Why I bought my brother STEEM for Christmas and how you can do the same!

in #steem6 years ago (edited)

This year I bought my brother 50 STEEM for Christmas and created an account for him ( @trygve ) without him knowing it (yet!). In this post, I want to share why I think this can be the absolute best thing we can do for the value of STEEM this season. I'll also give a short guide for a convenient way you can give a friend or a family member any amount of STEEM together with a steemit account.

STEEM Gift.jpg
Let us make STEEM the best Christmas present of the year!

Last year, it was a popular trend to give someone 1 Bitcoin for Christmas. Indeed, articles about ways to give bitcoin for Christmas was all over most of the popular crypto currency-news websites. CNBC is already at it again this year with an article pumping the idea of giving someone Bitcoin for Christmas. Now as some of you may have noticed, that same gift will be a little bit expensive to repeat this year. Luckily, there are other cryptos to give!

And it's a clever idea, for a few different reasons.

  • It can be far more valuable than any other gift
  • It can be fun for the person receiving it as they'll watch its changes in value throughout the year
  • It can be educating as the person not previously familiar with cryptocurrency can now learn by doing
  • It will promote cryptocurrency and blockchain to new people, and the token they are given in particular.

How to give Bitcoin as a gift for Christmas 2017.png
CNBC sharing a story this year on how to give Bitcoin for Christmas

So why would I like to encourage as many Steemians as possible to do the same?

The perfect time to give STEEM

The new year will be an exciting time for STEEM. SMTs will launch in early 2018 and Communities and HF20 should be right around the corner. The ability to buy STEEM with fiat currencies is also expected to be added prior to SMTs to ease the access to new tokens.

Long story short: For anyone who believes this will increase the value of STEEM, why would you not want to give it as a present?

It is a great way of promoting STEEM

Ask yourself: In the few weeks after Christmas, how many people ask you what presents you got? For most, the answer is “a lot of people”. Friends asks, other family members asks, colleagues at work asks, your hairdresser or dentist asks. Everyone asks. Now, if you’ve not been into bitcoin or cryptocurrencies before, and your son, daughter, nephew or santa gives you cryptocurrency for Christmas, how likely are you to share that with your friends just as a “fun” story? Very. So I think giving someone STEEM for Christmas will not only bring more value to the token directly (as STEEM is bought and stored), it will also be a great form of marketing.

Should STEEM also go on to increase on the new year with the launch of SMTs and other features, it will become an even greater talking point for the persons who have been given the STEEM. Will they start talking about how the christmas present they got is suddenly worth twice as much a month or two after Christmas?

Introducing "non-bloggers" to STEEM

A lot of people talk about how the network effect will make STEEM go viral. If I may be honest, I don't see that happening at the moment. Very few people I know on steemit have told anyone about it or tried to on-board new users. In the cases where they have, the outcome has usually been quite poor. When I ask people why the answer is always the same: "My friends would not want to write articles or blogs".

When you give someone STEEM for Christmas, it does not matter whether they go on to blog or become active on steemit. Just tell them to hold on to their account keys like they would for a Bitcoin wallet. @Ned made it clear with his second talk at Steemfest2 that with SMTs, he want the STEEM token to be a store of value, so let your friend or family member hold it as if it was a stock in Facebook. If they grow more curious over time about how they can make more STEEM by being active on the blockchain, or simply want to explore it further, then they can always do that later.

An added network effect

As mentioned, chances are good that they will tell some of their friends and family when asked “what did you get for Christmas?” that they received some crypto-currency, and specifically some STEEM. More so, throughout the year, whenever Bitcoin or crypto currencies comes up as a small-talk topic at their workplace or in their social circles (which is likely seeing how much it dominates the news at the moment), now they can proudly brag about how they own some cryptocurrency themselves! And when asked which token they have, they’ll of course say STEEM! If they are then asked “what the hell is STEEM?” Their answer will probably be along the lines of “oh it’s this social media that pay people in crypto currency. I don’t know much about it but my friend/son/cousin Bob says it will go to the moon”. While they themselves might not have been interested in blogging, perhaps this will get somesome of their friends interested!

Let us make this a thing!

So I would like to submit this idea as a great way to do something small to help boost the value of STEEM and thus make you richer yourself in the process. Think about it: You are going to spend some money on a Christmas present for the person anyway, why not buy some STEEM and thus help increase its value? If the person just wants to hold it, fine, now we’ve locked up some supply, which is only good. Furthermore, if they do want to go on to blog, now they’ve got the perfect story for their introduction post! One I am sure many steemians and curators will love to hear.

How to do it

This morning I decided to give it a go myself and was surprised to have everything done and finished in less than 10 minutes (account @trygve ). The simplest way I could think of to give someone who is not yet on steemit a lump sum of STEEM for Christmas was simply to make them an account using steeminvite.com. The account creation service is made by @pharesim to ease and quicken the effort of inviting new users and getting them an account. This also allows you to set up the account and transfer the desired amount of STEEM to it without ever needing to involve the person you are giving the gift to. Which of course would spoil the surprise!

All it requires is a small amount of liquid STEEM (about 0.2), some STEEM Power if you do not intend to Power Up the gift that you will give them (at least 15 would be recommended), and an email address.

Step 1: Log in to steeminvite.com with your posting key

Step 2: Click “Invite someone now” (make sure to have some liquid steem!)

steeminvite.png
Steeminvite.com is a convenient site that helps you send an invitation to a friend to join steem, or allow you to create new steem accounts with a few quick steps

I suggest you make the person a new email account (easy!) and then use steeminvite to send an invitation to that email. To send an invitation, you should have at least 0.2 Liquid STEEM in your steemit wallet as well as some spare STEEM Power to delegate. Note that some STEEM Power will be necessary for the account to have the needed bandwidth to make posts and comments. Delegations can of course be removed later from your main account.

Step 3: Enter their email address, ideally one that you have made for them yourself.

Step 4: Go to your email and hit the link provided by steeminvite.

Note: Don’t bother too much with the account name, if the STEEM is held in “Savings”, the person can always move it to a new account that they create by signing up themselves through steemit.com later on. Alternatively, they can keep the STEEM on the account and delegate it to their new account thus adding a new layer of security (this is done by many people on steemit).

Step 5: Double, triple and quadruple save their password and generated keys!

Step 6: Confirm the account creation on steeminvite.com from your own account using your accounts Active Key (this is needed because STEEM is moved from your account to the new one, which currently belong to you anyway).

Last Step: Transfer the desired amount of STEEM to the new account either from your own or from an exchange. Power it up or store it in Savings.

And there you go! Now all you have left to do is find an appropriate Christmas card to go along with the account keys which you can give in paper form in a sealed envelope or on a memory stick. Perhaps you could use a STEEM-themed Wallpaper made by @royalfinest , or see his guide to making your own!

Make sure to take a picture with your surprised friend or family member to post yourself on steemit afterwards. Who knows? Perhaps you’ll end up making a profit on your Christmas present for the first time!

I wish you a Steemy Christmas and hope you'll make this a happy new year for STEEM and for the person you will get onboard!

@fredrikaa

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For anyone who would like to give someone STEEM for Christmas, but either can't afford the STEEM Delegation or would simply like some help: @Acidyo has offered to make the 100 first accounts for free!

Check out his post on it for more details here:
https://steemit.com/christmas/@acidyo/help-with-account-creations-for-christmas-presents-100-first-accounts-for-free

Or send him an email directly to [email protected] with the email you would like to use for the account creation.

Also: I'm really mindblown by the amount of positive feedback and attention this post has gotten so far. Thank you everyone who has shared the post and to all who will be joining in to place STEEM underneath the Christmass tree to as many people as possible this season! You're all awesome :)

Merry Christmas and Steem on!
@fredrikaa

That is a great gift idea @fredrikaa! Love the idea of gifting Steem for Christmas!

I was thinking of doing something similar by creating business cards to give out with Steemit's brief info and how to create an account, and mention my steemit account that the new user would have to send a message to to receive their $5 worth of Steem from as an extra bonus from me. I think these kinds of initiatives do go a long way in bringing new people on board.

Also, the point about fiat on-ramps for Steemit is very needed for the Steemit ecosystem, as many new steemians are very new to crypto and do not know how to navigate through the fiat crypto on-ramps safely. Steem should become an additional fiat on-ramp in the crypto ecosystem, and we also need it to be trading on more exchanges.

This is obviously one of the best things to do. Steemit is going to be huge and having them onboard now is just a perfect idea. I just recently invited a friend too and he's loving it around here.

What simple terms can you use to explain it to everyone so that they understand why they should join yesterday not two months from now

Thank you!

Just ask them two simple questions imo. 1: Do you use social media? (which pretty much everyone does at this point) 2: Would you like to get paid a little something for doing what you already do? (no brainer) thus come join our community on Steem. More and more will catch on, join and/or continue to ask about it as the whole cryptosphere continues to grow.

What about for someone who doesnt see the value in joining right now? How do you help them understand blockchain and the importance of it

They don't even necessarily have to understand blockchain or it's importance, you should be able to sell it purely from a standpoint of get paid to do what you already do using this social media platform. If you want to try to get them to understand blockchain this video is a great place to start:

Ah thank you so much!

Yes. But every newcomer have a problem, I wrote about it here. https://steemit.com/steemit/@wnfdiary/how-to-make-steemit-futureproff

This is a really great initiative. I had the same thought for my family too. I'm definitely going to see that through because it's something of great value and not just a liability like most gifts are.

I don't know about the future, but Steemit was my worst investment so far. Hopefully it goes up, I will most likely sell everything.

This is an amazing idea, and not just for friends and adult family members. After reading this I believe I will be gifting my daughters (ages 2 and 7) some Steem this Christmas. They already have Facebook accounts that we've been saving pictures to for the future, when they're old enough to handle Facebook, but this is far better. I can only imagine what their STEEM will be worth when they turn 14 or 16 or 18 and I hand over the private keys. And with them growing up digitally they'll likely know far better what to do with their Steemit account than I ever will. Thanks fredrikaa!

Yes indeed! It's exactly for purposes like this that I thought it would be a great idea :)
I regret not asking for more things whose value was likely to increase over time when I was asked what I wanted for Christmas in the past :P

This has the added value of also providing some education in something that will only become more influential in their lives: Blockchain technology.

Hope you'll do it! Perhaps you could make a post about it explaining like you did here how you think it will be a great gift for the future :) maybe it will even pay back a bit of your purchase!

While I was reading your post yesterday i decided to buy my brother 100 STEEM. Today he is already in profit. Thank you so much for this post, steemit will be huge and already is pretty big :)

This is an awesome idea!

Creating an account for them, not only will you squat them a good username if they wish to use their real name and be the first ones with that unique name, they can easily just create another account later if they want another username and just transfer the Steem directly.

This should definitely be a thing and more people should participate!

I might even consider helping people out to create a batch of accounts for their family and friends and aid them with the delegation if they can't afford it themselves and I'm sure many more are willing to do the same!

not only will you squat them a good username if they wish to use their real name and be the first ones with that unique name,

Indeed! As my brother's name Trygve is slightly rarer than mine, I didn't even have to add two a's at the end! :P

This should definitely be a thing and more people should participate!

I agree, if 100 people did this I am sure that would mean at least 500 new people getting to hear about STEEM at the Christmas eve celebrations alone. Then the added network effect (explained above) will surely add a few hundred more.

It's like using your Christmas gift to boost the value of your own asset.

I might even consider helping people out to create a batch of accounts for their family and friends and aid them with the delegation if they can't afford it themselves and I'm sure many more are willing to do the same!

Would be awesome!

Like your post and your hat
marry christmas to you

...excellent...

bro vote for my post that i can also have a good X-mass holiday

Great point, best wishes 😁 - @splendorhub

I got a bunch of ppl onto steem in the last month but a lot have kinda slowed or stopped using I’m always promoting it to ppl maybe one of them would benefit from This

Have a couple of ppl literally about to sign up too how can I apply for them ?

You can send me an email with the emails that want an invite and I'll send them one. :)

Only works for 1 email at a time, send to [email protected]

Awesome article! Will definitely be giving STEEM this Christmas! And I should also get more for myself :D

I shall call it a "Cleveland STEEMit"

Very glad that you liked it! It is the perfect time to get more STEEM, both for ourselves and our loved ones. I think it will be unlikely that you will see STEEM below 1.5$ a lot on the new year. Instead I think we have a lot of exciting new things on the horizon to look forward to :)

Make sure to tell me if you give someone steem and if they come on the platform, maybe I can help give hem a warm welcome :)

Just wish the sign up process is easier.. but i think it's quite the right time since cryptos are hot now and the small barrier to learning long passwords and stuff might not be a problem after all.

Hence why I appreciated the existence of a service like steeminvite.com which allowed me to do it beforehand :) it would be lame with a present that they had to wait a week or two to use!

Oh I'm certain cryptos and bitcoin will be talked about over the dinner table in many homes, which means this gift is also likely to be a hit for the person giving it ;p

You’re right about the conversations that will happen, wait for the burst of growth after the holidays 😁

There are also supposed to be ICO launching on the STEEM blockchain in January

Nice. I'm waiting to know more about media token :)

It's a pretty easy sign up process as it is lol. Just got to save those passwords :)

The whole sign up process is really painful. I have two friends signed up together with me several days ago. Only I got approved. It is like a random hit and miss.

Thx dude. Never thought about a charged steemit account as present. Now I know what my brother will get for christmas. Really nice idea for spreading steemit over the world.

Awesome to hear that! Hope my full upvote can help you get that STEEM bought for your brother!
And yes, I think this is a good way to get some more of the networking effect going.

Wow, 1 SBD for your Upvote. Thx again! I'm a follower now! Looking forward for the next posts and will check out the old ones. Love steemit!

@fredrikaa, fantastic idea. I think that I'll get started doing just that. Have a few friends on already so I might send them some Christmas Steem to get them going.

No better way to get them to pay attention to the blockchain again ;)
And it sure is a more meaningful gift than most of the stuff I've managed to come up with in recent years^^ so unless you're more creative in this area than I am (which takes very little) this sure might be a good alternative! A win-win I think :)

What a superb idea! You just made me a much better "gift giver" this Christmas to a few of the men in my life. My dad, stepdad, husband, and brother-in-law will LOVE to receive STEEM ... and I'm pretty certain that they will enjoy Steemit as I have. Will be a much better gift than a robe or shirt or some other typical, boring gift; that's for sure!

I'm fairly new here and have found this to be such an intelligent and focused group of people on such a terrific and eclectic variety of topics ... I truly believe in Steemit and am so glad to have been introduced to it ... I have gained so much knowledge here and, although not wealthy in $, I've become so much more wealthy in knowledge ... thanks to all of you very much for that.

So ... after my short time here, I think it's time for me to invest more in STEEM for myself and support its' progress by gifting it to people who I know will enjoy/ participate. Thank you for this idea, my friend. Peace :)

Thank you for this wonderful comment Mia Marie,
I can only speak for myself and say that I would find it very cool to receive a gift like this. It is always exciting to get something that may increase in value, whether it is a rare collector's item, some stocks, or indeed crypto! Perhaps it can get them to learn more about it together? Could be a fun thing to do :)

I am happy to hear that you have such a positive first impression of steemit. Mine was quite overwhelming too as I had no clue when I wrote my introduction post that it would go viral and attract over a thousand views. But this is an exciting place indeed! I try to learn a bit every day myself, and just like you I feel that steem has become a place (especially since I'm in a community of science writers at @steemstem ) and has therefore also replaced time I would spend reading popular science on Discovery or New Scientist as I now there are some great writers here who are great at what they do.

I think now is a superb time to pick up a little bit of STEEM. As mentioned in the article, there are many exciting new things coming to STEEM early next year. Also, many developers are making new applications on STEEM which could be real hits. So I am an optimist :)

Anyways I hope you'll have a happy holiday with your loved ones and that they will enjoy your present! Take care and hope to see you around :)
Fredrik

and if it goes up in value, they can withdraw some later to buy a robe or a shirt and still have STEEM left :D :D

I am also new here (just got my account approved yesterday)
I can certainly agree with the struggle of writing articles and blogs, since i am no blogger myself.

However i do find it an intrestring way to encourage people to post their own opinions or anything else they want to talk about (for example people who love to write stories and want to write books later can start to post stuff here and get feedback on it from others).

To finish it off i can't wait to get into this kind of lifestyle more and i'm excited to figure out what i will post first (as i have no clue of it atm)

First of all: Welcome to steemit!
Yes I have not done any blogging or persistent writing myself before. However, I've read how healthy it is to do journaling and get one's thoughts down on paper. So I thought steemit could be a good way to create that habit and share my thoughts with the world.

I'm very happy for your comment as part of my motivation in writing this post is to get across the idea that there are many people out there who you may not think of as bloggers but who can still have a lot to benefit from STEEM.

I'm hoping you'll have a great time on the platform, which I certainly have. I suggest you simply do a post in the #introduceyourself tag and explain briefly how you got interested in STEEM, what your expectations or curiosity is and just share it with the community. Perhaps also join steemit.chat and find some chat rooms dedicated to your area of interest. It is hard to get seen when nobody yet knows who you are :)

Good luck! And again welcome to steem!

Thank you very much kind sir,
i will try to read up as much as i can before i post something, as i don't want to break any rules.
and a post about myself would be a great idea thank you man.

I guess it will be a challenge for both of us, but as it turns out you certainly do have it in you (i just looked at how much your post banged (twitter term for saying it got really popular))

i hope to hear from you in the future and good luck to you and your brother as well.
have a nice day ^_^

Very kind of you for the christmas gift to yr brother and sharing the tips. God bless you

Good idea Fredrik! I was actually thinking something similar. How do I get smart people on Steemit? My brother is studying quantum physics, and I would like to get him onboard. Steem is the perfect Xmas present. If the SBD stays strong, blogging could be very lucrative for (STEM)-students.

Absolutely! If he would be up for sharing/explaining some of the things that he is learning on steemit, or just blogging about life as a student in quantum physics, I know @steemSTEM could provide him with a reliable amount of upvotes provided, of course, that there 's good quality in his posts. So with the current prices of STEEM and SBD, that can quickly out-do any part time job in Norway at the moment!

And I thought the gifting idea is a good way to get someone on regardless of how active they will be in the community.

cool gift.

maybe include something of a roadmap for best practices to getting started on the platform (besides the usual "be consistent blah blah blah" stuff - but include that too as it's something most of us struggle with due to a variety of reasons.

It seems self explanatory, but if he doesn't find a way to get hooked within the first couple of days, i'd assume he (and most others) would drop off the platform rarely to return.

enjoy the holiday. nothing like the joy of giving someone a gift and seeing them light up. hope that happens in this case.

cheers

Yes, that is a great idea. I was having a bit of a brainstorming session with someone about making a STEEM Gift-card service where you can give Christmas cards, Birthday cards or other holiday-themed gift cards that takes the person who receives it to an account creation service that includes a gimified tutorial giving different tips and tricks.

Also, I'm trying to get rid of the idea people have that in order to invite someone to STEEM, the person must necessarily want to blog persistently. STEEM is becoming more valuable as new applications that have very little to do with blogging gets built on the blockchain.

Thanks for the comment! I wish you a happy holiday as well, and look forward to seeing how the gift is received and hope to see many other steemians follow the example :)

aboslutely wonderful idea! I will give 20 steem for two my nephew, 40 steem for my daughter for chinese new year. it is pity most of steemian use english, few chinese

Great to hear that!
Well, with the communities feature that will launch next year, it will be a whole lot easier to have people who speak another language together.

I hope your nephew and daughter will be happy for their gift :) my guess is that they will only be happrier and happier with it year after year as value goes up!

I'm on board for this! Lately I've just been hearing bitcoin this, bitcoin that. Great way to get Steem into some of those conversations.

Awesome!
Yeah, Bitcoin has the first mover's market awareness advantage. But with its lacking technology and increasing fees and transaction time, it is a great time to introduce something new that solves its mayor problems on top of delivering new utility.

Okay, I may just do this for my hubby and kids - thanks for the excellent suggestion!

That's awesome to hear! Hope they'll love the gift :)

This is a wonderful idea. Gonna get my siblings onboard.

Awesome! Tell me how it goes and perhaps I can help give them a warm welcome if they do an introduction post :)

I tell people about steem and they look at me like I just flew in from space landed in my alien spaceship. there's a big disconnect.

Hence why I think just giving someone a little bit and let them explore on their own as the increasing value grabs their attention is a good idea.

What a wonderful idea!

I have a lot of friends who could benefit, and this time of the year is perfect for an initiative like this. I will take time and make some plans for next week. I am sure i'll get a lot of nice smiles in my circle. :)

Thanks!
Yes I was thinking about it too: Why am I enjoying these gains in crypto and not making sure that I also get some for the people I care about? And if they can't be convinced over the dining table, well then they'll have no choice but to get it for Christmas instead!

I look forward to hearing what results you get :)

Every day I learn something new on here - I never heard of steeminvite.com
Absolutely perfect. Not just for Christmas but to get my Family interested in Steemit.
It can be a source of motivation to take that first step into the World of Cryptos.
On the other hand, it could be Steemit by coercion - here's your account, now make sure you do something positive with it or I'll remove my delegation - I love it!
Well done with your concept and showing us how to do it.

Perfect idea! Cryptocurrency is turning into a bigger and more intelligent way to pay for things as well as make money and invest in things. Rather than a $50 gift card to a store or a restaurant, why not give cryptocurrency where it could be more valuable. Thanks for the idea!

That's exactly what I was thinking! You give something that 1. Can make the person a lot of money potentially, 2. Helps boost and market the platform you're on, which is good for you. And 3. Gives you something to share and talk about the whole year and beyond!

Glad you liked it :)

How cool, that's a great present for the future!

I think so!

I have to say I'm a bit jealous I didn't think of this earlier. It's a fantastic idea.

& it's literally the type of gift that keeps on giving. The potential your brother has with this gift is endless I believe. Much better than any material item you could've gotten him.

Marketing BTC by saying, "I got BTC for Christmas" is a genius idea. Most people will ask what BTC is & that opens up the door to you having the opportunity to explain to them about Steemit & how BTC integrates into that.

Absolutely brilliant idea! I will surely follow your brother to see his progress on Steemit & help where I can with Resteems & upvotes.

Good post Sir!

Upvoted

They can also use https://www.steemcreate.com to make the account if you want to use credit card instead of Steem power (might not have enough)

Thanks for the contribution to the post! I was actually not aware of steemcreate.

Nice! Thanks

I got invited here by my kid sister and am totally loving the life on steem. I rarely visit my Facebook and ig page. I have invited more friends on-board as well because 2018 is going to be a swell one on steem and the influx will be magnificent. I hope they have made enought provisions for back up servers and database

Awesome! Glad to hear that you're loving your time here. I'm in the exact same place, hardly browsing Instagram or Facebook anymore. Especially with apps like SteepShot which basically replaces instagram with an alternative based on STEEM, why would you keep on using Instagram?

2018 will be huge for STEEM. Just looking at their GitHub today you can see how much work is being done to wrap up the new communities features. We're only going up at this point :)

G
E
N
I
O
U
S
!

I know!!!
It's like a win-win-win.
Win for him,
Win for me,
Win for STEEM.

Ooh yeah this seems like a better idea than gifting something like Bitcoin. Instead of "Here, Merry Christmas, now forget about this BTC for a few years", with Steem you're actually encouraging interaction with a community.

I love the idea, but I hate the idea of transferring accounts.

However, if the recipient isn't tech savvy enough to do it themselves, this is what you end up doing anyways.

I like the idea of delegating voting power to the new account. This way, if something goes wrong in the hand over, you can undelegate, and set it up again.

And so many things go wrong.

Imagine sending someone a Nano S. And the first thing they do is reset it. It used to have 1 bitcoin on it, now it has nothing.

Steem is much nicer in set up, because you actually get a named account. But still, they can reset their password, and lose it (forget to write it down, or just put it into notepad and forget to save it...).


But, from the title, I expected a card that said

Dear STMadhfasdjfkasf1DEdawk99saSS....Merry Christmas

and, they would be all like, WTF is this, and throw it into the fire place with the wrapping paper.

Hmm. So instead of making him an account, you would prefer if a site allows you to print a STEEM gift card. A card that looks nice, states how much STEEM it promises the person, and provides a unique link for them to set up an account themselves rather than needing to have it transferred to them?

That way, when they use the code, it could trigger a smart contract to give them the amount of STEEM to an account they make themselves. Perhaps initially as a delegation.

I think that would be very excellent.

What I would like is for them to set up their own account and for them to write down and store their keys properly, all by themselves. Because, I really don't want the responsibility of knowing their passwords, etc.

But, lets be honest, most of our friends and family are not that tech savvy. If they were, they would be sending us steem/bitcoin/eos...

So, the path you have outlined, I may be following.

But, for the future. I would love to give someone steem by having them jump through some hoops that they already will be.

Via smart contract, send steem or delegation after they create an account, make a post, and vote/comment on one of your posts. If they can do all those, then they have set up everything correctly, and it is safe to send the money.

There is just a lot of moving parts in that. It would be easy, but not trivial.

That's what I was going to buy my sister for Christmas too! Great article :)

Great to hear it! And thanks for the comment!
Tell me how it is received :)

Hey!!
VERY new to this and have only been accepted an hour ago.

I would like to give my family and a few friends some Steem for Christmas as you said.
Is there any way I can buy Steem or get it into my wallet without Bitcoin?
I don’t have any Bitcoin, but an willing to do what it takes and get in at ‘ground level’ with Steem and be a real advocate.

Any help or advice gratefully received!!!!

Chris

Hello @christhebantam and welcome to steemit!

@acidyo offered to help new users who would like to give STEEM as a present here:
https://steemit.com/christmas/@acidyo/help-with-account-creations-for-christmas-presents-100-first-accounts-for-free

So I suggest you see if he can help you set up accounts for your family and some friends for free :)

As for buying STEEM: Currently you still have to buy with bitcoin, ethereum or Litecoin. I personally have used Coinbase.com to buy a little bit of Bitcoin (not a lot) and then transferred it to bittrex.com where I used it to buy STEEM that I then transferred to steemit.com. Worked very well for me.

easier ways to buy STEEM should be coming next year (early in the year I hope), but it is not available at the moment.

Awesome idea :)

very very nice advice and idea! There also should be something real on top one can hand out in an envelope, like a card. For those who like to give away materials. :-)

This is a really cool idea, I love it! As I was reading this, I thought imagine how happy the people who got Bitcoin as a present last Christmas are now. I'd say pretty damn pleased. But then I thought, what if it's the same with Steem, what if it does increase tremendously so that the people you give it to will be over the moon. But regardless, I think STEEM would be a valuable present.
Sadly, few people seem to trust crypto...or the idea of Steemit. As you say, it's very hard to promote the site to others. I recommended it to many friends who - although they liked the idea and saw that I was doing well - were reluctant to try...weird...

Getting people to come onto a new platform, still in beta, and participate with regular posting, upvoting and engagement is hard I agree. Telling someone to just keep a password somewhere in case the asset you gave them becomes more valuable is not.

I'm just trying to challenge the notion people seem to have that in order to invite people to STEEM they need to get them excited about cryptocurrency or blogging. They don't. No more so than giving your mum a bit of Tesla stock in 2012 because you were excited about it at the time does not require her to go get an electric car.

Very good points. And who better to invite new people to Steemit than the current users?

Best present in the world!

It would be nice if Steem was transferable/giftable in the form of paper wallets like your favourite ETH altcoins ^^

I and some others are on the task ;)
Extra cool if you could buy special made gift cards made by artists on steemit with SBDs at the same time!

Good idea, furthermore you could include a (QR-encoded) link to a quick account setup landing page and make them redeemable for existing accounts as well
I like the concept as well ;)

That sounds awesome! I am an artist, if some STEEMcards need designed :D

Make it into a gift card like.

yeah i really love steeminvite.com i've already made a few accounts up and i'm moving onto the next stage of @teamvideo to invite the first batch of 10 youtubers into the mix but giving steem at christmas is genius! :)

It is my first time using it actually, but I found it very convenient and easy to use. It's awesome to hear that you've used it to get some people onto STEEM. I'll have a look at the @teamvideo project and hope it can help the growth of the platform too.

Yes I also thought it was a super way of getting someone introduced to STEEM, building its value in the process and perhaps getting this idea out there for others to do the same.

absolutely 1000% love it, perfect to do it at christmas too.

Such a cool prosent! I bought BTC for my whole family, and I really hope they Will be happy 😍

That's awesome! I suspect they will have heard you talking a lot about Bitcoin and crypto this year, so perhaps they will see it coming. ;) Always nice to use the season to invite those close to us in on what we're doing and loving ourselves :)

My bet is on STEEM to outperform Bitcoin by a factor or two in 2018 though ;)

I am just a noob but have successfully recruited two people to steem. Giving steem to them will certainly encourage them to be more active.

All I want for Christmas is steem. . . 😉

Superb instruction. Thank you

This is awesome. In addition to other gifts I decided to give Steem to the people I had in various secret santa gift exchanges I was participating in.

I should make an account for my 3 year old niece and put a 100 steem in it by the time she's old enough to use it steem could could be worth tons

That's very clever! And if you Power it up and let it trail your own vote on steemit, she could quickly make 10% gains in STEEM per year from curation rewards + the 2% interest on steem savings. So it will be far better than having the money in the bank even if the price of STEEM remains exactly the same in dollar terms.

An added little bonus is that if you trail your own account's votes, you would also get slightly more curation rewards.

Upvoted and resteemed! I will try it step by step, hopefully I‘ll manage it!

Thanks! Try it out and let me know how it works out for you :)
We're also trying to make a simple website where people can make an account for others and include any amount of STEEM as a gift and then print a nicely made gift card with a seasonal design. So would love to have your feedback on how easy/hard it is to use!

Hope they'll be happy to receive the gift if you choose to do so for Christmas :)

Hello @fredrikaa! Oh, perhaps this is a solution for the following problem... A dear person I know lost his Steemit account password. As we all know a Steemit password can't be recovered. He would need another phone number to create a new account. This is no pleasant solution, though, as he has a big private and business network... Perhaps he could sign in from some other phone, compelled to connect on his laptop only... Not so nice, either. My question: Could this worried person get an access with his old phone/phone number if I create this kind of surprise account for him? If I create a "Christmas surprise account" for this unlucky fellow, would he be able to be part of the Steemit community again? By the way, he has not been active on Steemit at all. He just signed in - and lost the password soon after...

This is a great idea. I have family who I’ve been trying to get involved for ages. This could be just the push they need!!

That's exactly what I've been thinking!
Hope it can help bring new people to the platform and more awareness in general :)

Giving Steem to someone is really good idea. And next year Steem is going to be something bigger than it is now.

I remember reading a post by a 90-year-oldrandpa, here on Steemit. He mentioned in the post that he plans to buy Steem, and other currencies and put the passwords and user names in an envolop and ask someone to give those to his children and grandchildren. He hoped that by the time he dies, the altcoins will be more than what he had initially invested in.

And I knew that he did the right thing.

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