More goodness @teamsteem; I really appreciate the fact that-- thanks to your thoroughness-- I always come away learning something from your posts!
I'm glad to see you taking on a topic I often think about... it's too late for governments to legislate and stuff the "cryptocurrency genie" back in the bottle... so what else can they do? Well, make their own (more "centralized") currencies... created either by governments or large corporations. And I'm not just talking about rebel factions, but also mainstream... taking the attitude "if you can't beat them, join them." Smart money won't buy it, but a lot of less informed people will look at it and think "Well, this coin seems to be backed by the US Government; that one is only backed by empty air."
But I remain very hopeful for the future of this great adventure! And I think the announcement of SMTs came at a great time... things were getting a little "stale" around here, and now there seems to be new life!
I'm glad you're always learning from reading me and taking the time to comment.
It's true that less informed people are always at risk of being tricked that's why we have to use Steem to help them.
If it's true that Steem was in need of a recent push it had it's also true that great things take great amount of time to make them happen and I'm really happy with the announcement so far even if I haven't read the whitepaper yet.
I've only scanned the whitepaper so far... but the possibilities for growth and almost infinite scaling is definitely there.
I am also hoping this will be a shot in the arm for decentralized exchanges like OpenLedger and others. The "big ones" won't want to mess with a bunch of "small" tokens... but it could be very beneficial to the decentralized exchanges, and their overall volume would grow since people have to use something (BTC, Ethereum, Steem) to buy all those tokens...