Response to Jeff Berwick vs. Tone Vayes debate

I think a lot is expressed off the bat, when Jeff asks Tone to make the case that it's a scam or a Ponzi scheme, and Tone passes it back and says he'd like to hear Jeff's experience first.

If I'm of the opinion that something is a scam, and now I have the air in front of a target audience like this, I'm not curious what Jeff's anecdotal experience with the site is. I'm foaming at the mouth to share what I know.

I wish people could lay off accusations of "scam" when what they really mean is they have vague skepticism of how the incentives will work out longterm.

Tone is probably hoping Jeff's anecdotal experience will open up some sort of angle for him to build his case from, like if Dan or Ned had personally asked him to join the site, or even better if they said they would upvote his posts.

But when that doesn't happen he tries to cast a shadow over Dan anyways, saying that BitShares is a failed project.

I don't know much at all about BitShares, except that I've used it and it seems like a perfectly great way to exchange coins without any 3rd party trust. I don't know what makes it a "failed project", or why that would even matter as it relates to Steemit.

If Dan strangled a cat ...

or did something dishonest, you should say what specifically your problem is with him. I find it pretty classless to throw someone's name around negatively for no particular reason.

But anyways...

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@12:16 he begins his case.

He mentions 3 features of Steem:

• Mining was very easy early on, and a small amount of people got most of the Steem
• The amount of Steem Power people have will double every year
• People who hold Steem Power have the power to upvote

As I suspected he doesn't actually have a technical argument. He just has a conjecture that something about this arrangement won't work or doesn't sit well with him.

It's hard to rebut any of this since he doesn't have a specific point. But I want to mention: You can't argue that something is a scam by listing attributes that nobody disputes are in play.

(Well, he's wrong that Steem Power doubles every year, but that's beside the point.)

If I sell you a cookie, and I tell you the ingredients are blah, blah, blah, and indeed the ingredients are blah, blah, blah ... I didn't scam you.

If a "scam" can happen when everybody does exactly what they say they will do, then you completely warp the definition of a scam.

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the founders will cash out and leave everyone else holding the bag
...seems to be Tone's general concern

The mechanics of Steem are in play and they speak for themselves. What we get out of it and how people value it in the future has nothing to do with what thoughts and motivations exist in the mind of Dan and Ned.

It's almost like Tone doesn't recognize that a blockchain can serve a purpose for people, and that there are real factors that dictate its value. So if certain people cash out, who cares? The smart money will recognize that nothing fundamental has changed, and they'll buy in to correct the imbalance. Nobody gets burned if this serves a positive function for humanity.

And quite obviously, it's the same concern you can levy against Bitcoin or any other project.

But Tone thinks that the 2-year lockup period changes this. That's good news for anybody who wants stacks of cash.

Apparently all you have to do is design a blockchain with a lockup period. And because there's a lockup period, it means magically people will pile into it after you, regardless of how useful your idea was.

I remember when I used to play Pac-Man, he would slow down in the side tunnel that crossed over to the other side of the screen. But since the ghosts would slow down too, it didn't mean anything.

It's the same concept with or without the lockup period. That those who get in first, yes, will be able to sell to new people who come in later. If anything, the lockup period seems to hurt the diabolical plan to run off with all the money, cause you can't act on a speculative bubble that the excitement of a new project often causes.

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Conclusion

I'd like to know what, in Tone's mind, should change. What does his idea of a decentralized social network look like? Or does he think we should just be using centralized websites where a few people control all the information and make all the money from it?

It seems pointless to try to cast vague clouds about this project without proposing what specifically would be an improvement.

I'm pretty comfortable assuming he has some sort of emotional bias against the project until he explains specific stuff like that.

I think Jeff did a good job of catching some contradictions in real-time (which isn't always easy). It was a fun conversation to listen to, and I want to like Tone, but he seems just really off base with his take on this stuff. That's ok though, I respect laying it out there, and I have no reason to doubt that he's trying to look out for people with his advice.

Just by the by, I'm curious what specifically Tone said about the DAO. If you predict that a restaurant concept won't work, I don't think you really get credit for "calling it" if a gas tank exploded and it went out of business for that reason.

I think you have to have predicted what specifically happened with the DAO to have really called it. Which maybe he did, I don't know. I just would be surprised to find out someone was sounding the alarm about that and they still went forward with it.

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images courtesy of Pixabay Creative Commons, except for Dan strangling the cat which I photoshopped myself