I just joined Steemit last week. I have had a financial blog for roughly 8 years now and racked up an email list of approximately 70,000. I posted 6 short "test" pieces just to see how the platform works. I'm remaining anonymous because I wanted to see how the system worked before I went all in.

I can say that the current system here is a waste of time for someone like myself. In the few first hours on this platform I was already testing bots to see how the feeds were manipulated. I could come on here and spend a couple hundred steem and get my way to the #1 spot without even blinking (but losing money in the process because of the way the bots work).

Has nothing to do with the quality of my work, where I come from, etc. It is just completely by gaming the system. Obviously, this is problematic for me. I have been published in the NY Times, Financial Times, Barrons, the Wall St. journal, and been on CNBC twice.

The day I joined, the top post was flooded with spelling errors (in the title), as well as being overall poorly written and flooded with grammatical errors. And then I go to see HOW it was ranked at the top, and it was all bots.

Of the top Steem power holders, the vast majority are bots or the Steem team itself. I looked into how the bots worked, bought a few bids, and my jaw dropped at how easy it was to get ranked.

Distribution of power in the cryptocurrency community is enormously skewed. It is only enhanced on this platform via the churning of bots, as they easily accumulate all the power in a short period of time.

There is no merit in any of this. It has more in common with playing a video game than writing.

Bots are openly discussed and encouraged for use by some of the top member of this community (they own some of the bots).

So I'm quitting before I get started here. This is a lose lose. Sadly, there is no incentive for me to create good organic content on this platform because, while it might be read, the votes given by people reading it with good intent are far too weak versus what I would see in ad and sales revenue on my own website. I would be crossing my fingers to bag one of the 50 "whales" that would actually incentivize me to keep writing.

And those odds are extremely small versus traditional avenues, where exposure is greater and chances of upside are greater, as well.

Per this author being criticized (@Haejin), he just played the system "right". He saw it for what it was (as I did) and played ball. Clearly, it worked for him and he is making a lot of money in both Steem and through his website. I know a lot about technical analysis (I was a former fund manager) and much of his content can be found similarly elsewhere - but his exposure is much better, which is why he will do better in the end.

I, on the other hand, plan on sitting on the bench. Kind of a bummer, because I did have high hopes for Steemit.