This is the thing that constantly occupies my mind, so I will try to answer as best as I understand it at the moment.
Yes, content is great, it creates a set of incentives that attract users to the blockchain. In its current applications, maybe we have not fully embraced it's true potential as there is no way that Steemit, Dtube or any other Daap currently in existence will interest absolutely everyone.
But the solution is two fold. meaning that yes, we need applications that attract traffic, attract users, keep them engaged and interested but it's just as important to have a blockchain that attracts investors.
In this sense, investors might care about the fact that there are many users of a particular blockchain, but only in the sense that it can give them a sense of security (as real or fake as it may be, but that's another subject).
However, investors are interested in one thing and possibly one thing alone: ROI (Return on Investment)
This is precisely why thinking of eliminating bidbots, at least at this moment might work against the valuation of the blockchain. This is of course, if we don't have a proposed solution to increase the ROI of current investors.
So, in other words. To me the solution to this whole thing is creating a system that can increase the potential returns for passive investors. Those who are completely comfortable with taking a big bite and do not feel compelled to post or interact on the blockchain.
Some might argue that they should become curators, but then you are also assuming they have an interest in doing so, or that they could even be good at it. They could easily upvote the people who are already getting the most upvotes in hopes of maximizing their curation and nothing more, making the distribution of Stake even more skewed.
Maybe the answer lies in creating financial services on the blockchain. The blockchain has already the ability to do escrow and honestly we have a pretty good example in @neoxian how the equivalent of a bank could be ran.
At this moment I'm not ready to jump to conclusions.
I understand this is not necessarily a great answer, or at least one that breaks down the steps to take, but I hope it makes some mental gears engage a little bit.
I think we need to increase the number of decentralized applications built on the blockchain. Also, we can focus and concentrate on building better communities to herald the SMT launch.
Since, the blockchain is birthed upon the idea of creating a good and great post/contents. We can decide to make the post payouts unlimited. This will motivate people to create great post since they are aware that their post earnings is unlimited. No rush to fix some shitty write-ups again!
voted
Well said @meno! In fact, your reply partially helped inspire another post about investors.
The thing is, the people who are going to come along and buy 1 million Steem may have no interest in anything but simply buying and holding till they double/triple their money. The assumption that investors are looking for "current income" is flimsy, at best.
but, wouldnt they be...
when i share something on facebook, the 'instance' of said post, allows my friends and i to make comment, independant of the orriginal post.
to be able to do that with resteems might be cool? @themarkymark
is that do-able?
It really floors me that a hedge fund/venture capitalist hasn't had one of the big wheels kid(s) freshly graduated from college, give them an internship and have them run a million dollar investment with the instructions..."Here you go (daughter/son)--show us whether or not it's worth our firm sticking 10, 20, hell 50-100 times this initial investment again in say...6 months to a year." That investment in itself would make that account (or additional 'branch alt accounts') amazingly important on here and could generate some ridiculous returns for that firm if done right at all. Of course ''the right way'' is very relative to each one of us.
I've wondered something similar myself. I was just discussing this with a friend over the phone. What would happen if let's say a "non-profit" (please note the air quotes) would decide they would love to use this blockchain for their "work". (there they are again).
What would we do as a community? Would be run the off, because they shitpost? Would we be OK with them delegating their Stake and getting a return?
What would be the reaction? - Because if we succeed, meaning... if this experiments finally drops the beta something like that could happen. And I for one would not like to lose on the opportunity in the name of "cultist like purity".
Forget non-profit, I mean an a legit venture capitalist that is out to do a R & D test on the real value of steemit. Their interns spend time on here, try to be profitable as much as possible, see if profitability can be achieved and at what scale, and then they can make some legit evaluations. They like what they got, they dive in, they don't, they sell say screw it, or hopefully wait for a good time to sell and get out. I agree, unfortunately I have a lot of reservations with ''non-profit agencies/charitable trusts'' as well. Pretty hard to write off travel expense on a purely online pursuit though that someone can do work from anywhere with an internet connection and a laptop though also. I too struggle with the non profit designation with people getting paid/beneficiary of ten times or more the regular working wage of a given country/state.
Hahahaha I was confident you would read between the lines.
But back to your point, venture capitalist.. that would be very interesting indeed.
I think a bigger Problem is, Steemit is not User friendly.
Think about a Iphone. For most people is it easy and intuitive to use.
A normal user want Fun on a Platform and no Content Discussion or somethig like this.
Steem is at the moment nothing more as a Newspaper or a really Big Blog ( for the normal End User).
Normal User see " hey my like is something worth". But thats all.
I Think Smt are nice, but something like Facebook Groups is a bigger benefit at the moment.
The First and only Rule to succeed is make the Mainstream User Happy.
Conversely, passive investors contribute little to the actual ecosystem and perhaps shouldn't be rewarded. In fact, perhaps passive investors and holders of the currency should simply sell off now.
I mean right now might be the best chance they get to secure a relatively respectable ROI if the price continues to decline. Certainly they aren't really helping to make the ecosystem a better place. The activity level seems more correlated with the price than ever before.
One of the benefits of a massive selloff and crash would allow for the redistribution of wealth to new individuals and potentially folks that actually care about the ecosystem than people that want to milk it.
Looking to cater to those seeking riches simply degrades the quality of product. I want Steem to become less profitable so the investors and wannabe entrepreneurs look somewhere else to make their quick buck and advertise because that's simply garbage content and my list of interesting authors is shrinking rather quickly.
Those people are leaving and this place will be a barren wasteland without them to prop up the value proposition of the platform. Banks and financial institutions won't really mean anything on a blockchain filled with spam and other unappealing ugliness.
I think people tend to forget that in terms of passive investors technically the same thing that is present in most cryptos here. Treat it like a traditional investment.
All the other forms of ROI require activity and go beyond what those cryptos offer. Though this fact may not be communicated very well and that likely works against this.
I think we need more financial products so that it can be treated as traditional investments. We don't have covered calls on any market for example. So everything in cryptos is high risk, highly volatile.
Yes. I agree. I was mainly saying that steem can be invested in by passive investors now just like other cryptos.
The difference is there are other activities posting, curating, etc that give more ROI but take some effort on the part of the user. They are not required though, they are a bonus.
I agree with you in everything you say but we need more than that to achieve the speed of spread and increase the value of the currency
If by speed of spread you mean wealth distribution. Yes, but that is cultural too. People constantly powering down and selling their stake is counter productive to the long time health of the platform.
I thought this was such a good point that I went and fixed it.