Hello everyone
I am very new to the STEEMIT community but have been involved with the crypto scene/community for about the last 17 months.
To better explain this piece I am writing I need to go back about 17 months when I have never even heard of bitcoin. At the time I was currently off work due to injury. I had a lot of free time on my hands. I remember one night I was surfing around the internet and I came across a site or a link or something that had the word Bitcoin. So I clicked on it and hastily read through it. I remember thinking wow this sounds really cool and at the time only knew a small fraction of a percentage what this bitcoin thing was. Well me being me I quickly did a search for these bitcoin miner things on our local kijiji web search and found a guy who was selling one. So long story short I bought it. Guy came over set it up for me and the way I went mining some bitcoin. In a nutshell that is how I was first exposed to the entire crypto scene. From there I learned more and more and found out about other alt coins and ways to make or lose bitcoin. PONZI, scams, etc. I don't want to get into that now. For another time :)
I only came across STEEMIT about 3-4 weeks ago. I did a bit of reading and found it rather interesting. From the standpoint of other crypto coins/ currency this seem to have real world potential. I have read some other articles on here about other people not have a clue about the crypto scene and STEEMIT has introduced them to it, which I think is amazing. Finally the average person being exposed to a really cool concept. By concept I mean the crypto scene. From my experience with friends and family if I told them and some I have they look or would look at me like I have two heads or think all this is nonsense, or a scam. In my opinion STEEMIT has create a application that has and can slowly turn people onto crypto and such. They can slowly gain a understanding on how it all works and at the same time present all the information, stories, articles etc. that everyone in the STEEMIT community has to offer.
As some of you are aware or maybe not aware of there is now I believe over 700 different current or defunct alt coins out there. MANY which have been complete scams or someone trying to make a quick buck off it which many people have done. This to me is one of the biggest problems facing Bitcoin, STEEMIT and some legit alt coins out there. Scam coins or coins that have zero value at all to the crypto community and trust me there all hundreds of them. I will admit I have bought and sold some of these worthless coins when I was first beginning to learn about crypto. Since then I have learned so much and look back and laugh at some of it. Don't get me wrong I am a huge advocate of people trying something out and making a legit go of it but so many of these coins and coin devs thought they had the next bitcoin.
This is what really turned me onto STEEMIT. They actually have a platform that they can actually give a value to STEEM and their STEEM dollars. Many other coins out there having nothing to back them up with. The next challenge I see that the STEEM community has is getting more people to adopt the platform and begin to use it. Not only use the platform but have more real world use for STEEM and STEEM dollars. Without this I fear the platform could die. I have seen this so many times with other coins. The promise of this and that and nothing has come of it.
Another thing I have thought they have done well is making the platform fairly easy to use. The easier something is to use the more people we can get to use the platform. I do see somethings within STEEMIT that are not very user friendly. I will go into that at a later time. I always tell people for many things we need to follow by the KISS rule (Keep it simple stupid).
I do applaud the people that have gone ahead and made STEEM apps and continue to ask people what the community wants. In order for this to grow the community needs to keep growing it not just the devs. I have read that some people are not entirely happy with somethings within the STEEMIT platform. I feel these things can be ironed out and have a more balanced community. As a whole, the STEEM community is still in its infancy stage. The worst thing that can happen to it is having people jump ship and give up on it. But I can also understand how people can get frustrated with this all.
I will leave it there for now. That is just a brief description of what my take is on things with STEEM at the moment. Coming from a person that has seen many things within the crypto community come and go.
Thanks