Question for the Witnesses…

If you have been following me since some time you may know that I used to post once a month a short article regarding a simple process I do concerning my Witness Votes. I call this process “Auditing My Witness Votes” the aim of which is to assess if my Votes are used in the most efficient way so, ensuring the proper performance of theSTEEM Blockchain by signing Blocks (signal that the witness works properly) but also I try to check if the owner of the witness keeps being active and supportive for the community, posting and upvoting and also developing.

The following is my current 30 Witness List, all of them working perfectly according to my criteria:

@abit
@actifit
@arcange
@blockbrothers
@blocktrades
@cervantes
@cryptopassion
@curie
@dragosroua
@drakos
@emrebeyler
@fyrst-witness
@good-karma
@gtg
@holger80
@lukestokes.mhth
@mahdiyari
@partiko
@pharesim
@quochuy
@roelandp
@sc-steemit
@steemitboard
@steempeak
@steempress
@swisswitness
@themarkymark
@therealwolf
@yabapmatt

From that list, only 11 out of the 30 are Top 20 Witnesses:

@yabapmatt , @lukestokes.mhth , @blocktrades , @good-karma , @roelandp , @aggroed , @curie , @gtg , @therealwolf , @drakos and @cervantes .

For your information, as an average, a top 20 Witness does currently around 9200 STEEM per month . At today’s price of STEEM that means 2800 USD/Month .

Instead, Witness out of the Top 20 but within the first 50, the earnings obtained a month are around 1100 STEEM , i.e 340 USD/Month at the current price.

This number decrease dramatically if you are not one of the 50 first…

The thing here is that many of the witnesses are also struggling with the current price of STEEM, some of them have had to switch off the node because, apparently, the cost of maintaining alive the node surpasses the STEEM earned and so, does not justify to keep the equipment running or just maintaining the rent.

Thus, I can understand that many of the witnesses decide to Power Down their stake in a permanent mode, especially if they are not within the Top 20 witness List.

The fact is that I have seen many of my selected Witnesses powering down and not stopping lately, some of them as I said are Top 20 witnesses and I wonder…

Would not be good to stop powering down and stop withdrawing your STEEM to the exchanges in order to, I would not say increase the scarcity of the STEEM price but, at least, stabilize the price of STEEM in the market at the present times?

Is this not the time for ACCUMULATION?

Is it MORAL to keep feeding the exchanges with such a scarce demand right know?

Would not be better for you to sell your earned STEEM at a higher prices?

…an below the main question for the witnesses which I hope, some of them will reply…

WHAT IS THE MONTHLY COST OF RUNNING A WITNESS NODE/SERVER?

Could we have an averaged monthly value in USD about the Cost of maintaining a server/node running and working efficiently?

Thanks for answering.

@toofasteddie

By the way, many Steemians here do not have the time or maybe they are not interested in doing some research and try to Vote by themselves for the witness they like…If that is your case, choose anyone that you know he would do correctly as a Proxy, which means that your account will exactly replicate the Witness Votes of the proxy account you have chosen.

*Reminder: if you feel like not having time to do a proper analysis and still think that mine is fair , you can also choose me as your proxy that will vote for witnesses for you.

Just, keep using your witness votes doing an important work.