Where does the money come from? And other questions about Steem

in #steem5 years ago (edited)

@whatsup asked Whose Job is it Anyway? in eight questions about Steem. That's a clever trick to tell bloggers what to write about, while they think they're telling various groups of people what to do.

Whose job is it to bring value to Steem?

You, dear reader.

Whose Job is it to get us added to Exchanges?

@ned, seriously.

Whose job is it to attract and retain new users?

All professional users who make a living from Steem, whether they're bloggers, witnesses or dapp developers (dappers). At the moment, most of the recruitment efforts come from amateur users, but we can't expect them to do this job. And protocol developers should focus on developing the protocol.

Where does the money come from?

This is the question I wanted to answer in particular, because there are better answers for Steem than for the average altcoin. Ultimately, the money comes from investors who buy Steem. There are many reasons why they may expect Steem to be valuable:

  1. Steem allows you to buy attention in a world where people are blocking and tuning out ads. This is also a social good, because advertising-funded social media have degenerated into promoting anything that drives 'engagement', like spreading lies and making users angry.
  2. Steem enables fast and easy world-wide payments. Steemit, Inc. has chosen not to promote this feature, but I'm happy that @roelandp created steemwallet.app. The enthusiasm for Netcoins, a small Canadian company, suggests that Steemians are interested in using Steem for payments.
  3. Steem Power is a system that encourages users to lock up their money. This keeps supply on the market low, raising prices.
  4. Delegating Steem Power is a unique feature. Being able to invest without having to hand over your money is like magic. Imagine what will happen when professional investors discover this.
  5. Developing apps for Steem isn't as easy as it could be, but it's fun to work with the things that creative people are posting. You can make an app about music, photos or whatever you're interested in. By comparison, I think about Monero every day, but I can't come up with any application that isn't either boring or illegal.
  6. Ned's hair.

What sets the price of Steem?

Kati's feet.


kati feet dark.jpg

What role can/do you play in building the economy of Steem?

Follow @newforyou to learn the answer.

What is Steem's greatest strength?

Like on a physical marketplace, the money makes us cooperate with people who have different values, interests and backgrounds. I'm still convinced that the incentive to be friendly and helpful outweighs the incentive to profit with minimal effort.

What is Steem's greatest weakness?

In the future, communities and SMT's will fracture our community, and we'll become as divided as Reddit is now. Maybe even worse. Imagine what would happen if the moderators of /r/The_Donald and /r/politics could make each other's users lose money. I'm very worried about this, because @ned enthusiastically endorsed tribalism when I asked him about this. Meanwhile, Facebook is helping people to spread rumors and hate speech faster than ever, leading to ethnic/religious riots in India and Sri Lanka, and even full-scale genocide in Myanmar.

Well, that's a downer to end on. Quick, say something funny, Inspirobot!


achtung.jpg

Sort:  

What I like about Steemit is that the same model that made the owners of centralized social media rich (the value of content) is now decentralized and the value kept by the creators (most of it).