In order to buy a share, you have to transfer one steem to 
I have to thank 
(NB - you can if you want buy more shares for yourself and someone else…it’s not limited to one each, you can buy 10 for them and 10 for you if you like although there is a 100 share limit per person per SBI pool)
Intuitively this project is ‘my kind of thing’, hence why I’ve gifted a few like-minded people with a share (not entirely altruistically, it’s a win-win situation) and this is just a brief post to raise awareness of the project and to provide a basic overview and something of a critical review of it.
**NB - 
SBI is very much a 'can of worms' thing. You start pursing it and you just end up with more and more questions, at some point you've got to stop and present your understanding to date... this is it!
How much can you earn per ‘share’ in SBI?
Or what does your one steem investment actually give you in terms of a return?
According to the data tab on SBI’s spreadsheet*, at time of writing, with steem and $SBD just over the $3 mark, the brief answer is as follows:
- One share gives you a weekly upvote from SBI worth $0.06
- This is equivalent to an annualised, compounded return of just over 100%.
- Looked at another way, it takes you 6 months to get your 1 steem investment back.
*The above figures factor in curation rewards, and assume that you always post at 50/50. _And of course, let’s not forget that your giftee is also getting the same return too!
Four ways to increase the value of your SBI vote and return...
>ONE - Upvote comments and posts from
You can also earn an upvote bonus if you upvote
TWO - Sponsor more members into the pool. Every time you sponsor a member, you will each receive 1 share. By sponsoring more members you can receive more shares.
This is probably the most obvious way to increase your share! Personally, I’m going to up my stakes over the coming weeks… it seems a nice way to reward people who interact with you. You can also take part in the various SBI competitions through which people give away shares in SBI as prizes… see 
For every 25 SP you delegate you get 1 share in SBI. There is no limit on how much you can delegate, although as I understand it, the long term plan is to move ‘beyond delegation’.
FOUR - Buy Steem. As Steem goes up, the value of your basic income increases.
Of course, this goes for everything on steemit…
How does SBI work exactly?
Here I’m really just going to select the ‘essence’ of the scheme and then point you to SBI’s explanatory posts for more details.
In the long term the steem you use to buy shares gets either powered up by the @steembasicincomeaccount (in the shorter term it might get used to lease steem power to keep things ticking over), adding to its voting power (Just under 29K SP at time of writing, but rapidly increasing), which is then used to upvote member’s posts.
SBI in ‘A Complete Overview of SBI, Jan 2018 explains it thus:
The total weekly vote strength available will be divided by the number of shares to determine the vote weight each share receives. Each member's weekly upvote weight will then be distributed to each of their posts, at a rate determined by their personal posting frequency. Each member's total voting weight is based on the shares that they own, but distributed across their weekly posts.
What this means is that if you post seven times a week, you’ll get an upvote of $0.01 per post, and if you post once a week, you’ll get an upvote worth $0.06 per post.
SBI’s Managing Voting Power post uses the analogy of a water tower to explain SBI functionality, which I think works really well (excuse the pun): with the water tower being the
Imagine there’s a large water tower which is constantly getting filled up with water. staggered around the bottom are 500 spigots or faucets. Above each spigot is an indicator that shows how much water is supposed to flow out of that spigot each day. Below the water tower is an engineer whose job it is to make sure every spigot releases the right amount of water, and that the water tank stays close to full, but without ever filling all the way. If the water pressure gets too low, the water barely trickles out when the spigots are open. If the water tower gets totally full, then the money spent on a ensuring a generous flow of water into the tower is wasted.
I recommend reading the post it does a good job of explaining the complexities of the SBI project.
SBI voting pools
The above analogy (I suggest you read it in full) goes on to say that the ‘hub water tank’ (the main
As I understand it, the voting pools are hierarchical, with there being a slightly larger ROI as you progress up the pools (inactive members are ‘marked’ for going down, more active for progressing up). NB - the differences in ROI are quite small, so it’s just a minor incentive to keep people posting.
I created this rather naff looking visual to take a 'snap shot in time' of how SBI works (NB it's growing so quickly, it already needs updating, but hopefully it'll give you some idea...)
SBI’s: pulling back the screen post explains more about voting pools. You should also take a look at this spreadsheet which shows you the members in each pool.
The strengths and limitation of SBI
Firstly, SBI is a nice way of guaranteeing yourself and your buddy a small, guaranteed income. If you invest just one steem, that’s an annualised 100 ROI for you and for them! This initiative seems to be a great way of supporting users who have been around for a while but have made little progress in terms of rewards.
Secondly, the SBI initiative should end up with a more equal distribution of rewards than with the mainstream steem platform: looked at ‘per pool’ this is certainly true… there is a maximum cap of 100 shares per pool, which is a ‘soft cap’ on the proportion of the rewards any one member can get per pool - so with 500 members max per pool, and 100 shares max per person per pool, that means at maximum inequality (for a full pool in terms of members) would be 1 person receiving something like 16% of the rewards (one person owning 100 shares, 499 people owning 1 each).*
HOWEVER, as it stands, there is no limit on the number of shares any one person can buy, and if they buy more than 100 per pool, a new pool is just opened up, and they start earning on those shares. As of yet, no one has actually done this, and I spent about an hour in discord chatting with
There is a general ‘spirit of equality’ on SBI than steemit in general because in order to invest in one share, you have to buy one for someone else. Technically this should limit the maximum percentage of rewards which go to the top 1% to 50%, although I think this ratio could be greater if groups of people buy shares for each other. HOWEVER, as it stands, there are much better returns to be had on steemit without effectively giving half of it to someone else, so I don’t see why those who have profit maximisation at heart would bother with SBI.
Thirdly, you’re under no pressure to post to get rewards… because if you post once a week, rather than once a day, you just get a larger value upvote on that one post (proportionate to your shares’ value.). This should mean less crap-posting.
Fourthly One ethical issue I do worry about is that it is just something of a modified voting club… while I only ‘opt in’ people who have a good track record of decent posts (and interaction with me) there is no guarantee that this is how everyone will use it as a whole! Also it doesn’t guarantee curation or engagement… although some of the SBI competitions do encourage this.
I think the thing that worries
Sixth, related to the above is the perverse problem of inactive members… inactive members don’t get upvoted, so their value comes back to the rest of us!
Finally there is the issue of automation - at present this is done manually, but I’m reliably informed that automation is on the way, which is a necessity if it’s to grow.
As a very final word, whatever you make of SBI, it’s a nice way to surprise someone with a ‘gift’! And there does seem to be a nice little community up and running around the SBI competitions.
SBI Competition
simply add in a comment about what you like about SBI, or what you think needs to be done to move it forwards/ expand it!
Whoever makes the most in-depth, grounded (researched), innovative, practically applicable comment/ suggestion will win the grand sum of 2SBI!
NB - If you've already got masses of shares in SBI, or yr loaded already, maybe mention this in yr comment so I can hand them out to people with less, in the spirit of the movement!
Cheers,
Karl.
: find out more
Introducing Steem Basic Income - the introductory post, explaining the very basics, and a useful starting point!
Steem Basic Income Review by 
SBI ‘A Complete Overview of SBI - really the main post which explains how SBI works in detail!
SBI: Managing Voting Power - the post with the ‘water tower analogy used above.