June 1st.
Something BIG is coming down the pipe from EOS.
A BIG announcement.
Speculation is rampant with various theories being proffered but the majority prophesize the launch of MEOS ... Steemit 2.0. In interviews and public communiques, @dan has repeatedly hinted at such an occurrence, perhaps most obviously in his recent, not-so-cryptic emoji-riddle:
Millennial techheads possess a unique sense of humor often lost on those of us from earlier generations. (@dan, next time DM me ... I'll write you a poetic riddle worthy of The Da Vinci Code.) Anyway, if you're curious to learn more, Google: "EOS June 1."
So, presuming @dan's not just screwing with our heads, what will this mean for STEEM/Steemit? Well, that depends on one critical factor: Will a MEOS prohibit cheating?
It's that simple.
STEEM/Steemit ... a Cheater's Paradise
Those who follow this blog even sporadically can attest to my never-ending harangue about the deleterious effects of the systemic cheating on STEEM/Steemit. I've argued that bidbots and multiple-account-self-upvoting are MASSIVELY misallocating scarce upvoting power (SP) away from it's intended purpose, curation ... and, as a result, destroying the very process upon which the entire endeavor is predicated.
I've further argued that such institutionalized corruption (the bidbots are owned by Whales and Witnesses) have created negative feedback loops and prevented the establishment of positive ones. I even published a series of articles specifically outlining HOW to reform the blockchain ... to counter the moronic claim that "banning bidbots was technically impossible."
Posts, comments and replies. I'd bet there's no rival to my wordcount on the subject.
But it wasn't just me. There were countless others.
To no avail.
The Whales and Witnesses were profiting from their jury-rigging and had no intention of restraining their short-term self-interests in service of constructing a blockchain capable of long-term survival. And why not, they figured ... the core group of Plankton, Minnows and Dolphins, despite their incessant moaning and groaning, weren't leaving.
Schmucks.
And, so long as said core group remained, the pretense that "Steemit was a remunerative alternative to Facebook and YouTube" could be, at least superficially, maintained. Technology changes, people don't. Wherever there is a concentration of capital, there will be a concentration of crooks ... and STEEM/Steemit has become a Den of Thieves.
My arguments, reflective of twenty years in High Finance, including as a hedge fund manager (one, a currency trading fund), were routinely ignored, and on occasion, vilified. One particularly dim bulb, notable for his obnoxiousness (but nevertheless part of a Witness Group), managed to call me a commie, a fascist and a dictator ... in the same sentence... demonstrating that his knowledge of political systems equaled his knowledge of economic ones.
Quilladamus
The world is full of after-the-fact forecasters, people who claim, "Yeah, that's what I was saying all along." The world of cryptocurrencies seems particularly replete with such evidence-free tale-tellers. And so, for the record, I'm going to make a couple of straight-forward predictions based upon a couple of straight-forward predicates:
The Predicates
- On June 1, EOS announces the launch of MEOS (Steemit 2.0);
- Biometric Identification (limiting accounts to one per person and hence making multiple-account-self-upvoting impossible) is required to open a MEOS account; and
- MEOS officially bans bidbots, making their usage (or any other forms of vote-buying/selling) a violation of its Terms of Service and implements a mechanism for enforcement.
The Predictions
If the aforementioned predicates are met, my predictions are:
- STEEM/Steemit will die and its death will be swift and complete.
- As the value of STEEM approaches zero, STEEM Whales/Witnesses will, en masse, begin receiving epiphanies. Like Paul on the Road to Damascus, each in their turn will be suddenly stuck, as if by a bolt of Heavenly lightning, with the desire to enact reforms and the understanding of how precisely to implement them.
- STEEM/Steemit will go down in history as an exemplar of strategic ineptness, the "Own Goal"par excellence." "How could they possibly have squandered a three year monopoly on what turned out to be cryptos' ultimate Killer App ... a Facebook/YouTube alternative where people get paid to create, comment and curate? God, these guys couldn't get laid in a whorehouse."
Discussion
Corrupted systems (political, cultural, economic) ALWAYS implode.
The reason is simple: All complex systems create force-multiplying positive or negative feedback loops (sometimes both). STEEM/Steemit is a complex system that is corrupt to its core. The pretense of "quality mattering" is long dead. Notwithstanding a few notable exceptions, Orcas and Whales (85% of SP) aren't even pretending to care about quality or curation. Instead, they're leasing their SP to bidbots or DApp projects in which they have an interest so as to generate Passive Income in the form of interest ... instead of earning Curation Awards from their SP holdings as intended.
Fair enough, it's their money.
But as most people over 18 understand, nothing is life is free ... and actions have consequences. By seeking to maximize their own short-term profits, they knowingly destroyed the Central Premise upon which the entire blockchain was constructed (and yes, Steemit was/is the essence of STEEM), that: Content Shall Be Compensated Commensurate With Its Quality.
And people like me ... the A-Team Content Creators ... are not happy about it.
And hence, my repeated admonitions that the moment a "viable alternative" to Steemit appeared, there would be a mass, and IMMEDIATE, exodus of the quality content producers and that STEEM's figment of legitimacy would evaporate.
"But STEEM Monsters will save us."
Perhaps I could interest you in an investment.
MEOS as the "Viable Alternative"
Of course, all this begs the question: Will MEOS (assuming my predicates) be a "viable alternative" to Steemit? Let's run through what we know and what we could plausibly assume:
- @dan constructed STEEM/Steemit prior to constructing EOS/MEOS. Unless he has an IQ of 2, he will have thought long and hard about the problems that plague Steemit, his original social media creation. He has spoken frequently about Biometric Identification as a means of preventing people from opening multiple accounts so as to prevent spam and abusive self-upvoting.
- EVERY SINGLE PERSON outside of STEEM/Steemit (and a whole bunch inside it) describe the use of bidbots as "blatant cheating" ... not "marketing" as some of our august leaders (who, incidentally, own the bidbots) try to rhetorically re-frame the matter. It's hard to imagine that @dan would ignore this chorus of moral outrage. Moreover, EOS is surrounded by institutional investors and advisors ... the people who run Wall Street and Fortune 500 companies. It is inconceivable that any of them would countenance something as obviously disreputable and self-destructive as bidbots ... if not on moral grounds, then in objection to such self-evidently suicidal amateurishness.
- Block.One (@dan's development company) conducted a USD $4 billion ICO. EOS is up and well-functioning. It is ranked 5th or 6th (depending on the day) with a current market cap of USD $7 billion ... and is hiring like mad. And, it has USD $2.2 billion in cash and 140,000 Bitcoins. Hence, it is an army ... armed to the teeth. Contrast that with STEEM/Steemit's 58th place ranking, a market cap of USD $129 million and a development company (Steemit Inc.) that recently laid off 70% of its employees to remain solvent .
- A large percentage of Steemians (almost certainly a super-majority) are demoralized to the point of suffering from SID ... Steemit Induced Depression. I do not assert this in jest. One can only try and fail so many times before developing an aversion to the source of one's misery. Given the magnitude of the malfeasance and given that it is orchestrated by the very people charged with safeguarding the blockchain's integrity, such demoralization is predictably accompanied by a great deal of anger, and in many cases (mine included), disgust. Disgust is the most negative of the "Other-Judging Emotions" and once triggered, it creates a moral imperative to punish the wrong-doers (or less charitably, to "seek revenge"). Given the reasons discussed above, MEOS is logically a "viable alternative." Combine that with the emotional desire to ensure that the Whales and Witnesses "get what they deserve" ... potent mojo.
- There are hopeful indications that @dan is at least partially in control of the ideological delusion that infects the minds of so many cryptocurrency enthusiasts ... Anarchism. @dan's recent tweet, "Would you prefer a centralized heaven or a decentralized hell?" ... and the responses to it, speaks volumes. Many of the respondents weighed in for the latter. "Bring on the chaos, so sayeth the Messiah, Satoshi." Incumbent upon ideologues of all stripes is the necessity to suspend reality so as to prevent subjecting their Utopian visions to common sense scrutiny. Constructive criticism is blasphemy and the implementation of pragmatic solutions that deviate from the doctrine, heresy.
It's a beautiful song, so long as you don't think about the plausibility of the lyrics ... or try to figure out why that yak, Yoko, was included in the video.
Anarcho-Poetry ... FREEDOM!!! Unfettered by the chains that shackle the rest of us poets ... like words.
***
@dan ... Think Like Napoleon
I've long since concluded that STEEM/Steemit has no future. Due to ideology, greed, (or both), the powers-to-be cannot bring themselves to create a blockchain that elevates Merit over Manipulation. There are, of course, those who say that people like me are just not smart enough to grasp the Big Picture, a paradigm shift in which cheating is to be celebrated as it is an act of "Personal Freedom," irrespective of the chaos it creates.
Obviously, this is a chasm too wide to bridge.
Given such reality, I proffer it is time for a divorce ... let the two camps separate and go their own ways.
@dan, here's a suggestion I believe is well worth considering:
- Using a portion of EOS' marketing budget, offer to Swap Steemians' SP, up to a maximum of 5,000 SP per MEOS account, for a period of 30 days following MEOS' launch, and based upon the EOS/STEEM exchange rate on June 1.
What would this accomplish?
- Instant MEOS User Base. The en masse acquisition of Steemit's entire active-user base: Planktons, Minnows and Dolphins. In any system, the hardest users to acquire are the first ones and Steemians are the most committed (obsessed) crypto social media users on the planet. They would be the nodes of networks upon which the entire MEOS endeavor would be constructed. The only ones who would not substantially benefit from this arrangement would be STEEM Whales and Orcas (who own a lot more than 5,000 SP). But I'm sure this wouldn't be a problem. You see, if my writing poetry ought not be "about the money," (as I've been told a thousand times), then neither ought their writing Python. Creating content or creating code ... we'll all just "do it for the community." Sarcasm aside, the Whales and Orcas would find themselves in a mess of their own making ... and paying the predictable price for their greed.
- Free Media Coverage. I own an advertising agency. The most potent thing any marketing initiative can hope to achieve is to spark widespread (and free) media coverage. Such an "EOS-for-SP Swap" would generate MASSIVE media coverage inside the cryptoworld and very substantial media coverage outside of it. This is to say nothing of the tens of thousands of grateful posts from MEOS users that would be all-but-guaranteed ... and shared on a host of other social media platforms. Such an initiative has ALL the hallmarks of a GREAT STORY ... and "word-of-mouth," the most effective form of advertising, is naught but the "telling of stories" (so make them good ones). What would the equivalent in advertising cost? Who knows, but I suspect a LOT more than the approximately USD $15 million (in EOS) cost of the swap (0.21% of the current market cap of EOS). [As the price of STEEM would likely drop to zero, such cost would have to be written-off.]
- Ferocious Loyalty. The announcement of an EOS-for-SP Swap, and the subsequent mass exodus out of STEEM/Steemit, would cause the price of STEEM to collapse, wiping out the capital of tens of thousands of Steemians who have spent years accumulating their meager post payouts. Powering Down requires 13 weeks so it's too late to liquidate one's holdings to prevent such a loss. An EOS-for-STEEM Swap would preserve the value of such holdings. This would engender a depth of gratitude that would be difficult to articulate. EOS, like every other corporate endeavor, WILL encounter problems in the future and its ability to weather such storms will be dependent upon the steadfastness of a core group of users. On more than one occasion, Apple was on the ropes and would have gone under but for the passions-beyond-reason of a small group of enthusiasts. Throughout history, stalwart rear-guard formations have saved countless armies from annihilation, allowing front-row troops to fall back, re-group and fight another day. Indeed, Roman Legions were organized around such a principle with the Triarii famously providing the last line of defense. Machiavelli was wrong ... name a Great General and you have named a General who was LOVED by his men. This is a potent strategic concept understood by few civilian business leaders.
- Mass Adoption and the Price of EOS. Every cryptocurrency's current price reflects the market's perception about whether it will, eventually, be widely adopted. Acquiring Steemit's entire user-base would dramatically augment such perception and would likely result in an immediate increase in EOS' price.
*****
So there you have it ... Quill's prognostications and predictions.
We won't have long to wait to see if they come true.
Quill
*****
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