Steem.it is a blockchain-based social media platform where anyone can earn rewards by posting relevant content, curating quality content by upvoting and by holding Steem based currencies in a vest fund, which generates interest.
Features
There are three main currencies in Steemit: Steem, Steem Power (SP) and Steem Backed Dollars (SBD).
Steem is liquid and can be bought in an exchange and converted into steem dollars or steem power.
Steem Power is basically Steem that is locked in a vesting fund for 3 months. Users can use steem power to upvote content and get curating rewards. When a user upvotes content his steem power gets depleted and then slowly regenerated. Steem Power holders receive interest from their holdings. The more Steem Power a voter has the more revenue he’ll generate for himself (in form of SP) and for the content creator (In SBD).There is also an incentive to upvote content early, as the rewards are distributed according to time. The earliest votes gets the biggest share of the reward.
Steem Backed Dollars are there to protect content creators from volatility and can be traded for roughly 1 usd worth of steem, in order to cash out from steem. Converting Steem backed dollars into STEEM takes 5 days. Users also recieve interest from holding SBD.
Underneath the hood of Steemit.com there is a tradeable cryptocurrency token, called Steem, and it’s performing well on the US-based exchange, bittrex.com, and blockchain-based exchange openledger.info. With Steemit.com, posts, comments and votes are immutable. Attribution is a given. Accreditation is not taken for granted. And community appreciation is an actual reward.
WHAT IS THE MAIN ADVANTAGE OF STEEM?
You don't need expensive hardware to mine Steem - you mine it by creating and voting on content on Steem applications like Steemit
WHAT OTHER ADVANTAGES DOES IT HAVE OVER BITCOIN?
FREE transactions with NO transaction fee
Right now sending bitcoin can cost several dollars at a time and your transaction can end up at the bottom of the list if you don't pay enough.
Simple adresses that are easy to remember and type
For example my Steem address is "thecryptofiend" that is a lot easier to remember than a bitcoin address like 1BvBMSEYstWetqTFn5Au4m4GFg7xJaNVN2.
Scalablity
Right now Bitcoin is capable of a theoretical maximum of about 7 transactions per second and this matter has been a source of serious conflict in the bitcoin community. Steem is already capable of doing thousands of transactions per second.
Speed
In ideal situations a Bitcoin block takes a minimum of 10 minutes to solve but you will often end up waiting a lot longer for a transaction to clear and be confirmed. Sending Steem is virtually instantaneous.
Steem Dollar is a low volatility currency for merchants.
The Steem dollar is a special dollar pegged asset based on Steem that is designed to resist the normal volatility you get with most other cryptocurrencies including bitcoin.
