My buddy @timcliff thinks investors are key! I think seeking steem investors puts the cart before the horse...

in #investors6 years ago (edited)

Hey Again, Steemitizens!

If you follow my fellow witness friend, @TimCliff, then you know he often posts about the importance of investors and large investments into the steem blockchain. He actively works to promote bringing investors and exchanges and their infrastructure into play for stronger investing options and methodologies.

And that's not a bad thing!

But I think it's premature right now, and off target for growth at the moment.

I'll explain what I mean and what I'd do differently with his influence and clout.

Tim and I have talked to each other a lot of times over the past year. In many ways, our fundamental love of the platform, our investment in time and energy and our involvement and engagement with new users is very very similar. We don't always agree, but we often aren't far from a compromise in our positions.

And this topic is similar.

I don't disagree that investors in a platform like this are important. Of course they are. I disagree with focusing on them as the potential saviors right now. In fact, I feel like we should all have an entirely different focus which I will outline in this post as we go.

But with regards to investors, let's talk about how that looks for them and for us, right now, just for a minute, just to see how it feels.

  • Early investors have had a tumultuous two year ride.
  • The active investors have often been bad actors, and the inactive ones aren't doing much for anybody. market cap looking good or not. Circulation is not happening and that's going to be a key point of my recommendations here.
  • Investing means trying to get an ROI, which means that money needs to be doing something, working. So they can self-vote, manually curate for peanuts (which means "going to work every day"), delegate for peanuts, lease or rent to people or bid bots... none of this is making the platform much "better" by the way so far...
  • Investing here is risky based in steemit inc delivery date fails and systemic stability issues seen so far such as recent outages caused by simple spam attack vectors.

And really, have "investors" to date done more harm or good here overall? And conversely, from their perspective, have they experienced more harm or good for their investments than they could have elsewhere. Define harm and good however you want, that's kind of the point.

Here's what investors have done for me and most others, since @abh12345 tells me my chart is pretty darn typical, like everyone else's... (Thanks for the chart dude!)

Here we see that the minnows and redfish are doing all the daily work on the platform in terms of engagement and that in turn drives retention, and OUR RETENTION FUCKING SUCKS! Ask @PaulaG who runs the numbers on that at about 20% of people who come here are still here a year later. Why? ALL the reasons, but if the money was useful, those conditions wouldn't matter as much, eh?

People put up with a lot of shit for money but the money... is the thing.

If you get some here, you still gotta go to fiat with it. For many the amount they make here never makes that cost or hassle worth it. Bye bye they say... Shameful of us really.

So okay cork, what SHOULD we focus on to make this place work?

Easy peasy...

Circulation and Utility

This is what we are friggin' REALLY good at!

  • 3 second transaction times
  • functional utility coin, two years old
  • easily transacted with usernames, via multiple exchanges & wallet points of access, mobile and desktop
  • 50 thousand daily global consumers using it already, and over a million alleged potential wallets (yeah, yeah, I know. but still a lot DO have humans who would use them...)

What do I mean by "circulation and utility?"

This phrase dawned on me as a "mantra" while at a meetup last weekend, and having an in depth one on one with prominent steemian, @instructor2121 which spilled over into discord chat when we got back home. We've met at a couple meetups, and this came up every time.

He and I share going back to the 90s in web dev and app dev and internet "stuff" and we were clicking hard on the whole steem utilization premise. That's when I knew I needed to make a post responding to @TimCliff's constant call for more investors now. I think that's premature, but if we do the right things, they WILL come anyway, organically and naturally, as they should for a healthy outcome for all.

So what I mean is...

I mean standing up ecommerce stores that take steem

I mean taking it in the local business you own and operate already - like the cafe owned by my friend @ProgressiveChef does.

Yes, DO keep making the sites like dsound, dlive, dtube, zappl, steepshots and on and on that provide compelling use cases to earn rewards, but make sure we also create sites and places to SPEND that money.

I mean making projects like @steemtipper by @followbtcnews and @crimsonclad, where you can tip people with steem on other social networks like twitter, pulling them in to our deviant steem world by extension!

I mean putting this thing out there into the world as the viable option it already is, and focusing on bigger goals like getting a fast food or retailer chain to accept it at the point of sale.

You want investors? THAT is how you get investors!

  • Paypal built services THEN got huge.
  • Bitcoin made an infrastructure, THEN got huge.
  • Shark Tank wants prior sales results to give you big investor money, not vaporous steemy ideas that maybe someday...

I mean, how do you get investors on spec? You end up only getting HIGH risk investors, the hardest kind to convince to part with big money, unless they really believe so much in the thing, hard to do right now, or somehow have a dog in the race themselves, already.

or for the more sadistic, more of the power hungry, stake abusers we have now...

But if you have a solid, solvent, and widespread utilization and circulation going on, the investment decision becomes a lot easier to consider, almost a no brainer, and we get more conventional investors as a result, who aren't so... impactful on the users, rewards pool, or social vibe or whatever.

So, yeah, sorry Tim, but screw investors.

We need to concentrate on making more places and things to spend on, to even have something to invest IN!

Our witness team is doing this with our projects, giving steem real world purpose in book publishing, charity operations, and some upcoming new things we can't quite announce yet, but hey, come to SteemCreatives in Toronto, and find out when my witness team mate @Rhondak takes the stage as a speaker, with partner @Gmuxx in attendance as well!

Go make a way to take steem in your business. Maybe plan for an SMT in your business along the way? My jury is still out on those, IF we ever get them (see above about missed dates and trying to convince investors, lol)

Or go spend some steem!

All my love,
@SirCork
Member - @NobleWitness team with @RhondaK, @Gmuxx & @Anarcho-Andrei

[edits after the post]

PS:

I keep thinking of places that do take steem already now..

Like

@Privex, the hosting company owned by @Someguy123

or this post that I just found

https://steemit.com/comics/@steevc/comics-in-the-mail-paid-for-with-steem-cfdcb22a7e3daest

List any others below in the comments please!

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In fact, I feel like we should all have an entirely different focus which I will outline in this post as we go.

As I said in my original post:

So, yeah, sorry Tim, but screw investors.

Without investors you can kiss your rewards goodbye. Unless there are people willing to buy STEEM, then the rewards that are given to bloggers do not have value. The less investment we have, the more the price drops, and then everyone complains about how they are not making any money anymore.

I mean standing up ecommerce stores that take steem

I am involved in this initiative too, and I agree it is good to focus on. (Just not at the exclusion of working on other things too.) Check out steemeconomy.com if you have not already.

Check out steemeconomy.com if you have not already.

I had not seen this. But yes this.

but here:

Without investors you can kiss your rewards goodbye. Unless there are people willing to buy STEEM, then the rewards that are given to bloggers do not have value.

is the crux of our disagreement.

The pool pools every day, investors aren't paying my rewards, hell they are taking most of them.

Prices in markets are not input driven, they are consumption (or output) driven.

People using steem will bring investors, however, investors holding piles of cash doing nothing, will not bring people.

Circulation, and utilization. Otherwise ten people holding fat sacks of french francs ain't doing much in a euro circulation world.

is the crux of our disagreement

Agreed :)

also, unless you are against doing so for personal score keeping, would you mind self voting your reply to pin it topside? Id like our conversation to show up.

I added my piddly upvote to hopefully keep it here at the top. I love discourse like this that is debate on friendly terms. It's good to see.

It looks like the parent comment to this thread is already the top comment on this post. It doesn’t appear that an additional vote from me is necessary unless I misunderstood your request.

Bingo, there is no compelling reason to invest because no return :D

I look forward to the part of the 100 reasons that explains how they can do that for steem (make it show up) and get a return without spending it somewhere to some other investor, or using it in the current ways that kill and run off userbase .....

@sircork - do you deny the simple fact that inflow of money into a system increases the value of a coin? it's as simple as that concept.

Doesn't mean we shouldn't do all the things you have listed but we can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Appreciate your passion about the topic!!

Read it again friend, I denied nothing of the sort.

This is about focus, priority and process. Something I've made a living in for about 30 years.

That is Just speculation.

Its like Trading USD for EUR when you think EUR Will be more valuabe in the Future.

When we talk about investing we are talking about something that gives return besides the value of the asset.

Without investors you can kiss your rewards goodbye. Unless there are people willing to buy STEEM, then the rewards that are given to bloggers do not have value. The less investment we have, the more the price drops, and then everyone complains about how they are not making any money anymore.

I don't think the disagreement is about whether or not we need investors, but about whether or not we need to be chasing them. I think what he is saying (and I tend to agree with this) is that if you focus on circulation and utility, even at the expense of focusing on investors, you will end up with an ecosystem to which investors will naturally flock.

And I’m saying do both.

Without investors you can kiss your rewards goodbye. Unless there are people willing to buy STEEM, then the rewards that are given to bloggers do not have value. The less investment we have, the more the price drops, and then everyone complains about how they are not making any money anymore.

I'm curious, what's your definition of an investor in this context?

Just simply buying Steem is not enough. That only briefly raises the price on Coin Market Cap. Do you call those people sitting on a pile of Steem, collecting inflation, self-voting circle-jerking the crap out of each other, investors?

Those are speculators and miners. They are only here hoping your hard work will somehow make their holdings more valuable by sitting on the sidelines.

An investor actually pours forth funds to projects and developments. Delegation is a form of support. Someone who just sits on a pile of coins is less useful than, say, someone who delegates to bid bots. At least they "promote" content creation, without going into their effectiveness.

Stuff like DTube, DLive, are great. They are working utilities that make Steem blockchain unique; even if they still have a long way to go in terms of refinement. Now, if stuff in Steem Economy, like @steembay could also take off with some support, we would have another great usage case for Steem.

Point being, I'm tired of the generic assumption that "investor" is anyone with sizable wallet when the only thing going for them is "bought some Steem".

Well, unless you have those people “just buying STEEM” then the amount of rewards that the community will have to earn will be significantly less.

An investor actually pours forth funds to projects and developments.

No. That is not the definition of investor. It is the type of investor that you want, but it is not the definition of what an investor is.

Everybody wants more engaged stakeholders who take an active interest in the long term success of the project. If I had a choice, I would want all of our investors to be that type.

Unfortunately though the reality of the situation is that there are not enough people with millions of dollars lying around who want to put that money into a super risky investment and then have to do a whole bunch of work on top of that to get a ROI.

No. That is not the definition of investor. It is the type of investor that you want, but it is not the definition of what an investor is.

I don't care what the dictionary definition of investor is, Tim. I want to know what, who, or whatever is an investor to you in this context.

If there's nothing specific, then the upcoming campaign you are running just seems like a quick pump for morale. They'll cash out before anything gets anywhere; maybe even leaving this place worse off.

Before you say join the Discord, no. I would like to see your vision immortalized on the blockchain, @fulltimegeek style. What exactly are you trying to attract where STINC failed?

I want to know what, who, or whatever is an investor to you in this context.

Someone who is interested in buying STEEM.

They'll cash out before anything gets anywhere; maybe even leaving this place worse off.

Many investors are interested in buying and holding a coin until it goes up in value. Going after that type is not necessarily bad.

I would like to see your vision immortalized on the blockchain, @fulltimegeek style. What exactly are you trying to attract where STINC failed?

As far as this campaign, I have already spelled out my objectives and methods. If you are not interested in participating, that is totally your choice.

Thanks cork for the great post.

As far as saying "screw investor"s ?? Sorry Cork. I am with Tim on this.

That is being short sighted.

Much like conventional stocks of conventional Corporations. Take Frito Lay for example. Of course you want to have people buying and having high demand for your potato chips to sell at their businesses and convenient stores ( just like we will want Steem to be in high demand by business owners who want to utilize bandwith for SMTs in their business) but in the end the Investors take priority over EVERYONE and EVERYTHING ( i.e people who actually just Buy Steem alone to Hold) .

And the appreciation of Equities is the very top priority. Even more IMPT. than bottom line profitability. Yes, you heard that right !! ( But usually they go hand in hand. High profits usually equate to high demand of stock ownership, but not always of course)

Investors are CRUCIAL !!

Always have been and always will be !! And that's just the way the world and biz works.

I am a Content Creator. That is my main gig. And I want to continue to do that on Steemit but like I said I am first and foremost an Investor in Steem and SP and want my investment to appreciate. And that is why I blog. That takes priority over everything !

I said what you quoted, but I opened with a disclaimer ;)

Distribution, distribution, distribution, and there's the big issue (and the elephant in the room that everyone keeps ignoring) which would keep any sane investor away from steem right there. I think something worthy of investigation would be places that USED to accept steem and do no longer, and no one seems to care. See Shapeshift (virtually instant conversions at market rate), see livingroom of satoshi (bank acc filled or bills paid with steem).

From memory they were removed due to a lack of interest and the infrastructure is not exactly reliable causing more work for the companies to support (running their own partial or full node to mitigate and actual time/effort responding to tixs.) pushing costs and margins so tight they ended up dropping it altogether.

You should mention anon.steem.network also, while you are talking about services run by someguy.

All valid points Sammo.

Hell, yes!!!! Yes, yes, yes, YES!!! Absolutely no disrespect intended for TimCliff, because he has definitely pulled his weight on the platform. But at the end of the day, our goals and his goals are the same. We ALL want investors to get behind this platform. The difference is in approach. @noblewitness has a four-way mutual mindset on the matter of circulation and utility. That's what makes us a very important up and coming witness team, worth casting a vote for. Our main priority is helping content creators make the Steem blockchain a venture that investors flock to.

Thank you so much for this post, Cork.

Circulation really matters. I see other coins like Litecoin pushing it on a daily basis.

Speaking of places to spend Steem on, I came across @steembay auction the other day. That is another case at utilization that no one talks about.

@IFC, ran by @apolymask, has a primitive market that runs on their Discord. Imagine if there is development talent putting that idea to work, but on a larger scale.

We need to concentrate on making more places and things to spend on, to even have something to invest IN!

Yes, exactly - but building these things takes investment. You're personally investing in your projects, and I'm personally investing in mine, and we have a bunch of other people doing that too. We're outside funding, in a way, or at least I am - I don't expect my Steem projects to be self-sustainable until late 2020 at the earliest. I'm going to be pouring resources into them for a while.

But if we're reliant only on the bootstrapping method, those things will get done much more slowly. If we can find a way to get some passive funding to come in and invest in building those small businesses, we'll be much more effective.

I think Tim's focus is too broad, looking for people to "invest" in Steem when what we need is people investing on Steem, but attracting investment is something we should be thinking about.

Right on the point.

The Focus on seeking investors must be on steem projects, not on steem itself.

Yer in the ballpark. And not wrong.

I do think we have enough business owners and entrepreneurs here already doing business online though to create quite an initial catalog of online and offline businesses that could take steem essentially immediately.

I'm one of them, and if there's a proof-of-concept I'm willing to follow it. But there are three essential problems that keep me from making more of an effort to sell real-world goods for Steem. (Though I'm happy to if someone asks.)

  1. My Steem audience and my real-world audience are very different. If there's anybody here besides me who buys medium-end art I haven't run into them, and I know some people who were actively looking and now have given up. And for the smaller things like books and greeting cards I don't at all get the feeling that trying to sell them to my Steem followers would be useful. I suppose I could be wrong about that. But as far as I can tell my Steem audience generally wants posts from me, not stuff.
  2. Shipping. Steem is way more globally diversified than anywhere else I'm active, and partly that means that I can't effectively sell physical goods to most of the people I can reach here, even if they could afford them. Steem may be simply more suitable for digital assets.
  3. The lack of an ability to have any sort of permanent post structure, or permanent ads on my page, and so on. Sure, I could build a website and put SteemConnect links on it, but how do I get people there consistently? Do I make my posts less appealing by putting ads in them all the time, and subordinate what's actually going well here for trying to sell stuff? Is there some method I'm not seeing?

If I can manage to get more of my existing customers onto Steem maybe this will make more sense. But I don't see Steem as an effective way of generating new customers for my existing businesses at all. Maybe different forms of retail businesses will feel otherwise. Somebody like @arseniclullaby who makes and posts and writes about comics and also sells comics might do better than someone with more diverse work like me. I know he already sold some through his blog here because I bought them.

I'll probably be starting a Steem account for my tiny publishing company pretty soon, because why not, but I'll be a little surprised if it leads anywhere.

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I commend tim's initiative, but I think investors need to be impressed by a project before investing. With the current state of things, there's a lot of things lacking which tarnish the luster of our Steem. As you mentioned, the active investors have often been bad actors, and the inactive ones aren't doing much for anybody. Couldn't agree more. Although investors are one of the multiple factors for the success of any enterprise, what's central to success is fundamentals. Steem has many advantages over the other coins/platforms, however on the technical and functional side it's been dragging for 2 years. Until everything is fixed and stable, I don't think we should divert our focus on anything else, e.g. investors and SMT's. Nevertheless, it wouldn't hurt to try to bring more investors, but I'm afraid it will be a tough sell to convince them.

well said, i'm in lock step, my talented and involved witness friend!

Me, too.

We DEFINITELY want the investors. As TimCliff points out, we have nothing without them. But let's give them something exciting to invest in. I think that's our responsibility, not just one possible option.

Same. I've been saying from the start that, whatever Steemit, Inc.'s view of Steemit as a platform, it continues to be the flagship. Unless we have other prominent examples of just what can be accomplished, we're treading water at best.

I like this point of view. I completely agree. I would like to clarify the word investors. The so called investors in steem, as with many blockchain projects are actually speculators, they come to get rich as quickly as they can. Greed is always punished.

This quiet time, its the time when the long term believers (such as yourself I assume) work hard to build things of utility. Give people a reason to buy, hold and use steem. It is times like these when only the biggest advocates are still left here, talk, work together and come up with useful things, even when it seems all is lost on the platform. It is these discussions and people building value creation systems with working business models on Steem that will bring it through. Not only a combination of bloggers and speculators. I guess Steem still suffers from the stigma that it is a place for bloggers, when it is far from that. Steem really really suffers from that. This thing is a facility for rewarding people for carrying out voluntary actions on and off the blockchain. Its up to the most die hard Steemians to come up with sustainable ways to make these actions / services or goods valuable to others who will invest in Steem long term in order to gain access to the use of these actions.... Its coming, people are starting to see it. It just takes bloody hard work, a lot of time and grit to see these times as the opportunities they are... (that's my two cents, I hope you jive)

Talking of serious, long term investors bringing large pots of steem to hold on our blockchain. our business recommends a minimum of 200K usd in order to give enough of an up vote to get people doing voluntary actions. We have already bought one client in and have set up the facilities to properly manage their steem for initiatives they want to achieve. We are sharing our profits also to people who bring new business into our company. I really wish more people started thinking this way on Steem, the price rises would be tremendous if they did.
We are essentailly the worlds biggest startup with 50,000 employees. if we could get the majority of them thinking in this entrepreneurial way, then we could really be amazing! Steemians would be the most powerful (and benevolent) force in the blockchain industry.

oh yes
all of this

It does seem quite logical to expand Steem as a cryptocurrency it really needs more real world places to accept it as payment - you can convert it to another crypto and eventually maybe get some physical money through that - but the fees and hoops are often too off putting.

I know of @steemgigs but have not had chance to look into it yet, I believe it is basically Steemians offering to do various tasks in return for Steem. I'm interested to look into @steemtipper I have not heard of that and it sounds like an awesome idea.

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#thealliance #witness

Those are indeed some valid point here.

And why are we so obsessed with big investors?

There is a fundamental difference here that i dont know If @timcliff realized: we are not talking about pouring money in a Company with the expectativa that the Company grow over time. We are talking about Trading money for money.

Calling big players to buy steem to Rise its price os only based on the prossibilty that one day that money (steem) Will be Worth more than what you paid for.

This is speculation, not investing.

When we talk about investing we need to think what we have to offer in return besides the market speculation.

Here is a suggestion for you big steemers (@timcliff included):

Try to pitch investors to put money on steem projects (@utopian-io, @steemhunt, etc etc), and not on steem itself.

This is what May bring Future returns besides the price speculation.

This is speculation, not investing.

Omg, that is exactly what @iamstan and I have talked about. Instead of investing in projects that could increase the value of their investments, many are hoping that if they passively sit and wait on the Steem they hold will eventually worth more through the work of others.

Jokes on them because if they had stepped in, they could facilitate that obsessed ROI quicker.

I have had this in my head and Im not sure its conveyed the whole time, but thats exactly what I mean when I ask "What are you giving them to invest in?" and "We have to give them something to to invest in!"

You got it! Thanks for reading.

I get the feeling that Tim is going to reply and says he agrees with you and that everything you mention doing (all great ideas btw) are strategies to attract investors....!

Also I think to scale many of the various 'useability' initiatives you menrtion will require investment - take actifit as an example - I downloaded it, but compared to my android pedometer and map my run it's a bit shit - it needs an investor to pay people to make it better!

Very nice post btw - I agree we need to use (in the broadest sense of the word) the platform to make it grow - but investment can't hurt - people will use it more if there's more of a return!

Lots of chicken n egg stuff to think about, cheers!

I would go on but Im on my phone and damn keyz!

Posted using Partiko Android

You smelled the stuff I'm stepping in then :D And I suspect you may be right about Tim's reply if it comes :D

What you're talking about is the right shit to make steem grow. But I think the rewards structure needs changing to facilitate that! Tim'll reply. He always does!

Posted using Partiko Android

yeah, we actually are friends. I know he'll have something to say :D

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I simply think that Steemit.com don't really need investors more than it needs to start its advertising service. Allow people to advertise their amazon businesses or any kinds of businesses on the steemit platform. There is billions dollars worth to make out of simply advertising. Why not?

I was going to comment on advertising, so if you don't mind, I'll continue this discussion... :D

I hope you don't mean banner ads and such are so 90's & 00's... haha
When was the last time you clicked a banner ad?
I cannot remember the last time I clicked any type of Internet advertising...

The competitor platform we are looking to overthrow (Facebook...) goes to great lengths to data mine for advertisers. Yet, it is proving ineffective and advertisers are pulling money from their Facebook advertising budget. 4 monts ago, I did a bit of a treatise on the big boys bringing a portion of their advertising budget to Steemit.

  • Steemit is already setup for advertising and marketing right here on the platform we have, right now. There is no additional infrastructure to be built. All that has to happen is for a good "idea guy" at any of the major corporations to read my treatise and realize they should be on Steemit now. :D
    • Be the first toilet paper company to engage me here on Steemit and I will switch brands in a heartbeat. (My wife is pretty particular re: TP, so she would probably still have to buy her brand, too. I, on the other hand, am not that particular! haha)

I agree with both @SirCork's and @TimCliff's point of views.

  • We probably have to walk before we can run, so urging small businesses to start using the platform as SirCork hypothesizes is a great idea to show the big boys we are ready for them.
  • TimCliff is absolutely right that we need investors.
    • I'm simply adding my 2 cents idea that the quickest aspect to growing Steemit, through businesses and through investors is to shill the fact that we are ready for advertiser and marketers to come find customers here on Steemit, now...

Yep, let's get some brands taking and talking steem!

Hell, how about a softball, "steem" - a tea or coffee company? plenty of them online. irons? not very compelling. But what about Uber, or AirBnB - we keep trying to build the dapps, when we could be trying to get existing ones to add a checkout button.

They actually have reasons for that, which you can find in older posts as told at steemfest to witnesses like @luke.stokes in the past. I don't agree with their reasons, and think steemit inc is short sighted BIG time, but thats whole other post and discussions.

Before bringing in investors the platform needs to be cleaned up! yeah bidbots bring short term success to some greedy people and some crumbs to the rest to desperate to see that their greed is killing the platform. They need to go! A second rewards pool for evergreen content needs to be built .
If this platform is to become some thing it needs to shine with the content it provides and the community it builds .

Do we have some good communities here - yeah but they are insular and swimming in a ton of shit ... we need to clean house and build a strong foundation so investors will want to be a part of this . shitpost central and 8% retention rate is not going to sell to anyone who does not want to do a rape on our already ailing platform ...

as for real world application. I have talked about a reloadable steem debit cards and readers before ...like this people who want to get away from the corrupt fiat money system could just offer goods and labor for steem ...

If this platform is to become some thing it needs to shine with the content it provides and the community it builds.

Stay tuned we have big news about new places for steemians to go for shining lights coming in Toronto next month.

What a good way to see the ecosphere of steemit! I am happy to have found this article of yours and the debate you create around the steemitsphere.

I would like to deliver a poetic view on it which came to my mind while reading your article:

People, imagine a permaculture garden. Those who founded this garden, who bought the land to create such a place, need lovers who are interested in the biodiversity of the garden and the harvest itself. They need participants who have a profound interest in the fertility of the soil, the diversity of plants and animals, who operate a functioning water management system and who do not tear out every little shoot right from the start, as soon as it has started to grow. This would be like harvesting the entire first crop without ensuring that seeds are stored, new crops are planted and the harvest for the coming year can also take place. Such a (kinder)garden needs several years to become an adult garden, to be a place of cooperation, food, refreshment and edification for visitors and other gardeners alike. In the beginning there is in reality not so much to harvest as to provide the conditions for an ecologically rich system to develop.

At the moment, there are still many land buyers and occupiers who have grown monocultures of sprouts and now stare at them at every opportunity and say: Grow, now finally grow! These non-gardeners then bring in new amateurs. They have taken a seed or a sprout and put it somewhere, no matter whether it is sitting where it is good, whether it gets enough light or shade, etc. Someone else then comes by and plucks the leaves or throws fertilizer from the retort onto the plant or expects it to do magical things. And because it doesn't do that, he goes on indifferently and looks at the next seedling in a similarly superficial way. Alternating helplessly scratching his head or almost angry at the sparse green.

Other unwitting people marvel at a few giant trees and scratch around them, water them constantly and stroke the bark, praise the leaves. They forget that they could care less for such a tree than for the entire garden.

The number of permaculturists, it seems, is still inferior to the property buyers. A claimer who wants to let such a garden work for himself, but does not purchase a pump for the well and does not pay workers for the construction of water retention basins, who does not allow critters to graze or dig on the land and does not nurture and care for the seedling on a daily basis is not a founder but merely a bungler who does not understand his business. Especially when the garden is at one end of the world and the buyer at another end, he can only have a distanced relationship and nothing more. Sure, even then something grows somehow. But the garden cannot feed of itself if feeding of itself is the only thing.

A true gardener tends and cares for his garden, is on site and teaches other newcomers, who also want to become so masterful in gardening. He provides an environment that prevents others from trampling the fresh plantations dead or devouring young vegetables. He takes time and leisure for the training and also does not forget to take enough time to relax and calm down. He knows that his wealth stays if everyone sharpens the garden consciousness.

Specialize in apples, but don't become an apple idiot. Share the harvest with others by selling one part, investing another part, giving away a part and letting a wild part lead its existence. Leave room for surprise guests.

That's a lot to "chew" on :D

Thank you for your addition to the conversation!

If we even manage to convince investors to join in now, how are we going to keep them long term? Self-upvote for ROI is frown upon, other methods are not fruitful or don’t bring value. Some previous investors have already powered down and took money out.

It’s better to delay that until the platform is worth their while or we will end up with frustrated investors that might not want to come back if they end up leaving.

I think we should focus on producing more quality content, clean up those spammy craps and get Steemit Inc to get to complete the SMT thing and get to a stage where we don’t need that « beta » tag in the logo anymore.

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And have a lot of users, creating ways to use the coin and users using it. Or there is nothing to invest in.

My essentially uninformed opinion is that you are right. If you want to lure investors, have a fully functioning product. However, we just bumped up against the reality of international shipping, physical goods could be a problem unless a shipper starts taking steem.

Theoretically if the seller takes steem, they would include shipping in the total, but there are plenty of digital goods as well, that require no shipping. Sure, the initial adopters have to convert to fiat, but that's the business doing it with their receipts now and then, not a consumer having to do it every time they shop. That's the win here.

Amen! A biiiiig and huge amen! This is some extremely important and rather well thought through arguments, and they apply not only to Steem, but to all projects in general.

Also, Google built a search engine that people wanted to USE, THEN got huge :)

At Byteball - we are so fortunate to have a vast set of features up and running and not just a whitepaper of bold promises. This allows us to change focus to the actual use of the platform. Put the tools in the hands of the people who needs them, I say.
So the main task is basically to get a lot of creative, productive, innovative and entrepreneurial people to discover the possibilities.

Only through use and actual adoption, will any project ever succeed.

they apply not only to Steem, but to all projects in general.

30+ years of being in the game is exactly where I learned that, starting from about the time the Steemit Inc boys were born...

@sircork I absolutely take your side here.
When I joined Steemit in the beginning of this year I was looking for a kind of steem store, to buy some stuff for steem, and I was very much surprised to hardly find any. I think the situation with steem store or steem shop has not changed, though 8 more months passed. And so I really wonder, is that so technically difficult to build it? Why no one still done it. This seem to be a great business model to me, when you make platform or let it call steemplaza for selling goods for steem and then give the possibility for the steem members to rent small and big shops there to have chance to actually sell their stuff there. I've seen so many creative people, they draw, they make music they share it here on steemit, why not give them chance to actually sell their drawings, compact-discs with their music, just any amazing things from their posts. I wish I could do it myself, but I am still among those red fishes on your diagram and has absolutely no technical or any other promotion support to start it by myself.
If you know the way how to make building such steem hypermarket possible, let me know, I am absolutely ready to go that way and join the developers team.)
I also say hello to @timcliff - you were actually the first witness I voted for here on steemit, I think I later took my vote off though.))) Still, I think you and @sircork are trying to solve the same problem of steem future development, coming and working on it from different ends. And it seems if you both work hard enough you are going to meet somewhere in the middle and this will only mean that the problem has been solved.
As for myself, I will try to work in both directions, trying to make any possible contributions for steem to have more practical real life usage, and if I manage to bring couple more fat investors here, well I will become even happier then.)

Maybe... things like that are happening soon, maybe :D ;) Glad you agree!

Hey @moeknows, Congratulations! Bodzila just upvoted your post with 33.33% power. Keep up the good work!

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Thanks @moeknows and @bodzila! :D Wow! Much appreciated!

is it possible to open playback in a new tab, and can we speed her up about 3x? :D