Why would you think 1 week power down is insane? It is insane to make investors lock up their funds for 3 months.
Why would I turn my bitcoin to steem and lock up for 3 months? Have done that. Never again.
If there is one week power down I may reconsider.
For security reasons. To be honest, I prefer to keep it in my Steem wallet more than anywhere else, because I know that then it can't be hacked/stolen, because it is technically impossible (through Steem's inbuild account recovery features).
How should account recovery work with a 1 week powerdown period, when the whole recovery process is based on a 4 weeks period? Just disable all security on Steem to be able to receive bucks quickly?
Big investors don't make short term decisions. Most of them are in for years and they don't care much about market price fluctuations in between.
The whole idea of cryptocurrency is transfer of power and responsibility to people. If I want full security I may keep my assets in the bank.
If the concern is security we can give a choice for the user/investor to enable/disable lock up time.
Volatility in crypto space is not same as in traditional markets. I would prefer choice of lock up and responsibility of security decided by the user.
Moreover, there can be security measures implemented to avoid theft. You are a developer. I am sure you have some ideas.
Security is not an excuse for 3 months lock up. That is a very long time in crypto space.
p.s. Yes investment is long term. But when investors want to get out, they shouldn’t be forced to wait 3 months.
This gave me a good laugh, thanks... ^^
Changing the powerdown period won't automatically make us do the right decisions in future. According to the following chart (daily candles), we had plenty of time (more than 3 months) to catch a good price last time and even a few months after that it came back into the $5 area.
It is not insane to have a 3 month lock-up. The Hedge Fund market was valued at 3.53 trillion USD as of November of 2018 (which is an order of magnitud above the whole crypto sphere). Hedge funds usually have a lock-up period between one and three months. Real investors don't mind it only short term speculators do.
The real question is what type of "investor" do you want to target.
You're not forced to power-up the Steem, so the comparison to Bitcoin is like comparing apples with oranges. You can hodl Steem in your wallet, same as Bitcoin. Which is why we need a dynamic range of stake-duration with increasing incentives. Those who want, can stake it for multiple months or even years and be rewarded with some incentive in form of APR, while you can have the luxury of unstacking it within a shorter period of time, but with less APR.
@therealwolf "You're not forced to power-up the Steem" we are in fact forced to power up when claiming rewards. Even if you pick the 50/50 option , a portion will always go to steempower, which when claimed is powered up and locked up for 13 months.
Oh no! You're getting free money, which is locked for 13 months? Boy oh boy, how unfair is that?
@therealwolf wow, why so confrontational ? I was simply correcting your incorrect statement that we are "not forced to power up". We are in fact forced by default by the claiming rewards function, but I am not at all complaining. Please take a deep breath and calmly understand I am not attacking you or complaining about it. Just stating the facts. Also, it is not "FREE Money". You must pay for a device to post with, pay for the electricity to power that device, pay for an internet connection if you can't find free wifi and also spend your time to post and interact and as they say "time is money". But thank you for at least replying. Also, I wrote a post about stolen keys floating around this blockchain if you care to read my blog and find a solution for it. Have a wonderful day buddy. I'm send you some positive energy, I can tell you are passionate about this blockchain.
My statement wasn't incorrect as I was referring to potential Steem investments that you bought in liquid form. You're not forced to buy those as Steempower (vesting shares), rather you usually buy it in liquid form. It's a free choice to power it up. Now I do see the problem where in order to participate on Steem, you have the 13 weeks powerdown period. But I don't think it makes sense to go the quick-and-dirty road and reduce it simply, without giving people an option to decide how long they want to stake STEEM.
Earning Steem however via the reward pool should have an even longer power-down-period IMO.
Last but not least, good post you wrote.
ok, thank you for clarification and thank you for reading my post (I gave 100% rewards away so I am not trying to make anything on it, just get some attention to someone like you so you know that it is happening).
I would be ok with that if your shorter time is about a week. The more options for the user the better. Everybody can decide for themselves.
There is no point of buying steem and holding as liquid as it is a toxic asset and diluted by inflation. Only reason to buy Steem would be to participate in the economy which will force you to lock it up.
Nothing wrong to compare steem with bitcoin as both compete to be preferred method of digital payment, transfer of value, and decentralized financial instrument.
However, I wasn’t comparing. Most people to buy steem will need to buy bitcoin first, then buy steem. Once a person has bitcoin, why should one buy steem instead of hodling bitcoin? That is the question that needs to be answered to attract any responsible investors.
I still don’t understand the objection against lower power down time. There is no evidence that 3 month lock up time benefited Steem.
I would connect rewards for long staking periods to curation algorithm. Your every vote gives you always a minimum 50% return, no matter what time you have voted on post. That would award real curators who are reading posts/watching videos before they cast a vote
If you don't power up, you incur the full brunt of 8.5% inflation, which is going to be a non-starter for most investors/holders.
That's not the case with Bitcoin (current inflation rate is about 3% and set to drop in half soon), nor with most other newer tokens and coins which have moved away from high inflation models. The few that haven't (Zcash being one well-known example) have been poorly received.
Realistically that means incurring more inflation and won't be attractive. There is no free lunch; any rewards paid to one group (such as people who lock up longer) has a flip side of higher inflation for another group (people who don't), and if the inflation is too high becomes and deterrent to invest.
One way to make the option of holding liquid Steem more attractive ("like Bitcoin") as you suggest would be to greatly reduce inflation (including both rewards paid to content and rewards paid to those who do lock up). Obviously both of those reductions are going to be unpopular with someone, but that doesn't mean they could never happen either.
I could live with that although the APR is mostly dependent on your actions as a curator and not your hold time (outside those 2%).
So really it would make little difference unless you would drastically increase the base SP interest.
Absolutely correct.