I discuss the issue of whether Steemit users should continue to create Steemit-focused content or not and then I discuss what I view as the First Principles of Steemit.
I discuss the issue of whether Steemit users should continue to create Steemit-focused content or not and then I discuss what I view as the First Principles of Steemit.
This is what I've learned from the video:
Steem (the system) can work perfectly well without Steem (the digital commodity) skyrocketing in value. In other words, Steem (the digital commodity) does not need to skyrocket for Steem (the system) to work.
If Steem (the system) works then Steem (the digital commodity) will probably skyrocket as a result. But this skyrocketing is not a precondition (as many people probably think) but the effect of Steem (the system) working properly.
These are very insightful thoughts. This is probably one of your finest videos.
One correction, only Steem (the crypto-commodity) can skyrocket. The system is specifically designed to prevent the Steem Dollar from skyrocketing in value because it is pegged to another currency. This is probably exactly what you meant, which is why I do not refer to Steem as a cryptocurrency but as a cryptocommodity and I only refer to Steem Dollars as a currency. The repeated use of the word Steem can be a source of confusion, so I try to be careful. Thanks so much for the thoughtful comment. Glad you liked the video :)
Just to be careful, I wouldn't say it is "literally impossible" for the Steem Dollar to skyrocket. My understanding based upon the whitepaper is that if SMD are trading less than $1 and the debt-to-ownership ratio is under 10%, then the interest rate can be raised to bring the value back to $1. If the debt-to-ownership ratio is over 10%, then the number of Steem produced per SMD can be increased, which should also bump up the price. However, if the value is trading over $1, interest rates can be dropped, but aside from using negative interest rates on SMD, "there is little the community can do" (whitepaper). Of course, you could always make an argument that it would be unlikely for this to happen, since it would be illogical to buy SMD while they are trading above that psychological level of $1. However, we can't rule out the possibility of people doing illogical things. :)
Excellent point. Amended my comment. Thanks for the thoughtful correction. Look at us working together to create better information!
Good point. This reminds me of confusions (and irritations) in some college sports forums where, occasionally, some posters would forget to refer to a school by their proper name. For example, they would refer to: Penn State as Penn; Ohio State as Ohio; and UC San Diego or San Diego State as San Diego. It really drove me batty! As a Steemit newbie, I like to be constantly reminded of the difference between Steem Dollars and Steem Power and Steem.
Yeah I remember that being a huge problem for me too! All of the "Steems" can be a bit daunting at first, but I get why they used the same word in all 3. It all goes back to this being a "Steem Backed Monetary System"
Yes, I meant Steem (the digital commodity), not Steem Dollar. I'll amend my comment to avoid potential confusion.
I appreciate you being so precise with definitions - this limits the amount of misconceptions.
Another familiarity:
Steem dollars(to be used as a digital currency) are what Bitcoins were meant(not designed) to be but instead they ended up becoming steem(a digital commodity).
This comment is such a great summary of this post, that you my friend, are getting some SBD for your contribution :)
I feel both grateful and honored. Thank you.
I think a lot of people that create non-steemit content NOW, will be rewarded even more later as the site grows. (And I hope to be in that group.)
I did a couple of posts about Powering Down and what I learned from it. And I did both the powering down and the posts because I couldn't find the information I was looking for. And people responded thanking me for it, because I answered questions they couldn't find.
But there are so many other people, doing Steemit posts better than me, you being one of them, I just realized that ain't my thing.
So I do photography and writing posts now. And hopefully I develop a small following for that.
This was another excellent video. At this time I don't disagree with your assessment. Your presentation was top notch. I felt like I was attending a seminar from a very skilled professor (the type you want to be in class for) in a topic. It was so well thought out that I actually IMed a few people, and posted in a SLACK I am part of saying. "You guys need to watch this video, it is good."
Keep up the good work. I would have to say you are quickly becoming one of my favorite people to follow.
Bless your heart, this is the comment of the month. You know what, I am so grateful for this comment, I'm sending SBD your way sir/ma'am. Thanks for the thoughtful response and I am so happy you feel this way. I always wanted to be a teacher but the current educational system did not appeal to me. To be able to serve a similar function here is the ultimate compliment.
It is a sir. You'll likely hear from me again. I believe we have quite a few things in common.
I am uncertain why people flagged your comment. Even though I was being honest (I always am) some people may view it as being a kiss ass. Sometimes people are worthy of comments and praise, and steemit seems to have an inordinate number of such people.
Oh I'm familiar with More Cowbell :)
Someone say more cowbell??
You know I'm getting tired when I start bustin out the random MS paint memes XD
Love your stuff, btw :)
Um, haha I didn't even notice that flag. I wouldn't give it too much thought, haters gonna hate!
Didn't I tell you awhile ago you needed MORE COWBELL? It turns out @mrwang made a post about that. If you don't know the reference you should check out his post.
Your explanation of Steem Power is one of the most advanced and important ones I have heard. Thank you.
My pleasure! Glad you feel that way
I don't know enough about steem, steemit, cryptocurrency and bitcoins to ever write a post about them. You have to truly understand the whole concept before advising others.
That's an excellent way of putting it. Thanks for the thoughtful comment
Your welcome. I wish I did understand it more, Hopefully with time and lots of reading I will get the hang of it
Well I like to think that I have one or two other posts that can help you acquire that knowledge. You can also check out previous videos on YouTube where I discuss the Steem System: https://www.youtube.com/user/afetherw8/videos. However, you can also simply choose to write about something you do know a lot about, something that you are already passionate about. There is no real reason you have to know exactly how Steemit works to use it, just as virtually no one who uses facebook actually understands how it works and yet billions of people use it without issue.
Thank you I will take a look
This is awesome advice and thoughts, brother. I love your use of the whiteboard. Keep churning this stuff out, and I will gobble it up.
awesome video as always. keep it up :)
Wow you're amazing, not only because every word you speak is thoughtful and contains value, but also because of your confidence, the way you build a relationship with the viewer .
I tried recording a Video today that I wanted to post, but decided not to, because it doesn't look or felt natural, I make to many pauses and "uhm's". May I ask how long you've been practicing or if you're naturally talented?
I have to disappoint you, all points you make I agree with! Regards from Germany :)
Well, I don't think I'm naturally talented, I can tell you that much. So I do think you could do this if you set your mind to it. I will tell you that I have NOT published everything I have SHOT. Some stuff just doesn't work. I wasn't having a good day, I hadn't thought about the content deeply enough or I hadn't come up with a good enough script. If it isn't clear, sometimes I improvise, sometimes I read a script, sometimes I do something in between. When I improvise, believe it or not, I prepare by wondering around my apartment rambling out loud, haha. I probably look like an insane person! In order to improvise I have to have a firm grasp of what I'm talking about. In other words it must be something I've been thinking about for a number of days, weeks, possibly even years. Economics has been a passion of mine for many years, hence my ability (hopefully) to talk about relatively complex subjects with relative ease. That's actually years of work. I also briefly did stand up comedy. I'm sure the practice that came with that was insanely beneficial, and that would probably be a great way to learn real quick. Of course it can also be horribly demoralizing. I'll give it some more thought though and maybe I'll do a post on this specifically. One thing I would say is that it's important to realize that this is me attempting to act like my authentic self. The moment you turn on the camera you are acting. You are not being yourself. So don't be disappointed if you're acting weird. The trick is to get closer and closer to your authentic self. And practicing not saying "Um" and "You know" is an ongoing struggle for me. Editing helps a lot with that ;) It might also help you to know that I am naturally quite shy and introverted :)
P.S. I remembered another important thing. I TRY to talk fast. It sounds simple, borderline moronic, but for me it is very important not to think too much. That's when you say "um" and "you know." I actually didn't do that in this video, but I probably should have. Don't think, just talk. Force words out even if you feel like you don't know what you're talking about. Just SPEW words. If you know what you want to discuss it might surprise you how much what you say actually makes sense!
I had a professor once (it just so happens, also from Germany) who noticed me doing the exact thing that you're doing, but he didn't think that was a problem. What he thought was a problem was the apprehension I had over the pauses and the ums. That is what makes it sound unnatural, is your apprehension. He told me that if you need to pause for a moment, as a person who is familiar enough with the topic to teach it to others, the audience sure as shit needs a pause as well so that they can process the information you've just given. If you rattle it off faster than even you can think it through, it will go over everyone's heads and people will surely be bored to tears.
He said instead to embrace those pauses and let them help you get to the next thought. The audience will enjoy the presentation more and you will feel more comfortable as a result. All of my presentations after that have been much improved and I don't freeze up like I did when I started out.
Also of importance is practice. You simply have to just do this kind of thing repeatedly in order to get good at it. I hope this is of some help.
@andrarchy the statement that hit hardest in that video was "not creating a piece of content because you think it won't make money is just a cynical as creating content only because you think it will make money"
Literally wish I'd said it that good myself. Wrote a post earlier today about "luck" and how work has to meet opportunity. However, one does not know when that will be. They must create because they have a joy and passion for what it is they are creating.
"happiness is in the journey not the destination"
Great Video! Excellent presentation and good use of the white board. Make me want to get a whiteboard.... lol! Nice!
Do it! Also my whiteboard is actually an Ikea closet! So you can get one of those too and get some extra storage :)
Great vid I watched it twice just to make sure it all sunk in and I understood it completely from your viewpoint. If looked at in a logical way from an outsider, the investment into steempower is a gamble like most crypto assets. But if you have a firm belief in the system then the gamble innuendo becomes void. like many stemians i have 100% faith in the system, but it is still nice to watch a video or a see a nicely written post pushing that point home just to add a bit more faith in the belief - Like going to church once a week to keep the faith.
Love it
@andarchy as simple & articulate as you are, due to the nature of this topic, the average person would still be confused. Heck , probably 90% or even more , of the human population doesn't even fully understand or even grasp the current monetary system but blindly follows & knows the value of the papermoney in their pockets.
However, I would just like to point out the example you used dollar being backed up by gold.. Nixon in the early 70s took the dollar away from gold. The dollar has value not because its backed up by gold , but because its tied up to oil., hence the "petrodollar" system. Oil, The one jurassic commodity all nations' & industries' source of energy, can only be purchased thru the dollar that's why it has an enourmous value & power that goes with it.. But that's another complex & confusing topic as well ..
But this is another excellent post you shared for us to understand steemit better @andarchy. thanks! ;)
Your videos were some of the first I watched to get an understanding of Steem, Steem Power, and Steem Dollars before I joined Steemit last week. Good job!
One thing I'm struggling with in all of this is to determine what exactly the function of the Steem Dollar is in reality. I know that it was stated in the video that it's there to present a familiar equivalent to something that we already use, the USD, but the problem with that is that you can't as of yet trade the Steem dollar as far as I can figure out. Without that ability to trade it directly, in other words convert it directly into USD, I think the uninitiated among us are simply just going to be confused by it (I put myself in that category). Right now you have to convert it to Steem, convert Steem into Bitcoin, then convert to USD. There's no familiarity going on there for most people. Steem by itself I think would suffice for this purpose of familiarity, simply because all you'd have to do is present a real-time conversion into USD right next to the amount that's in your wallet, and you could note the exchange rate in the header to the site where you see your navigation buttons. People ARE familiar with the idea of exchanging foreign currency, because most people have traveled across at least one international border, and in so doing were forced to exchange their home currency to the foreign one to conduct business. This could be customizable as well to accommodate the native currency of whatever global user is interested in using the site. The caveat to all of this is that you'd have to streamline Steem to the same extent that bitcoin is, so that ready conversion to USD would be forthcoming.
The reason I'm pointing all of this out is because I'm not only new to Steemit.com and the Steem crypto-commodity/currency, I'm new to BTC and crypto-currencies in general. I just got a Coinbase wallet yesterday and I haven't actually exchanged any currencies yet. This whole process has been extremely confusing to me. I think that if your average person is presented with this complexity, it's going to be an incredible turnoff.
By the way, thanks for the presentation. It was very informative and cleared up a lot of confusion for me about what all of these different currencies' functions are. It seems like there's a lot of confusion out there, not just my own.
Very good observations. You have figured out EXACTLY why Dan and Ned are currently building an eBay competitor with Steem. A market for real goods that can be purchased with Steem Dollars. A+ to you! :)
Killin it buddy, you're on the fast-track to becoming steemit university's first professor soon! I find this first principle method awesome, perfect to simplify stuff :)
Excellent post, thank you for sharing; very informative and enlightening.
Im so glad you covered familiarity being the reason the steem dollar is pegged to the USD. Ive been frozen out of a few crypto conversations for even suggesting it. In my mind steemit or any cryptocurrency will fail to go mainstreem simply because the adverage person doesn't like seeing a bunch of figures they cant immediately understand the value of.
(comment removed, misunderstanding)
I don't think I explained myself clearly as i was rushing due to low charge on my phone. when I say understand what i really meant was instantly recognise.
The average person may not understand the monetary system as a whole but they do know roughly what $100 is worth to them where as a figure such as 0.02567 BTC (note i have no idea what 0.02567 BTC is currently worth) means nothing. When you combine those sort of figures with a steep learning curve to understand how/why cryptocurrencies work it actually acts as a deterrent where as the figure of £100 acts as an incentive to people who's main concern is can they afford their kids birthday present.
PS the reason a lot of these systems are widely adopted is because we are taught that this is the way things are at a very early age when our minds are most adaptive to learning complex structures and most accepting of abstract concepts.
Ah I see, yeah I was a little confused by what you meant! Yes, you're exactly right
Something interesting of note about this post. If you go on YouTube and look at the stats below the video, it says the video has only 176 views right now, but looking above, I see 236 up votes here on Steemit. I'm genuinely curious why that is? I remember not too long ago that YouTube would stop counting at 300 for some reason on high volume videos, and then add the stats later. I'm wondering if there's still some artifact there.
There does seem to be a lag. The views usually do catch up with the upvotes and eventually surpass them. Some people may be upvoting it just because they believe it will get upvotes in the future which will help them with their curation rewards. In this case they are betting that my reputation and history for creating valued content will continue. I understand that some people view this as unfair (assuming it is even happening) however I personally have no problem with it. They are betting that I made good content instead of consuming the content directly. The way I see it I would lose these auto-upvoters (again assuming they exist at all) the moment I stopped creating quality content.
This was a nice and informative video. It's funny, but it felt like an episode of Limitless (TV Series 2015)!
Thank you for this post it is very interesting and as a newbie it has given me a better understanding of how steemit works.
I agree on the point that the klondyke mentality of posting for easy money using popular tags and content, is not a long term priority. If Steemit is the killer app everyone is wishing for, you should find a subject that you have personal or expert knowledge or experienced opinions about and stick to that. Posts that does not make money at first may work later as the foundation for a great body of well thought out work, that is unique in some fashion
Excellent post,..thank you
Thanks
Where's the support forum? I tried to post a reply to someone, and got this:
db().calculate_discussion_payout_time( *parent ) != fc::time_point_sec::maximum():Great Video and explanation of the system. Thank you.
This post has been linked to from another place on Steem.
About linkback bot.
If I post it within this post it becomes the thumbnail