"Steemit is an elaborate elitist scheme" - My Rebuttal Letter

Steemit is like ONECOIN

"Steemit is more than just a ponzi like Onecoin, the latter actually a totally legit scheme by the way, nothing wrong with it in the eyes of the law. Steemit influencers (the whales and those who pre-mined before ninja-launching) plays on the foolishness of influencers in other areas, voting for them to gather more audience which equals more investors, which equals more value to the tokens and actual liquidity for the tokens that reflect prices on the platform."

Onecoin is not a legit scheme by any means. It may be legal in some places such as Bulgaria, where it is headquartered, but Onecoin is indeed illegal under security laws in the USA.

There is no Blockchain for Onecoin.

There is no open source code to review for Onecoin or proof of cryptography anywhere for public to see. Thus, it is not a cryptocurrency.

Onecoin makes no reference to who created or operates business known as Onecoin.  It takes no power of anything to create and anything relating to how it works is kept quiet.

Steemit is not a business. It's a platform. It has no owners. This platform can be replaced by any other platform using Steem as its currency.

Onecoin says in their terms and conditions: 

"Any government agency or other appropriate governmental, police, or regulatory authority in state of Bulgaria or elsewhere in order to meet legal security and regulatory requirements."

Steemit does not have terms and conditions. The content is regulated by consensus through voting.

In response to the whales and distribution of Steem, I completely agree. I am from a decentralized point of view. As Steemit grows, or if another should take its place, these issues are what comes forth.

Steem was largely premined. The creators hold the majority of the premined steem. The creators have the greatest power in the Steem ecosystem thus far. I am hoping that the Market and Steemit voting system will allow for the best correction against an power system which can be used against or for anything of a particular.

Steemit is a Scam

"Therefore, Steemit doesn't work like a direct illegal MLM-system where new users add direct monetary value to user levels above them, and so on. That doesn't mean it's based on proof of work by blogmining, as many want to believe. It isn't even backed by real PoW since the decentralized factor is virtually non-existant. It is much worse than ETC, which is a huge scam by the way. But Steemit is way bigger."

Actually, those who invest in Steem Power do indeed invest into the ecosystem. Some have millions of dollars invested for the right of voting power. Some have tens of thousands. Whether you or I like it or not, they believe in Steemit enough to invest that much knowing it will take two years to withdraw their investment.

They should be awarded something. Voting power is how it is structured on Steemit and unlike an MLM, I have had not to invest anything but brainpower to write articles and get paid

I get upset about who's articles get promoted largely because their influential factors to expand the Steemit community but when I calm down I realize this is just BETA and still has a long way to go.

 Complex Steemit may be, but I still do not see the scam in it. 

Anything Unregulated is a Scam

"Its playground is the grey unregulated area around cryptocurrencies in general. The whitepaper gives a clear understanding of this by giving contradictory statements in various ways aswell as being modified without logging the changes."

This grey and unregulated area is the area I seek to free man kind. Playgrounds  were where traders first met under the buttonwood tree and where Wall Street was built. If I did not have access to this platform, I would not even be able to pick apart its imperfections.

I am not one for centralized control. I prefer unregulated and decentralized control of EVERYTHING. This applies to Steemit and every other cryptocurrency under development. I would rather crypto be regulated by math than centralized powers. I am not arguing that Steemit is decentralized, because it still has a way to go, but it is a start.

As for the contradictory statements, I would like proof of claim on what is contradictory. Usually I find that whenever the word "contradict" is used it is usually the result of not understanding.

Cryptocurrency developers are often plagued with bad explanations. Even satoshi himself could not explain Bitcoin effectively due to the fact that there is nothing that exists to compare it to. Most just do not have time to explain as it takes time to develop and time is money. 

Steemit is Badly Distributed

"Steemit is the equivlent of an elitist-cryptoanarchist wet dream of playing digital golf. Only the Tiger Woods of the system will prosper - this will also lead to its downfall.
Downfall won't be the lack of liquidity (at first), the downfall will be annoyance and lack of trust in the system."

It's quite possible that you may be correct. It's also possible that you could be wrong. I have noticed a great deal of professional authors, video/radio jocks, cryptocurrency media centers, bloggers and artists benefit highly from this system. They have been gaining exposure, SEO and getting paid. 

Some of them are fairly new to crypto in general. Steemit has launched them head first into the world of cryptocurrency.

I have also witnessed some of them take advantage of their popularity and capitalize on the system whilst further pushing down the value of the economy.

How to deal with these people will eventually be figured out. I think as time plays on, Steem will become more distributed and allow for better voting.

It is decentralized, yet not nearly decentralized enough. I know plenty of good crypto who won't use their Facebook or Reddit to join. Checks and balances must be refined as with any experimental system. It's about whether you believe they will be refined or not.

Steemit is an experimental platform. I was told by many that Bitcoin was a MLM scam. I have been told all altcoins are scams. For a MLM scam, Steemit is very open sourced. 

I believe even your claim that ETC is a scam is kind of hard to prove since it in fact has names attached and is not a centralized business. It is just a different way of distribution. I question some very serious ethic issues with exchanges, ETC and ETH. These issues can be solved with decentralization and not laws against insider trading. 

You could claim that everyone who invested and researched into a project before it mooned was in fact an insider trader. Let us move away from centralized and political governance of cryptocurrency and allow the math to decide what laws will be coded.

Many things are called scams when they are in experimentation. If you think it's a scam, if you think its not fair, if you think its a MLM, create your own platform and currencies/tokens. 

Competition is not a sin. I hope Steem, Steem Dollars and Steemit have competition. It will allow the market to correct anything the market does not like.

Make it the crypto "twitter". You may just be more successful than Steemit.

Until then, even though I have had my own issues and rage quits with Steemit, I have found it to promote my decentralized thinking while giving me access to many in crypto.

These people are very dear to me. I have been learning a lot about many subjects and most importantly, about people I was friends with yet knew very little about.

I highly respect YOU personally  and your opinion on Steemit. 

I welcome a rebuttal of my rebuttal to clarify your claims.

I know your heart is in the right place and I applaud you for your principles of decentralization.

Be the Decentralization. 

Thanks,

Keith Smith