Holy moly I have to light a 20 dollar bill on fire to open a second account?!

Why is there an account creation fee at all? If I had no money in my steem account I wouldn't be able to vote anyway so why should it matter?

It also seems like that makes cold storage wallets largely impossible. You wouldnt be able to vote without having your account name and password handy on your computer, and that makes you vulnerable to keyloggers and other malware. And if you dont vote you dont get any curation rewards which means you are slowly getting eaten up by inflation.

Im still not very clear on how to even create a second account. I must use one of these 3rd party services or its merely an option? Why cant I create a second account on the main steemit website? Why is there no desktop client?

The entire appeal of cryptocurrency is that it is supposed to be decentralized and anonymous, and I have to tie my phone number to this account? How is that anonymous?

Man im really glad I tried this whole thing out before investing more money into it. This is completely nuts.