the upvote button only to eventually realize that the curation reward for minnows, even for the post with big bids, may pay out a penny if you're lucky. And even if you do manage to get 100's of votes on your own posts, they are worthless votes that aren't even worth the calories burnt to write an article. Ever wonder how some trash articles have big dollar figures underneath them? It is because all the articles with big dollars signs is nothing but a mirage created by the content creator's own money and their colluding partners. The only real winners are the early investors of the steem token selling their votes. More people may buy into this mirage in the beginning and as long as their are more people joining the steemit network than exiting, the new money is enough to profit off much like the Amazon effect; make a few dollars off millions of people instead of thousands off hundreds. Volume is key!
Looking at the steemusd chart, it is a slow bleeder. Although it can rebound hovering around 2 dollars again, for long term investors that should be a sign to exit, not load up. This will easily go under 1 dollar so it's not a fire sale that'll eventually shoot up to the moon like some steem optimists predict. All the smart steemit money is going towards not losing their initial investment, let alone looking for capital gains. No system is perfect and manipulation will always exist and steemit certainly cannot last as long as greed is prevalent especially at such an early stage of adoption. Also the law of diminishing marginal return plays a big part in the price of steem tokens. Nobody knows how steem dollars are created and is the reason why the total supply is not determined much like the central bank. If total supply is not offset by the total demand, equilibrium is nothing more than a pipe dream.
So am I done with steemit, the answer is: not entirely. I never try to be too biased one way or another and try to look at all angles objectively so I won't ever rule anything out completely. The point is to take profits while you can and don't bet the farm on speculation alone. One advice for authors of quality content is, don't waste too much time creating the best content because it most likely will go unnoticed unless you pay for votes with your own money that will immediately have a negative ROI in sites like steembottracker. It is unfortunate and saddening that this platform works just like a pyramid scheme.
DISCLAIMER: All statements and expressions are opinions, and not meant as investment advice. Information provided in this post is not personal investment advice and should be used as informative or entertainment purposes only. Seek guidance from a professional investment advisor or due your own due diligence before trading or investing.
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