Are Investors Looking At What Happens On STEEM?

glenalbrethsen in #dpoll • 6 years ago (edited)

Are Investors Looking At What Happens On STEEM?

Early last month I wrote a post wondering whether or not what we did on the social media side of STEEM—good, bad or indifferent—really had any influence over the typical investor looking for ROI, or if there were other factors that would drive their decisions.

I've decided it would be a good idea to open it up to those of you in the community who would care to weigh in on this subject, because I think it's important to see what everyone is truly thinking.

I say that, because over the last two years it has been posited in one form or another that things like bid bots (now more of a moot point than before), reward pool abuse, circle voting, flag wars or just even "downvoting for no particular reason," plus whatever other inanity that one might take exception to—all keep investors away.

To do this, I guess I'm thinking of the investor that has some resource large enough that they could power up at least a couple hundred thousand STEEM if they so desired. But they're not necessarily looking to use the platform or invest a lot of time in into, too.

So, not so much a typical user trying to earn rewards through blogging, etc., but one who's looking to get some decent ROI, however they might do that.

Currently, as far as I know, if you're not going after author rewards, the main choices to earn are curation, delegation leasing, and the 'interest' that all stake accrues thanks to the percentage coming from inflation.

So, that's the type of individual I'm thinking of when the term investor is used. They might have an account, and technically that makes them a STEEM user, but in reality, they're not here to post, comment, or even manually curate, become part of the community, etc. They want somewhere to park some funds where they will get decent to awesome return.

To me, that's different than the typical user, where I would say many absolutely do care about what goes on here, the direction the platform and the community are taking, and how we ultimately interact with one another. And while an investor might have an eye on how many are using the platform and how they feel about it, I wonder if that's what they are really looking at first, second, third, fourth, etc.

So, what do you think? You can select as many options as you like. If you feel inclined to provide a little more along with your choices, please do so. Especially if you choose other.

I know there are at least a few who have problems with dpoll for some reason (technical or otherwise), so don't feel like you need to go there to participate. Through dpoll or however you accessed this post is fine. I'd rather have the input and the participation if y'all are reading this post and are inclined to speak your mind.

_{Image source—Pixabay}

In my opinion, investors are most certainly looking at and care about:

Vote buying/selling

Reward pool abuse

Circle voting

Flag wars

Downvoting 'just because'

Governance

Inflation

Decentralization

How we treat one another generally

What Steemit Inc. does

How the dApps are performing

The number of users

How much and ease of ROI

Whether there's marketing and how good it is

The direction the platform is headed, if in any

What the platform is, does, or how it's defined

Other (please specify)

Answer the question at dpoll.xyz.

#poll #steem #community #palnet #newsteem

6 years ago in #dpoll by glenalbrethsen

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minismallholding 6 years ago

That's actually pretty thought provoking. I'd never thought of looking at this purely from an investment point of view and you could be right, it doesn't really matter what people are bickering about on the platform, so much as what kind of ROI there is. I guess if I didn't want to interact on here, then my approaches would be leasing or setting up an autovoter for authors who'd give a good curation return. Other than that, I'd want to know if it's a viable coin with enough longevity and demand. The fact that you can earn from your investment should be plus. Can you earn like that from many other coins?

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2 votes

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glenalbrethsen 6 years ago

Hey, @minismallholding.

I think the majority of us come in with the intent of using the platform, and essentially building our stake through sweat equity—time and effort versus buying STEEM and powering it up.

For us, the daily active users, we definitely care about all of those things. We want some semblance of fair play, civility, etc., while, hopefully, not expecting equality of results (since that never happens).

However, the person who has resources amounting to a couple hundred thousand STEEM or more, who could essentially invest it anywhere, to me, wouldn't care about what we pay attention to so much as long as they can get their passive ROI. Delegations would seem to be the way to go along with 'interest' earnings. Or even setting up the auto upvotes with a curation trail or proxy they trust.

And they would definitely want to know as much as they could about governance, direction, longevity, deliverability, etc., because those things make the difference between a long term investment and a fly by night, pump and dump kind of situation.

STEEM, at present, is fairly unique in the ways you can earn, though there are copy cats, and would be challengers hanging out there. So far, none of them, especially in the crypto bear market, is paying out in rewards what STEEM does. So, the answer is no, there really aren't any other coins at present that you can earn like you can with STEEM, with some asterisks attached.

Most coins depend on some form of the scarcity model, while STEEM is much more into utility. It probably could and should pay more attention to the scarcity aspect by doing something to limit the actual amount of inflation (it's about five points above what it's actually supposed to be right now), and getting SBD to the $1 USD peg again (or doing away with it entirely, take your pick).

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bryan-imhoff 6 years ago

I’ve honestly never understood the desire to cater to investors, it seems a “cart before the horse” kind of approach. Actual users should be the main focus as the value of any network grows in relation to its audience and userbase.
So that being said, I think dApp performance and number of users would be the core metrics any serious investor would be most interested in. By serious I guess I mean a venture capitalist with a multi year horizon who is looking for appreciation in the token value. The opposite is the more “vulture capitalist” types who seek to acquire tokens via methods that inherently devalue them.

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4 votes

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anthonyadavisii 6 years ago

never understood the desire to cater to investors

I know, right. The prevailing sentiment has been just that and it's ass backwards.

Should be pushing for users first and then that's what will draw in investors or folks that want to benefit from our future sprawling platform (wishful thinking?)

But I also think the nature of the investor is important. It's obviously not great for Mr. Moneybags to join and create a vote farming network to exploit our vulnerable reward pool. Need good faith investors not just anybody with money to throw around.

In other words, less Bitconnect esque ppl and more crypto revolutionaries that believe in what this technology is capable of and uses their resources to help build the vision.

That's how I see it at least. Good answer!

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5 votes

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glenalbrethsen 6 years ago

Hey, @bryan-imhoff.

I think the question about pursuing investors plays to the identity of just what STEEM is. Some of us think we're a social media platform, others an investing platform, and there's probably another half dozen legitimate answers. You're looking at STEEM as a utility blockchain that can be built upon, and how that potential diversity of application can bring in more users than one single use case could.

So, I like what you're saying. I wish it were more venture than vulture, too, but we don't seem to be out of that cycle yet.

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