Steem is so much more than a social network

Steem is so much more than a social network. It's taken me until now to realize this. I'm going to write this post in hopes that anyone who has not yet seen the potential of the Steem blockchain may save themselves some time realizing it.

Everyday, hundreds of thousands of speculators trade cryptocurrency online in the hopes of buying low, selling high, and becoming a millionaire overnight. Dreams of riches and crypto-anarchism abound! Although so far, no cryptocurrency has yet to break into the "mainstream" for a myriad of reasons. Below will follow my analysis of the cryptocurrencies as a form of payment and what Steem has done to solve some very basic issues.

Cryptographic public/private keys

UGLY! In basically every crypto, a user sends funds to another user by way of cryptographic hash's - they are long alphanumeric strings that confuse the everyday user (in fact, saying "alphanumeric strings" out loud to someone might even confuse them).

Bitcoin and it's children have come a long way in usability - making use of addresses via QR codes. QR codes are pretty easy, but add in "change addresses", and "unique addresses" and it's not really so friendly anymore. Sure, the average techie or trendy tech-savvy senior can figure it out, but it's been an an anchor around it's neck in terms of adoption for the average user.

Steem solves this!

In Steem, sending a payment to me is as easy as sending to @kodaxx (feel free by the way :p). No need to ask me for an address, double and triple check, or even scan a QR code. Nope. It's as simple as tagging someone on twitter.

Price volatility

A huge problem for mass adoption is the price volatility. It stops people from spending because if they hold on to it, it might be worth a little more! It scares merchants to death. There's absolutely no way to make a business plan around money that fluctuates as much as cryptocurrency does. So, in come services like BitPay that convert your coins to cash right away (for a fee) but - is that really good for the market?

Steem solves this!

Steem has created something called the Steem Dollar. It is an asset that promises to always be worth about $1 of STEEM. Now, users and merchants can transact in these dollars without worrying about their wealth halving overnight.

Fees

Cryptocurrency has long claimed to have no fees, but sadly what they meant was low fees. We've see bitcoin transactions cost as much as $50 when the network is congested - as well as with Ethereum. Can these fees be adjusted? Not easily, and not until it's too late. Fees can start out small (less than a penny) but can quickly balloon into huge amounts as the use of the blockchain grows. This is a burden for mainstream support.

But guess what?

Steem solves this!

You heard it right - there are no fees to transfer coins with Steem. Steem has an awesome way that they go about this that is too technical for this article, but I encourage you to read the whitepaper regarding this.

Speed

The final thing that I will touch on is speed. Speed will have to be broken down into 2 important categories: throughput and settlement.

As of now, bitcoin works at a rate of 7 transactions per second. That's a far cry from VISA's average of 30,000/sec. There are faster blockchains, for instance Nem can do about 24 transactions per second. But that's not fast enough. Steem can achieve the throughput needed to catch up (and even surpass) VISA, because it is based on Graphene technology.

As far as settlement times go, bitcoin will take roughly 10 minutes per confirmation, requiring about 6 confirmations to be considered secure and irreversible.  PIVX and Dash can do this same settlement in less than a second, while Steem takes an average of 1.5 seconds. Plenty fast for in person transactions like buying coffee. 

Conclusion

Now don't get me wrong - there are other cryptocurrencies that have some of these things - ION has a sort of username system. NuBits has a stable price. IOTA has no fees. Dash and PIVX have instant transactions, fast enough for everyday use.

But only one cryptocurrency has them all - Steem. And while, yes, the Steem social network is freaking radical - Steem also has anything that anyone could ever want in a cryptocurrency for payment.

So what are we waiting for?