Tonight, I am thinking Steemit so instead of writing some fiction, I decided to write some ah, what would you call this? I don't really know, Steem thoughts? Anyway, this is something I have thought about looking into for a awhile but I think it is such a rabbit hole I am going to employ the Steemit community instead which bring me to the case at hand; Employed through Steem.
Does that sound like dream or a potential reality, good or bad, scam or the future?
I am going to lay out two basic, hypothetical scenarios in this post to get us started so others can weigh in or spin off their own ideas on the topic. But essentially, it is about being employed through the reward pool.
1. Upvote me please?
Wages are a massive overhead for companies and can eat into profits significantly and is one of the drivers for automation. So, why pay them at all?
Let's say company XYZ powers up 1 million Steem (5 million worth). Using current values, their 100% vote would be around $400. They have 10 votes at around that value per day.
Let's say they have one employ and they upvote 1 post 100%
Employee 1:
vote = $400SBD = ~300 after curation = 150 in SBD is ~1050 USD + STEEM ~25 Steem (150 USD value). Therefore ~1200 USD a day. 200 days a year work = 240,000 USD salary.
What is your salary per day? Per year?
But, they have 10 of these votes per day and, they can pay 7 days a week 365 a year which means they can pay 365 x 1200 USD x 10 = 4,380,000 USD per year. (all things remaining equal) and, pay it in a likely appreciating currency. It also means that they can employ 18 people at that salary.
This means that their initial 5 million investment has been able to pay 4.4 M in salaries the first year. But, they are also earning curation on it of about 20% so by the second year, they will have 1.2 million STEEM POWER instead and a $460 dollar vote.
Does this sound correct? I do understand this is crypto and 'all things remaining equal' is not going to hold true but, it is actually likely to drive prices upwards, even though their Steem returns will change.
So, if I have this somewhat correct in theory so far, a Company can invest 5 million, pay 4.4 million in salaries and without even having a product yet, not only keep their seed capital, but increase it 20 odd percent in an appreciating currency.
Is this already happening?
2. Market manipulation?
Imagine if there was a trade analysis influencer on the platform with a lot of followers who when they posted their TA recommendations, there would be a near immediate jump in the price as thousands of followers bought the call. Knowing the call before hand would be highly beneficial right? The trader of course does know this and insider trading doesn't seem to cover cryptos yet.
So, what if a big investor paid to get the information early but instead of paying directly, they chose to vote from the pool instead of burn their own capital. After all, they have stake and can use it as they please right? This way they can make their buys low and at the jumps, sell for 5 or 10 percent gains consistently.
Does this seem above board?
Now, above are only two scenarios but there are many variations to this.
- Is this possible?
- How can this work in practice in the long term?
- How does it affect the pool for the now 'unemployed' who don't have a company contract voter?
- Is this legal?
- Is this the future of salaries?
- Can the system handle it?
There are hundreds of possible questions and so much uncertainty around how it would work in practice but, I do see this as potentially viable for a company to do. Even a small company, even with a low investment as essentially, it need not be the entire wage paid, it could be a percentage of it or, a perk of working for the company, a bonus. And, it completely changes tax liabilities for both the company and the employee.
Each day or week an employee could submit some arbitrary vote-worthy content on to the blockchain and the company can vote it up without even raising suspicion.
This sounds very scammy doesn't it? Is it reward pool rape?
- Are there ways to combat this if this has negative implications?
I really don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing but it will definitely have an effect on the pool and on the demand for Steem if a few large players choose to do this. I do think that it happens to some extent here already with the way some of the Steem projects work but, I can't really say.
I haven't seen any other discussions about this but I am wondering how the community sees it and how they think it may affect the platform and them as an individual. This is an 'out of my comfort zone' post also so, go easy, it is just a discussion.
Taraz
[ A Steemit original ]
Ok, tomorrow, no Steem related content... probably. :)