Some days ago @somebody has stated on Steemit, that "The Chinese are coming". These @somebody wrote, that 'cn' had reached the top 4 tag position on Steemit in a very short time. He gave a good overview of the recent taken milestones of the Chinese entering to Steemit - from the Chinese translation of the Steemit Whitepaper to new Chinese whale accounts like @abit (300k SP) and newly established Chinese Steemit discussion groups. Also he explained, why the Chinese like him are so fascinated by Steemit and STEEM.
In this post I want to provide some thoughts, why these 'chinalization' of Steemit is a hint for a huge future success of STEEM, the cryptocurrency, that is build into Steemit.
China is already dominating the Bitcoin market - which is a good thing
March 2015: A study by Goldman Sachs stated, that 80 percent of the global Bitcoin trading volumes comes out of China. (Source) Why? Because of the strict capital controls in China, Bitcoin is for Chinese people a solution to solve many problems. With the cryptocurrency it is possible to make anonymous transactions, bring large amounts over the border or simply prevent oneself against the inflation of the Yuan.
So, it’s no wonder, that Chinese are dominating the Bitcoin market. An impressive real time visualization could be found at Fiatleak.com:
(Source)
Another interesting visualization of the Chinese domination of the Bitcoin market was published by The New York Times:
(Source)
Another sign of the heavy weight of China in the Bitcoin market is the recent selling of the Chinese Bitcoin Mining company Canaan for 466 million US-Dollars. (Source) And besides this official company there are many other big hidden Bitcoin mines in China. Danny Vincent gave in an BBC documentary recently an impressive view behind the curtain of a huge Chinese Bitcoin mine:
(Source)
Is this Chinese domination of the Bitcoin market a good thing for the users of the cryptocurrency? Yes it is, because the Chinese a stabilizing the price of Bitcoin. In the first half of 2016, they pushed its price again over 700 US Dollars. (Source) The Wall Street Journal stated, that Chinese investors added 1 billion US Dollar to the Bitcoin market cap. (Source)
China will be dominating the STEEM market as well and will raise a new question about the nature of Steemit/STEEM
Will there be the same 'chinalization' of Steemit and the STEEM market? In my view it’s likely that the Chinese will as well dominate the STEEM market. First, there are so many Chinese at all. Second, cryptocurrencies are already well-established in China. Many Chinese have trust in them. Many of them use Bitcoin and Ether already. And they are constantly looking for good alternatives. Because of the already big market cap of STEEM they are likely to start soon investing in it heavily. And third, they also will enter the mining-by-content business. Because this is a good starting point for many talented Chinese to acquire some coins simply by providing content. The top 4 position of the ‚cn‘ tag is only an obvious sign of this trend.
The coming rising of Chinese investment in STEEM and participation on Steemit will raise an interesting question:
Is Steemit/STEEM a social news website like Reddit with an additional cryptocurrency or is it a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin with an additional social news website?
The founders of Steemit.com - @ned and @dan - stated in the Steemit Whitepaper, that their aim is to build the best social news website in the world. Maybe the Chinese are seeing Steemit - respectively STEEM - more as an aim of building the best cryptocurrency in the world.
Is this 'chinalization' a good thing for STEEM and Steemit? Yes, in my view it is, because it's stabilizing the STEEM market. And the STEEM market itself is the fundament of Steemit.
Thanks for reading. Karl (卫岚德)
It will be great if the Chinese join us on Steemit. WELCOME GUYS !!
Good thing : Steem price will go up, SMD will be stable. so once the Chinese exchanges start adding Steem trading, we will see a price bump of Steem.
Bad thing might be: if the Chinese users grow exponentially faster than other nationalities, Chinese posters will be able to rack up high numbers of Votes and receive 50% of all Steemit payouts. this might in the short term hurt the Steemit platform, its hypothetical but i think this will happen.
I think overtime we need a language filter, which filters out languages we dont understand, so we wont get distracted by 100000 posts a day we cant read anyway.
About the rest of the concern in the other comments, i think we have to wait and see how it works out. i am sure that @DAN and the team have already thought about China joining, so ATM i am not worried about anything.
So guys, Welcome and we are waiting for yours POSTS !
Steemit is still beta. I'm sure, there will be some changes in the futures that helps to solve the language issue. Something like a filter system would be best. So anyone can filter out all the posts, that are written in languages, he can't read.
there is google translation you can add to your extension on google chrome. Helps translate any languages.
Hi 卫岚德. Thanks for your interesting post.
One of my concern is that Steem team never state Steem will be decentralized, which I think is a must.
The Steemit team is the biggest holder of Steem. Thats why I sure, they will everything they can to ensure a rise in the market cap of Steem. Maybe theres a third way between centralized and dezentralized. IMO they are really smart. Steem is already the the cryptocurrency with the third largest market cap. - Thanks for your thought.
I think a lot of Chinese might be scared to publish votes and opinions on a site that could be so easily traced back to them personally. I guess that is true of all social networks and there certainly is a place for steem in China. It will be interesting if they clone a Chinese language front end that lets you only read in Chinese. They could have CB trending hot new etc.
Actually I'm trying to do that on steemit.cn. In one week this site will online.
sweet!
I hadn't considered that, but very good point @dennygalindo
Your surely right about the security issues. As being raised in East Germany, I knew this feeling of being watched all the time. Steemit is now open source. So it's really easy to build a Chinese Steemit clone. https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemitblog/steemit-com-is-now-open-source
I think without a doubt the arrival of new users to the platform will be an advantage. I'm curious how steemians will handle the current downtrend in price, and i'm also anxiously awaiting the launch of Yours (social network based on bitcoin's blockchain) to see how that will effect this platform as well.
lol im from the future and i can tell you Yours was a complete failure where you literally have to pay like a few cents to a few dollars in litecoin to download a webpage its crazy noon would ever want to use it, steemit doesn't charge people to see content and yours is just a failure and nothing innovative about it at all but you are in the past and had no way of knowing that XD lol
oh and 'ni hao' Karl
Ni hao kareemaudi. We should be aware that Steemit is still in a beta version. And as the founders stated in the Steemit Whitepaper, it is an experiment. Only time can show us, how it will evolve. I'm really excited to be such an (still) early adopter of Steemit.
Wow very good post! So true what you posted here, keep on Steeming my fellow Steemer :)
I like to write something which is not related to Steemit or Steem. But still all my thoughts are going around it.
Great info - I miss seeing fiatleaks! forgot all about it!
I just discovered it. Amazing to see, how much Bitcoin is flowing into China compared to other parts of the World.
I completely agree!!!
And imagine one billion Chinese would agree as well. :-D
U said the things completely close to what I think.
Time will tell. :-)
Its definitely a possibility imo!
We had seen it in the Bitcoin market und we will see it in the Steem market, IMO.
Awesome post - thank you for sharing @capitalism
Thanks @michelnilles
Love the Fiat graphics and the effort in the info graphics
Take a look at http://www.fiatleak.com and you will see a pretty animation of Bitcoins flying into China.
It's unfair this post get so less return. But cannot upvote now.