If you're in it for trading (therefore speculation), powering up is not the best option, but if you are trying to help boost the community, it's your call.  Very nice holdings btw, keep it up!

I have no issue upvoting my own content as per the post however upvoting myself for comments and everything is going a bit far. I have also seen steemit become a game of just auto voting the most popular people which is not helping new people that provide quality content at all. Its almost as if you want to play the steemit game you need to invest about 10,000 steem power +

That's a lot of SP can we lend it to others i have heard but don't know how.

<p>This post has received a 3.20 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @whatsup.</p>

I join jimitations, I wanna stop upvoting myself if Something changes and people upvote eachother more :)

@whatsup There are a few reasons for holding STEEM POWER:
1. Receiving interest (15% of all created STEEM goes to STEEM POWER), which currently is ~1.4% (15% of ~9.3%)
1. The ability to earn curation rewards, which easily will get you 10% ROI per year
1. Having more power on your curation actions (if you just like supporting the network)

steem power has that much power never knew that before.

dear @whatsup
I never upvote myself.bcz I dont have big steem power...but I will always upvote other steemians post and comments...I think steemit is kindly helpness platform....thanks sharing your ideas..upvoted ..

I've always heard holding steem power is good for a long term investment, especially if you believe seem will go up in the future like I do. Some people have said they earn interest from their steem power.. is this true? Either way, I don't have a problem with people upvoting their own posts. I understand that it took most of them some time to build up their influence to where it is

Interesting post. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. The biggest group of uneducated investors in mankind has to define the trustworthyness and price of a crypto. It's an interesting world we live in.  An interesting website I found:  https://www.coincheckup.com. Supposingly they researched every crypto coin in the scene based on: the team, the product, advisors, community, the business and the business model. They even score the coins stengths.  Go to:  https://www.coincheckup.com/coins/Steem#analysis To check  Steem Analysis.

Holding Steem Power (SP) confers no benefit. SP only becomes beneficial in how it increases your influence and rewards for actions within the Steem Community. So, upvote, curate, post and comment.
You can power-down SP into STEEM in a process that takes 13 weeks to complete.
If you wish to hold value, then STEEM is more liquid. However, STEEM does not generate rewards for actions within the Steem Community.

Since you mentioned buying upvotes....
I couldnt resist ;)

Have a great day whatsup!

I hold Steem for 3 purposes.
1. to upvote others and have a little influence on the community. I even powered up an investment in order to get that Steempower and be able to put in some thanks to people who write good content and give me good comments on my posts.
2. I think the Powering up has me connected to Steemit and to Steem. This way, even if i do not get the feedback I would have liked on my posts, I will keep working on it, as it takes 13 weeks to get it out. Besides that you keep yourself from making a decision in selling when times look bad. If you trust in the currency you stay.
3. Brings me right to my next why; I have a very good feeling about Steemit. eventually people will see that only upvoting yourself will not help you and help the community, reslulting in only writing for yourself. I think Steem will go up the next months.

I'm just a noob here, so my opinion may be miss-placed, however, from what I have seen so far, I would say that by holding SP, you attract more upvotes from people curating than if you had less SP. The noobs mostly seem to gravitate to the whales and dolphins in the hopes of catching some scraps, while other whales and dolphins don't want to waste their votes on minnows. So the more SP you have, the more you attract upvotes and the more you make. When you power down and lose your voting power, you become less desirable.

Like I said, this is just my observation and since I didn't do any in-depth study of it, I could be way off the mark.

Upvoting oneself? Powering up? Illiquid Steem? I'm new here and I haven't grasped the meanings and subtle implications of all this jargon yet. It's kind of making my head spin, though--on the inside, metaphorically speaking. If it were spinning on the outside, like the girl in "The Exorcist," that would just be weird.

@whatsup thanks for this imformative post :)

thanks for sharing man :) @whatsup

why not self vote? my self vote is pretty worthless at just a few cents. yours is enough to make $100 a week. if you had a bank account that could collect interest why would you purposely not accept it?

On voting selfies... I'd be willing to stop upvoting myself (ok, that was a distracting phrase) once enough other people are willing to upvote me. Until then, you get it where you can.

@helpbot What is the value of holding Steem Power?

I don't think the **Helpbot** is functional yet. ha,ha  I've made the decision early on to reserve my upvotes for other peoples content in the community.  I believe my account originally set to auto-upvote my own posts.  About a week in to Steemit I read an article (?) on the merits of sharing upvotes with others - an I decided "*sharing begets sharing*".  My limited understanding is that the more steem power one has the more influence - one has in the community.  Though I am still a nube, so it is my thought and not necessary fact.

One reason I like the idea of SP is the 13 week power down.  I look at in a view of a long term 401-S (for Steem)  something I contribute to that will be of benefit to me **down the road**.  Sort of a *Crypto-401K*.  Also it's hard to **Hack**.  Which when you mentioned Bittrex - I learned in a article by @hexdek16 or in his @loosechange project - not to keep large amounts of coins on exchanges.  Hence, I now have an Exodus Wallet and some other alt-coin wallets.  Not that they have large amounts, perhaps one day.

I was reading @stellabelle post VBlog on being a Full Time Steemit blogger, she's quite a **whoot!**.  She proposed some *steemy* ideas of doing things with Steem Projects.  I think the idea of renting out some steem power to get returns is an idea worth pursuing.  That way your coins are earning you more coins, and in turn benefiting others.  My .02 Cents.

I stopped back by your post to share this article I came across this evening: https://steemit.com/steemit/@etcmike/benefits-of-steem-power-and-buying-the-dips-in-steem-price

... But then I was reading the conversation you had with @oudekaas.  One of the most interesting **comment** discussions I've read all week.  (and trust me, I had a **doosie** one this week - perhaps *stepped on someones toes* not intentionally mind you)

  I was making the connections in background research, and this platform to a creator of **EOS**, and I noticed something (perhaps a *theme* in the creation) - Somethings I learned about **GAS** *Traction & Friction* [Lot of Car themes here in cyber-space]  One of the 'causes' of inflation is the 'cost of use' which on steemit is free in a sense, and I saw this theme repeated in my studies of **EOS** by the same creator.  

I'll stop writing now because I am getting myself confused and **off topic**.

 If I could make an analogy it would be this:  Steemit a 'cheap' way to buy a **Lambo** and get the *GAS for Free!*  Just note, you have to purchase a coupe of **tires** once in a while with **SP**  ... Other than that,  **Enjoy the Ride!**  

Note: I found the **Lambo** meme joke mention looking up memes because of the posting @whatsup made of the user @clayford08  - and I wanted to find a way to use the humor.  As always, Love, Peace & Hair Grease!

Vote for yourself!

There hasn't been a reason not to so far. 

Personally I haven't been doing it lately but I think it may be reasonable to take this approach:

If you can't find great content on Steemit, worthy of an upvote, upvote yourself as a reward for looking for it. 

Until a circular economy is developed there is no reason to not do that. 

You could also loan out your SP and have a better return, vs just selling it. And that way you still help out by not sucking up the rewards pool.

I've seen some people liking their own comments which is really really really weird. It's like giving yourself a high-five!

I am about to power up, but after reading into steem a bit more I have my doubts about how inflation could drop the price of steem

From reading the replies it seems that most people have no idea how steem works nor steem power. 
From what I read holding steem is a bad idea as steem itself is inflationary 100% a year if you are not holding steem power. 
By holding steem power you are better protected against inflation as  for every 10 coins that are added to the market you will get 9 back. So I understand?
Which basically means that people holding steem power could have 11% inflation.  
You have ofcourse more steempower and more influence in terms of how much your upvote is worth and you could by actively participating overcome that 11% inflation by making money through your content and participating in the network.

So this is a genuine question, what stops the steem power of becoming worth less if whales are dumping even more coins on the market which they earned from increased steem that they received from holding steam power  more and more steem floods in. From what I understand 80% is held by the topwhales and due to holding it in steempower they will just increase their amounts. Due to the incredible imbalance of distribution of wealth they can effectively continously power down their earned steem forever and as long as steem has even the smallest value still make tons of money,

So holding steam power you are fully at the mercy of how many people (whales) are actually powering down versus what investments are coming in. 

On top of that you have to be active every day to at least counteract the 11% inflation rate. 
Please point out where my stories doesn't make sense and why it should be viewed otherwise so I can feel better about putting money into steempower 😄