The whales who gave us bidbots were already making good returns on their holdings. Excellent returns would actually be a better adjective, but perhaps still not a strong enough word when you consider the increasing value of STEEM.
So why would someone who was already making - simply through upvoting content or their selves - a very decent amount of money every day, bother to start selling votes? I ask that question with the thought in mind that vote-selling is a phrase made acceptable only by this platform, and so at the time, it surely seemed like a potentially illegal and definitely nefarious option.
So why would one put their - considerable - stake at risk by hijacking the daily reward pool and auctioning it off? Well it is quite simple, from where I am sitting at least.
Yes, these whales were making excellent profits before bidbots, but they already had enough money, and if they are smart, they already understood how much money they would have when STEEM goes considerably higher next year.
Money was not the goal. They have hijacked the reward pool because earning profits doesn't help them retain the influence they have become so accustomed too unless they are earning profits at a rate which negates the distribution of STEEM across the network. In other words, whatever percentage of total STEEM they held, they would need to be acquiring that same percentage of the reward pool or their influence would begin to dwindle - which was supposedly the whole point and how this distribution of STEEM was going to stay fair.
It seems to me that it was fear of losing influence over the network amidst an - almost - fair distribution that led these members of our community to fuck us. They aren't psychopaths who take pleasure in taking food from the plates of their fellow community members, they are simply men who found their selves scared they were going to lose the power they had grown to love.
I do not know what role Steemit Inc played in things, but I have noticed some peculiarities surrounding the previous hardfork decisions that seem also to have paved the way for bidbots intentionally. I am going to investigate and think on those observations more before making such a brazen accusation, however.