I never really understood cryptocurrency, a few years ago I saw this thing called Bitcoin, but I just couldn't wrap my head around it. Here was this digital currency thing that was increasing in value, but I couldn't understand intrinsically what it was.
For the record, I wasn't a stranger to digital currency. I'd spent some time in a Virtual World called Second Life, in which I sold digital goods, that I was able to convert to real currency via PayPal. I also had a stint with E-Gold, but lost all of it before it's systematic shutdown by the government. For years I truly thought Bitcoin was just another E-Gold fiasco waiting to happen. But ignorance is ignorance, and now I realize just how dense I was.
If you watch my Crypto Plunder videos on YouTube, in my first video, I talk about how I began my journey trading crypto. I purchased my Ethereum at $11 in 2016, it was the first time that something in the cryptocurrency world, had actually made sense. Decentralized contracts! Yeahhhh buddy! Then this year, the price had jumped up to $400. I immediately sold all but one of my Ethereum, and made a decent profit. That gave me enough capital to start investing in more alt coins, but still I truly didn't understand what I was buying.
Things began changing for me September of this year, as I started to understand what Bitcoin actually was. I began to realize I wasn't trading a stock like I was back in my Options days, I was investing in transactional power. Then I realized, investing in a whole bunch of alternative coins, that did similar things as Bitcoin or Ethereum, just just didn't make sense. If I was going to put my revenue to work, shouldn't it be in coins that had an actual use case? But more than that, could I use it as a utility to grow a business!
So how would I go about doing that? What platform could launch that ideal into practice?
I had registered for Steemit months ago, but mistakenly treated it as any other social media platform, where I thought of it only as a place to market and promote on. Never once did I think about Steemit as a platform that could launch a publishing business. So it should be no surprise that I didn't see any results. Why would I? I wasn't using the platform correctly, my content sucked, so why should anyone care. So a few days ago I thought about it. What if I just wrote what I felt on a regular basis, and used Steemit as a way for me to publish my thoughts. This would allow me to actually receive two benefits:
- I get the opportunity to do something that used to be very therapeutic for me, which is writing.
- Doing what I love, the community could judge my content based on up voting and I could gain revenue.
My mom always told me my dreams need to support my lifestyle.
So a few nights ago I stayed up till 6 AM, and drafted up a publishing strategy. Not one in which I cared about my earnings, but one in which I could be in a position to be helpful to the community. Any earnings that I would receive, would just be a plus, not something that I was going to make my main focus.
I know, I hear you! So what the heck does that have to do with a change of heart towards crypto?
Well, if I'm treating crypto as a stock, then I'm just buying it and holding it and not doing anything with the underlying technology. My change of heart was to add some of the value trading skills that I've learned over the years, and put some of it to practice, by only investing in distributed utilities. Things that are at their core a part of my business practice. Am I utilizing the technology now? Or am I only investing because it seems interesting!?!? For the most part, I've only been investing in projects that just seemed interesting. Technology that only had a white paper, and wasn't even functional yet. The problem is, by doing that, I'm only investing in hope, not a functional project!
A business mentor of mine told me make sure you always "eat your own dog food." If you don't believe in something, how was somebody else supposed to believe in it. So by "eating your own dog food", then you position yourself as an evangelist to a technology, that you actually are actively using and believe in because of its functionality. So what are the benefits of Steemit? It's a publishing platform! Catered more towards the written word than the visual one. This means the approach that you can use on the platform, has to be in line with the platform's actual use case. So if I'm going to use it as a publishing platform, then I have to spend more time getting to know it, seeing the long term value, and seeing where my business model will grow with it. It also means that my content needs to add value to the platform, not diminish from it.
Over the next few weeks, I'll be able to expound on this more. My goal is to have a proof of concept, that shows that the publishing arena not only is ripe for destruction, but is already in the process of being disrupted. If we truly believe platforms like Steemit can do that, then it's up to all of us to prove that use case.
So what is my change of heart? If I can't see value today, or even see it in the next year, then I'm not going to put my time nor money behind it. There are going to be hundreds of thousands of individual cryptocurrency's, all doing the same thing. Should we keep running back-and-forth between coins, hoping and praying that their white paper will actually come to pass? Or should we utilize the ones that are actually working right now, and make them a part of how our businesses function.
For me it's a no-brainer, and that's why you'll be seeing more from me on Steemit.
Author:
Jay "TrajicK" Jeffrey
Lead Developer
Toxichustle Media
Misc Links:
Chat With Me In The EastCoastCrypto Discord:
https://discord.gg/ggXUtuP
New Crypto Shirts:
https://teespring.com/crypto-plunder
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http://spoti.fi/2AAVWOj