How do you have an account with almost 360,000 Steem Power and your vote worth next to nothing?
The answer: give all your money away.
Sounds crazy doesn't it?
This is exactly what @fulltimegeek did. He delegated over 359,000 of his Steem Power to others.
Ah, of course you say, he is renting it out. No, notice I said give. He delegated most of his Steem Power to others free of charge. To my knowledge, he has not charged a single person for the SP he delegated. Naturally, he still owns it (he cares, he isn't trying for sainthood). However, he simply believes the best way to build long term wealth on the steem blockchain is for many to be involved. He is using the approach of empowering others to eventually empower himself.
I must admit that I might not be the best one to write this post in an unbiased fashion since @fulltimegeek delegated 5,000 SP to yours truly. Nevertheless, I can tell you the difference it has made in my life on here and those I interact with.
To start, my voting power went up. At that time, it doubled my voting power. That was a huge difference maker for both my curation and the value of the upvotes I give. My personal code is that I upvote every comment made on my articles. Therefore, unless something is just outright stupid, everyone is getting a vote. Commenters on my posts get to share in the wealth.
In addition, I committed to helping @mariannewest get to 1,000 SP by upvoting two of her posts at 100% each day. This is part of the @1KSP program that I mentioned in a post a few weeks back. While others seem to lose interest, I keep hitting her posts and, I am glad to say, she is closing in on 1,000 SP. I already have the next person in mind to help out.
Finally, it verified my belief and posts that I wrote about whales. I have defended whales for the past few months. It seems many want to attack them for not behaving in a manner that takes others into account. The truth is I see many whales doing all they can to help out this site. What @fulltimegeek is doing is just one example (by the way, @stellabelle is doing the same thing). Of late, I received a number of upvotes from whales and what is interesting is many of them are at 10%-25% voting power. In other words, they are upvoting a lot. @jerrybanfield, for example, will upvote anyone who puts his name in the tagline of their post. I also know of another whale who I will mention in my next post who is maintaining a site that few are aware of (I wasn't until recently) but is of great benefit to the community.
I think in this instance, we can say @fulltimegeek really put his money where is mouth is. Why would he do this? I believe the simple fact is that the 50 or so people he delegated SP to can reach a lot more people than he can himself. Through his actions, he is multiplying the reach of his power. Without ever having met him or chatted with him, I can already tell he cares....a lot.
I make it no secret where I think the steem blockchain is going and, hence, the price of STEEM. $100 by the end of 2018 is my target and I stand by that. In the end, @fulltimegeek is going to profit handsomely from his STEEM holding. However, I do believe the path to that level is made easier through the actions he took of delegating his SP to others.
Excessive? Maybe. Effective? Most definitely.
And everyone who has any STEEM should profit from this.
Please remember this article and the actions of the ones I mentioned in here when you read someone attacking the whales or feel the desire yourself to vent how unfair things are. Do not let the actions of a few tarnish your view of the whole. Most of the whales I came across are extremely committed to making this site and the steem blockchain successful.
If you founds this article helpful and informative, please give it an upvote and re-steem.
Pictures by google images.