Introduction
The other night I was having a chat with friends at a pub. We were talking about cryptocurrencies and sharing what we thought the future would hold for this breakthrough technology. I had a friend who was all in on RIPPLE (he works at a bank) and the other one is a MONERO fan.
They didn't know how involved and for how long I was in crypto...they are both brand new, but motivated enough to figure out the tedious process of acquiring their first coin. There are part of a rare breed of people geeky enough to figure it out.
I shared with them what I'm about to share here with you that convinced them, just like me, that STEEM has a bright future.
It's Not About Technology
There are a lot of cool features in crypto. Some coins have interesting consensus algorithm, some have anonymity, some have interesting functionality, etc.
But that is beside the point in my opinion. Because when it comes down to it, why is it that in 8 YEARS we haven't been able to make that technology used by common people?
Don't get me wrong, STEEM has some interesting features and technology. But that's not what is making it's success or failure.
Why Coca-Cola is Coca-Cola?
Coca-Cola is not the best carbonated drink out there, and the company itself isn't in the business of selling cans of Coca-Cola. It's in the distribution business. It has such as wide ranging distribution mechanism that if it decided to add a new soft drink to their arsenal, they can deploy it very quickly.
I don't care how good your new soft drink is for health or in taste. If you can't distribute it, you can't get it to be consumed by the large majority of people.
What STEEM has that no other crypto has is DISTRIBUTION.
A Self Promoting Platform Across All Domains of Interest
So now, average people can open a social media account and earn crypto. Those people can be anywhere around the world and interested in anything from fitness to wikileaks. The users write content that has a high chance of ranking on Google as well as being shared on Social Media.
Without any special push from a central authority with a very intricate marketing plan, STEEM is capable of promoting itself in all sphere of human interest and appeal to people outside of the world of crypto.
The Only Way to Stop Using Centralized Exchange
The only way I can conceive to be able to exchange value between us in the real world without requiring to pass by a centralize exchange would be to have a billion people using an app on the STEEM network.
Once enough people have a token of value in their possession, it's only a matter of time before these token start being used in the real world. I believe this process will happen gradually and then very quickly. One day, we will wake up and people will start paying each other for all sorts of goods and services.
That would have happened without having to go to cafe and convincing them that they should accept SBD, because they would already know about it and know that it has VALUE.
Conclusion
All this to say, if you can invest in STEEM when it's at ~$1.20, you would be crazy not to...it's only a matter of time before it becomes much much more expensive to have a stake in the network.
Very true indeed. I rather look upon the idea and vision of something than the technology behind it (although that is a very important factor as well ofc). Steemit has become the father of this new idea were people can reward each other for their mind's value, and will most likely seem to grow. Probably gonna buy me a few more EOS and Bitshares soon"ish"! :) (I know, it's not Steem but still in the same area ;p)
It's so true. I view this as the difference between an app and a protocol.
Steemit as an app, not that impressive. Steem as a protocol, holy shit it's going to change the world.
The same goes for some others - LBRY has an incredible protocol to build upon, for example. Even ethereum's value is all based on the hope that it will be useful in the future as a platform for something useful.
People are already making applications for Steemit like Dtube and Mangosteem. I am not sure these will be the next big successors but they are being one of the first in their kind. Once EOS comes around it will probably make such platforms as standalones seperated from Steem, unless of course Steem as a currency would be linked. But either way Steemit itself will most likely thrive alongside those other services as a blogging website and things like crypto news. So yeah, it will continue to grow! ^.^
Those applications and Steemit will be able to adopt and utilise the EOS platform which will bring paralyzable commercial scale dapps and an abundance of capacity. I think the technology is impotant for synergy and mainstream adoption. IMHO it is all about the technology enabling distribution and more...
I have high hopes for some of the additional platforms built on Steem like Zappl and dtube.
Steemit is awesome, but as I see it it only competes with sites like Medium and other private blogs. The long form blogging style encouraged here on Steemit is not what we find on FB and Twitter.
We need something that will draw in people only wanting to be kept up to date on the lives of their friends and family. Status update style.
When we have more apps and those start to gain mass appeal THEN Steem will rise significantly in value!
@ronni
I think you should look into peerity, cause that seems to be more like FB and Twitter. I personally don't think Steemit is ment to be used that way.
Me neither, but Steem might. There is difference on Steem and Steemit.
Thanks!
Do you agree?
agree my friend ;)
Oh, and don't forget to mention Reddit when you make comparisons @ronni, and I totally see your point. What mimicked network are you excited to see Steem implemented on next my friend?
In the next 2-3 years, i believe Steemit is going to overtake facebook, twitter etc. as the social media of choice for the general public. That is when the true value of steem will be unleashed. It's price probably won't reach as high as bitcoin i guess, but it will be the crypto to have in the near future!!
Good post!!
Cheers!!
I hope so, that would be a nice Story, if Steem has the same growth as ETH in the last years.
After 8 years, it definitely should not be this hard to buy into crypto or to get out of it and back into fiat!
All the news coverage sure is helping our cause! Every day brings new people into our sphere. Such exciting times!
I agree with you that after 8 years, it definitely should not be this hard to buy into crypto, or to get out of it and back into fiat. It should be possible by activating an app on our phones :-) there needs to be a crypto for that...
I would invest more if I could afford to! All of the coins are down since the news on China's rule against ICOs.
I don't think the crackdown in China is the only reason they are down. I believe they are down, too, because $5,000 for a Bitcoin that doesn't really do anything is outrageous enough to question the rationale behind its valuation. If it's to effect a private purchase and/or sale of a contraband item, then there are other, cheaper coins around. So I think what we have is a crisis of confidence unfolding.
i agree with you @cryptoctopus, i can already see in posts that SBD is already start to use in buying products online @exyle tell in his post that he buy his own logo shirt online by paying sbd from steemporium and already a designers of logo also start accepting SBD i think these little developments surely gives a nice idea that this coin has the ability to grow much higher and even with the induction of D-Tube and Esteem also strengthened the steemit blockchain even more, so all in all no doubt by buying steem @1.20 is a very wise decision.
i'm still not all-in, but i have a big part of my altcoins in it.. and planning to buy more and more!
Your post is always worth reading. Thanks for the great suggestions you have given.
"One day, we will wake up and people will start paying each other for all sorts of goods and services." Well said .
Thanks
It really is exciting times here on Steemit isn't it.
I am grateful to be here and even more so to be soaking up advice.
Great explanation , especially about distribution. I never was thinking so deep about steemit , now all becomes logical. I regret that found out steemit so late and was not able to grow my account yet. 1.20 is such an opportunity for investment now. Anyway i am glad i am in steemit community now and can take a part in its development :)
I agree about the distribution also. More and more members are joining daily and without the 'spreading of the word' how can it grow and bring new people to the platform?
I have yet to decide about the all-in avenue... but am leaning every day closer to it.
So true. Must also be the reason why when the market for all cryptos bulls real high or bears real low, Steem is still within a small margin of change.
Its really nice how you broke down everything for easy comprehension. And its only matter of time, short time IMO for steem to actualize such disposition as you predict.
you very nicely explained it about the steem it has huge potential and i have no doubt about it and the Coca-Cola reference was nicely added !!
Thanks for sharing your valuable thought's on this :)
Genius article @cryptoctopus..😎
And cool profile picture.. 😊🤗👍
I'm very glad if I could join to steemit about one year ago.. 😔 Unfortunately, I could join to it 2 months ago..
This is a great time!! Not too late at all.
Steem at least is backed with content creating platform that may possess certain amount of intellectual property value. This makes it unique from other crypto currency. Hoping that the community will keep on growing :)
Awesomely put together post @cryptoctopus ! I really like it, and the header as well, haha :)
You managed to put into words exactly what I'm thinking - that's exactly the reason I'm such a big fan of SteemVoter, so I can support all sorts of authors, and get those curation rewards on auto-pilot. I only get like 0.005 SP / curation reward, but damn it adds up over time, and the more it adds up, the more I end up making back in curation rewards. My voting power is always between 10% and 20% as I drain it all day long. I try to keep myself busy as well, I experiment with posting different things on my blog, using upvote bots (decent ROI) and make sure to do whatever I can to hoard coins that I think are going to be strong. I currently have about 80% of my portfolio in STEEM POWER (nothing liquid tho). So umm.. yeah.. STEEM ON!
Steem's potential is definitely outside of demographics. You can be any type of person from anywhere in the world and trade will feel far more personal, by giving back power to individuals. I would imagine in the begining to be a curve, but as more people adopt the ideas, many will breeze into it. Just a look into the future.
as i know half year ago steem was at ~$0.2 so ye thats was huge opportunities, now again steem at $1.2 its again nice chance at current realms;)
plus steem is in white list of regulators.
I like idea to be able to pay with steem for any kind of items, koreans already selling many items in steemit, so hope trend continue. The best part every month more and more content is published in steemit, and more and more people come from search engines;) With time we will be bigger and bigger.
A few observations I sure hope you are not 'all in' that is not a wise strategy especially when there are so many bright things in crypto that you can diversify into. Also agree Steem has a bright future I am convinced of that, but I doubt it would be as a payment system there are better coins out there for that, Steem is good because of the community and the development that is going on, for that reason I feel it is undervalued at present.
yes at a 1.20 hope its nice, i did some research today and i read alot about inflation, if so many steem is produced, does it even make a change to rise x times like other coins?
So, investing would be good. Very good post, I also follow the cryptocurrency. Hope everything will be good for investing in our future.
It is all about the distribution channels. I work at an online shop--we have really strong distribution channels and it makes all the difference. Other competitors have better prices sometimes, but it doesn't matter because they can't get the "eyeballs" on their products or website because they don't have the distribution.
I agree and I am "all in":)
I want to believe that Steem will continue to grow, but my fear is that whales cashing out will prevent the price from ever getting out of the $1-$2 range.
That being said, I'm OK getting paid for content I would have been posting elsewhere for free and I'm having fun doing it, but I think changes need to be made to prevent the air being let out of the balloon by whales and beating down the price every time it tries to break out.
Facebook 👎🏻 YouTube 👎🏻
Steemit 👍🏻 Dtube 👍🏻
I think it's time for these 2 censoring propogana machines to be taking down!! It won't happen overnight but in my mind it is definitely a possibility!!!
I gotta get me some more STEEM!!
STEEM ON EVEYONE!!
Great post and I, too, agree that distribution is so important. Since I have been on Steemit it has become an addiction. I feel that because of the developers and visionaries behind Steem that it is a "keeper" for the long haul for me. And last but surely not least, the "community" atmosphere on Steem is more like family than most social media I have experienced. I have watched so many generous and caring acts unveiled here.
I really hope you are right. And it can be, but there still has to be done a lot with Steemit before the masses will adopt it. The growing userrate is very good, and a gradual grow is way better that a fast spike, because then it becomes vulnerable. I still have a little bit of doubts, but not enough to not invest in Steem!
I agree this is a great time to be buying STEEM if one can afford to put extra $ into it. I've been buying since it dropped below 0.0004 / BTC and plan to continue making regular buys as long as it's cheap like this.
It'll be interesting to see if the recent low point a couple of weeks ago holds or if it will drop more as people panic over the China ICO ban (not that it's the end of the world like the market reaction might indicate).
I agree 100%. I have very little knowledge about the technical side of crypto. What I do have is common sense. Regular people probably will not "mine" crypto. They might be nervous to buy it. But will they try to earn crypto doing what they do anyway: posting pictures, poems, songs, art, essays, jokes, etc. on social media? Of course they will. My mom can do this.... and she has nothing to lose.
Nicely said. Just started researching cryptocurrencies myself (actually the rabbit hole I fell down that landed me on Steem!) and had been wondering many of the same points that you raised about how to eventually increase adoption outside of those already in the know or generally early adopters. Looking forward to seeing where Steem goes in future!
You are right, this is the first crypto which makes sense for me as a creator. I need to share my work in order to get new business coming my way. Steem becomes nice additional benefit, added value, I hope I will be able to use some day to buy my art materials or maybe pay for the hosting plan. Account here was so easy to open, I am sure there will be many people able to do the same without Mastes in IT. That will bring a lot of them here. I am working on buying some steem, but the problem is that I need bitcoin to do that and coinbase has problems with validating my id. This sort of obstacles put me away from crypto in the past. Thanks for your point of view.
I don't know where you live but here I can get Bitcoin without validating my ID (other site than Coinbase though).
I live in Ireland but I come from Poland so have Polish ID. It said that its valid but I have to contact customer service, probably will need to provide proof of address. Few days later no reply and I don't see any place on the platform where I could scan the proof of address.
I agree that the more people join steemit, the easier it will become to exchange value between members/users, especially without going through - as you said - centralize exchange. However, and I don't know if this will make sense to everyone, I feel that the more people join steemit, the greater the possibility of it losing its distinctive characteristics. A billion people are great, but the platform might no longer be a place to come for valuable content, engaging discussions or simply an escape from all the other futile social media platforms out there. This is my only apprehension!
You had a close dialogue, I also think STEEM that has potential for wide application, as its functions are not yet understood by many and people will understand the delights of the platform STEEM and that it is universal for use in everyday life. Its price for today is very attractive for investing and making a profit in the not distant future. Thank you @cryptoctopus
I agree. With over a thousand cryptocurrencies out there, Steemit's advantage in how it gets promoted and how easy it is for ordinary people to learn to use it is very interesting and gives it a very good chance to become much bigger. That's why I powered up.
What I like is that ostensibly, unlike Twitter, Facebook and other social media, there does not appear to be a way for Steemit to "shadowban" or "throttle" one's audience in order to monetize the attention you're getting. That's why I have gotten involved with it.
Many people still do not believe that the future for crypto currency, many doubt. As long as they wake up it will be too late.
I'm blessed to have found this platform, and knowing the great future of SBD/Steem according to your vivid prediction I look forward to investing for more in this crypto. Thanks for sharing specially about the power of distribution...
Steemit is a great community one of the best social networks that enable all those who are involved in it to obtain several privileges, which fight unemployment and offer competencies and specialties in all fields of technical, health and beauty,
I disagree with you
It's not the best location
Coin mining is much better
?
Long live Steemit...
@cryptoctopus - Very useful article Sir. I wish STEEM will touch $10 in the end of 2018 and half of world population will attach with STEEMIT. Love your post Sir. Therefore, I wish to ReSteem your post.
+W+ [UpVoted & ReSteemed]
I agree steem is the best platform for content for now, but there are a lot of companies developing new platforms and there will be competition soon enough.
@cryptoctopus,
One of my friend introduced me STEEMIT! Now I am at my 2nd month here and already less active in FB and hope I will shut down my account at FB in next couple of months!
Yeah as you said, STEEM is not the best of all, but it is the best of bests! Yeah this crypto is still undervalued! I mean a lots of sh!t at the top of the coinmarketcap list, but STEEM is still holding the 25th place! It doesn't mean STEEM is a low-valuable coin! According to my viewpoint STEEM will rise to the moon in next 2-3 years of time.
And this will be the future, YouTube, FaceBook and all other network will bow to STEEM and it will make us millionaires!
As you said in your article I am a big fan of XRP, and XMR! But now I feel XRP is a sh!t. No matter what kind of bank support it has, I have huge investment there, hope to transfer them to STEEM in near future.
XMR, I respect it, but now I respect STEEM than XMR too!
So, we are at the dawn of the future crypto experience and STEEM will act a big role there!
Great article and thank you very much for sharing with us! Really appreciate your effort!
Cheers~
amigo #resteemia at your service
'Why Coca-Cola is Coca-Cola?' wow you took a nice example & you explained everything perfectly. impressive work & i'm a truly steemian now @cryptoctopus
ReSteemia
'UpVote ReSteem Comment'
BTC has been around for 8 years, Steem just over a year, it has quite a upside potential. Last time I checked, there are less than 300k registered accounts and many of those are abandoned already. There are 320 million people just in the USA.
Steemit will continuously gain 'steem' (pardon the pun) going forward as more people bail from FB and onto this platform.
I think TenX and their crypto payment app on the phone will be used by a lot of people to pay for things in public in a few years. Especially using the Steem generated from this site.
Indeed, steem is created by the people, for the people were everyone has a chance to own it. Steem and sbd is a crypto for the masses, it also promote fairness and equality.
I feel the same way about Steem. It's just something intuitive about this platform and it's potential.
It's a bonus that you convinced your friends, I'm telling everyone I know about it to!
Great post!
I think my favorite part about Steemit is exactly what you said--Steem is set up to self-promote and as we already know from your earlier series--it is all about the story. Every single post on Steemit puts a little bit more of the "story" out there as a bit of advertising.
I'm excited to see how the STEEM token begins to get used when people are paying for goods and services. It will make the value of STEEM skyrocket as it goes into general circulation.
@cryptoctopus, hey I'm super interested in your steemit.chat comment but it won't open there for some reason--I will get back to you as soon as I can get the steemit.chat working right again.