Thanks for your reply!
"I'm not sure I would personally call steemit a "ponzi-scheme""
A "ponzi scheme" is any scheme in which you invest money, and by its design, essentially provides no chance of ever making a return on that money, despite claims to the contrary. Steemit claims you can make money by curating posts, whereas in reality, the vast majority of Steemit members can not and will not do so.
"(nobody promised you'd double or triple your money in a short span of time)."
While it's true that nobody promised that you can double or triple your money, Steemit does claim that you can make money by curating other authors' posts. In reality however, that is simply not the case for most members. Steemit does not state anywhere that the chances of making any money at all, is fully dependent upon both making a significant investment, and on having a relatively high reputation rate. Those 2 facts will immediately eliminate the vast majority of Steemit members. Only a very small number will invest the amount necessary (if any), and gaining a high reputation is next to impossible when you have so many unethical members who are constantly downvoting members with lower reputations than themselves, for no reason at all in the vast majority of cases.
Actually, the definition of a Ponzi Scheme is a fraudulent venture that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors. If they were asking us to pay some sort of membership fee from which the senior members were getting their rewards - this would be a Ponzi scheme. But when steemers choose to purchase more steam power that doesn't directly benefit those who joined before them or those that referred them. It actually benefits the buyers whose vote now weighs much more than that of a user with mere 15SP.
The best comparison is the online game. Those that are serious about succeeding (or winning?) do spend some of their money buying weapons and armor or whatever other tools they need - even though these tools are virtual and are worth nothing in the real world. Same thing here - people may wish to purchase some virtual power with real money and they may not get any material benefits from it, but this doesn't make Steemit a Ponzi scheme.
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Well stated.
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Steem-power does pay out about 8% APR, + if you setup automatic voting to instantly band-wagon onto the top earners like gooddream and nonameslefttouse and steemcleaners, then you can even boost that up a bit.
It's not bad for a hobby, but almost nobody is "making a living" at this. I mean, last time I checked, gooddream was making about $500 a month in payouts (which is hardly lambo cash).
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By that definition we'd have to include purchasing a home (most can't sell for a profit), paying for a college education (most never pay off their student loans), starting a small business (90% fail) and investing in the stock market (90% lose money).
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Don't even get me started on the lottery or casinos...
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