Most people visiting steemit.com view this as a platform where you can get paid to post, but this is just the tip of the preverbal iceberg.
The real money isn’t in blogging, content generation, or voting. The real money is found in bootstrapping a digital currency. A currency owned and operated in a decentralized way by ordinary people.
The key to bootstrapping a currency is having a community which is able and willing to use it. A blogging platform that makes it possible for everyone to earn their way in is just a trojan horse. It is a means of hiding the vegetables (honest money) in the food (fun content).
The first phase of Steemit’s manancial plan involves establishing a price stable currency. This is a currency denominated in values that everyone knows and trusts. This is the Steem Dollar.
A Steem Dollar is different from other digital currencies because you are not trusting anyone else to hold real dollars in the bank. It is backed 20 to 1 by Steem, a growing community of bloggers. It also pays people interest far beyond what the banks pay!
To bootstrap this currency we need people to have a way to earn it. This is what posting rewards are for. We also need a highly liquid market in which people could trade their Steem Dollar for Steem. Market liquidity is the key to building trader confidence and minimize conversion costs.
The next phase of Steemit’s profoundly wicked plan is to bootstrap a marketplace. A market place is where people can buy and sell goods and services. You may have heard of systems like OpenBazaar, Craigslist, Angie's List, or eBay.
A successful marketplace needs two things:
Steemit is attracting hundreds of new users every day and filling their pockets with fresh steem dollars. This is an environment that is ripe for a rich market place where people can exchange real goods and services along with their ideas.
If ever there were a website / marketplace that would bring cryptocurrency to the masses, steemit.com is it.
Think of a side-chain as a Facebook app. It will allow developers to build new games. It will allow people to issue their own currencies. All kinds of robust financial instruments can be built on the back of the Steem Dollar and the Steem network.
Unlike other smart contract platforms, Steem will have no fees! This means app developers can build things that just aren’t viable elsewhere.
Maybe the plan isn’t so evil after all.
