The universe's beauty seems infinite or at least, it's as close as it gets, I love to think this exquisite beauty is perfectly being reflected in this sentence as well as embedded in the very fabric of everything we do, which in a sense it is, it's just that we don't necessarily always see it.
That's part of life, the great mystery we're all part of, a mystery of unfathomable everything.
Sometimes, only how painful this mystery is, seems to equal its greatness, while for some, for whatever reasons, suffering can become too great at some point, leading them to reach out for the universe's second greatest mystery, death.
Death's mystery is as great as life's mystery and only second in its chronological order. Now, I'm not saying I wouldn't want to postpone death as much as possible, in fact, I'm pretty much all for it.
I won't go in detail into this but I see those who oppose life extension technologies as part of the "natural" selection process, these people get to live their early natural death while others get to live their unnatural extended life and everyone live and die happy.
There really is no need to get offended by this tongue-in-cheek joke, as this is just a joke. I wish the best to everyone and that we can all come together for the greater good.
Before going any further with this post, I want to say, this post is part of a series. This series is about empowering individuals and helping strengthen this culture of mutual empowerment. It is part of a wider scope empowerment project. Each posts are very powerful on their own but even more so as a whole.
Cryptocurrencies are pretty literally the best financial investments of all time. Proof of this is shown in #3.
I think it's worth it, pun intended, to be repeating the stats below until they become known by most.
Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency invented and still the one with the biggest market cap, has gone up in price by 919,900% from an initial price of 0.50$ in January 2011 to 4,600$ today.
10$ worth of Bitcoin back then is now worth around 92,000$. The price of Bitcoin has gone up 650% and 200% in the last 365 days and 4 months respectively.
The market cap of cryptocurrencies, the value of all cryptocurrencies combined is $165B+ and rank them as the 41th largest company in the world by market cap, right under Toyota Motor and Intel.
It would put cryptocurrencies as the 46th biggest economy by M3, between South Africa and Qatar.
The price of Bitcoin, in April 2010, on it's very first exchange, the now defunct BitcoinMarket.com, was $0.003.
At this rate, cryptocurrencies would surpass Apple's market cap of $815B in under a year and become part of the G20, ranking as the 18th biggest economy. In less than 2 years, cryptocurrencies would rank as the third biggest economy, right under China and the USA and 1 year later, they would then represent $120T. [source]
The greater good is made up of the sum of the individual people's well-being. Like every personal thing, it is subjective, it is a personal truth.
Everything we do in life is based on our own perceptions, our own truth and everything others do is based on their own perceptions, their own truth. Our truth is what we value and what we value, is what our truth is.
"Only individuals can make an estimation of truth based upon their own perceptions." -
@dantheman - [Source]
To value, to esteem is one very fundamental part of life. This is perfectly reflected in the way Steem is design from the very name itself. Steem is a cryptocurrency with a stake based voting system. The more Steem Power* someone owns, the greater their influence on who or what posts receive the new Steem which get created every 3 seconds.
On Steem, we estimate or give a value judgment based on everything we perceive. We vote for those who are the best at expressing our most empowering truths in a way to bring about mutual empowerment with the spirit of countering empowerment at the expense of others.
Each Steem are currently worth around 1.47$. Their price fluctuate according to demand and offer.
If everyone voted only for themselves then every Steemians would grow their amount of Steem by the same %. Only Steem witnesses would grow their Steem at a faster rate. (What are witnesses is explain below.) This simple mechanism assures Steem content will always be a net positive.
Simply put, Steemians have incentive to approve witnesses who aren't selfish, the incentive being, they, those who approve witnesses could receive votes for their posts from those who they approved as witnesses.
Thus the most widely supported witnesses won't be selfish and the Steemians and posts which will be the most mutually empowering should always eventually rise at the top and get the most attention and rewards.
Most of the time, empowering others is the most empowering thing we can do.
Steem witnesses are the equivalent of the Bitcoin miners. If you've never heard of Steem, cryptocurrencies or Bitcoin bare with me for a second.
Any Steem account can become a witness. Steem witnesses use dedicated computer running 24/7. It is these computers which are creating the Steem blockchain. New Steem blocks, making up the blockchain, are created every 3 seconds and are said to be signed by witnesses rather than mined like cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
The chronological order of these blocks are called the blockchain. Each blocks contains all the operations done by Steemians in the previous 3 seconds, in text form only, no image or video, only the links to those are stored.
Among those operations are the full text of posts, comments, editing of these, the Steem transfers, upvotes, flags, resteems, power up, power down, SBD conversions, profile changes, account creations, password changes, post rewards, curation rewards, block creation rewards, follow, unfollow, price feed publications and much more.
Every new blocks create new Steems for the post, curation, interest on Steem Power and witness rewards or block creation rewards.
The Steem blockchain is currently 85GB+.
Every witnesses in the top 20 signed around 1370 blocks for which they currently get paid roughly 0.18 Steem per blocks or 247 Steem per day. If compared to the best paid authors daily, this put them as the top 20 best paid authors today.
The rest of the witnesses sign the rest of the blocks proportional to the stake weighted votes/approval their witness receive compare to other backup witnesses. Backup witnesses are the witnesses which aren't in the top 20. Top 20 witnesses are the witnesses who receive the most stake weighted votes/approval.
Backup witnesses currently sign between roughly 60 blocks and 0 blocks a day each for which they are paid roughly 0.9 Steem a block. How many block each witness sign can be seen here.
Anyone has 30 witness votes or in other word any Steem account can vote for 30 different witness and change those vote at any time. Anyone who doesn't vote for witnesses or doesn't use its 30 votes is missing out on their power to influence who signs the most blocks and who receive the block rewards.
We all want witnesses to represent our truths, just like we want the best paid authors to be those who best express those same truths. Authors, which are those who receive the biggest part of the reward pool, roughly 67% of the reward pool in the last 30 days, should logically end up supporting the witnesses that best support their views, mutually empowering one another.
The top witnesses aren't necessarily the biggest whales in fact, they aren't, for the most part. Some of the biggest Steem whales could easily be in the top 20 witnesses but instead they judge it would be more beneficial if some other Steemians occupied those places.
Witnessing this is very uplifting. Some whales, at least one whale has even decided to totally stop their witness all together, leaving more opportunities for ascending Steemians.
Whales deciding to step down so to speak and put some much smaller stakeholders as top witnesses is something most Steemians might have never realized before but it is something very real and very uplifting as I've already said. Not everyone is trying to abuse everyone else in this world, Steem is a testament to that, in fact most people would rather chose mutual help whenever possible over any merciless competition.
Even today's most powerful warlords would most probably chose to live in a more merciful and cooperative world if they simply knew how to achieve it without putting their freedom at risk.
Steem is part of an emerging movement of decentralized technologies which are empowering each of us to create a more enjoyable future. Cooperation empowers all of us more than any type of competition.
Steem is all about cooperation and mutual empowerment.
Today's most popular websites are, starting from the most popular, Goole, Youtube, Facebook, Baidu, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Reddit, etc., are all owned by companies with special interests. These special interests aren't those of the people at large but the interest of those company stock shareholders and possibly more sinister group like shadow governments and secret societies.
These companies aren't there to ultimately empower us, they are there to empower themselves. Anyone who still consider Wikipedia to be neutral and a non-profit organization should be reminded truth is a personal thing, a subjective thing and no matter how good we can try to be unbias, we can never totally be unbiased, this is impossible.
Wikipedia, just like the others, isn't unbiased, nor can it be. Starting from first principal, we know nobody can be totally unbiased as truth is a personal thing that only people can determine for themselves.
What a lot of Youtubers feel like
I've been looking at the trending page of Youtube on a daily basis for more than a year and I must say, the most trending video aren't necessarily of the most enjoyable and empowering type, far from it. Most people must have heard about many Steemians having some of their Youtube video demonetized because the information contained in these video could potentially be exposing some truths some Youtube advertisers would rather prefer being keep out of the public's view.
Google/Youtube isn't looking primarily to empower people with truth or helping people to determine what is true nor does it has the ability to achieve this, Youtube just like any other company are looking to empower themselves and this empowerment always ultimately comes at the expense of everyone else.
@pressfortruth
@lukewearechangeI've used Facebook for many years daily.
Baidu is a Chinese company.
I've been looking at the front page of Reddit and many subreddits for many years daily now.
The case for decentralization is undeniable, as we all rely on information to make decisions in our daily life and no one can arrived at the truth for us. Truth is a personal thing and can only be determined by individuals. The better we'll be able to live and communicate our truth, the better we'll become at avoiding unnecessary violence.
Steem is one set of decentralized technologies which is fundamentally challenging many aspects of our society to the clear benefit of everyone.
Many other decentralized technologies are bettering many other centralized one and whether or not these decentralized technologies are based on blockchain technologies or fully decentralized is beside the point.
Not all of these are fully decentralized and I get the irony of listing Youbute and Wikipedia. There are many more than what I've listed. The world is becoming more decentralized with all this entails, more power to the individuals and less for the ruling elite.
Steemit Inc has played a big part in launching Steem the cryptocurrency. Steemit Inc still holds a very large amount of Steem and thus have every incentive to see Steem succeed. In fact, no matter what I said previously, companies are pretty neutral entities with the options of acting mostly selfishly or for the greater good but because of the current state humanity is in, people are most often pressured toward acting selfish.
Steemit Inc is still the major force behind the development of the Steem open source software as well as providing an easy access to the Steem blockchain itself through its website Steemit.com and soon to be released mobile app.
There are many more Steem windows to the Steem blockchain some of which I've listed here and many more to come.
My hat's off to the whole Team at Steemit Inc for their great accomplishment and for the 15 months plus they have been operating.
Today's most cryptocurrency enthusiast and other decentralization proponents, all praise decentralization and how decentralization prevents the censorship of monetary exchanges and the sharing of ideas of any kind, they also, and I agree with them, prone decentralization facilitate cooperation between people and the irony in all of this, is they're all doing it mostly on centralized platforms which have been shown to prevent free speech, close accounts for arbitrary reasons which have translated into serious set back for many of those enthusiasts.
Ethereum, the second biggest cryptocurrency by market cap has its own decentralized social network built on its blockchain but at this point it doesn't make much sense to use and there's serious problems that need to be addressed before it could ever come close to being as useful and user friendly as Steem.
Steem is currently the best decentralized social network and possibly the best social network period. Steem is challenging the business model of every existing websites or at least eventually will.
Sooner or later cryptocurrency enthusiasts should logically end up on decentralized social network and Steem will be there to welcome them, in fact, 325+ thousands of accounts have already been created and we are welcoming many more thousands everyday.
Steem is growing fast. I doubt there has been any social network which has seen such a fast growth. The reasons are many and obvious. There's currently no comparable technology able to do what Steem currently does.
Anyone who understand the basics functioning of Steem, understand that developing a technology enabling comparable feats would necessitate an incredible amount of work but even then, there would be no guarantee any process can equal or even less surpass what DPOS is currently achieving.
DPOS is the technology underlying Steem.
For at least more than 4 years now, everyone in the cryptocurrency space has currently been looking to scale up the number of transaction per second their blockchain allow, one would think that if it were that easy, many would have come up with many working solution, yet all of them are very much behind in term of transaction per seconds and the speed at which they are confirmed.
I already benefited a lot from Steem and I know many others did to.
Steem is an ever improving technology with a fast growing support, it is bigger than each of us combined and its potential as well as what it has already accomplish is mind-blowing. I'm very enthused by the idea of seeing it grow even more and seeing it better myself and the world even further than it already has.
Steem and cryptocurrencies in general have the potential to change much more than just social networks, money creation and banking. How they influence our world is entirely up to us, yet Steem and cryptocurrencies are not the whole. Let's not confuse them for the whole. They're only part of the whole of the great mysteries of life and death.
"What I would like to say is that, there's so much more ahead in blockchain technology and in cryptocurrency and there is so many more big problems to solve and if we all continue to work together and brace this technology and bring it to more and more people I have no doubt that 5 years from now we will be looking at a much more fluid, inclusive and empowered group of people across the world." -
@ned - Steemit CEO - [Source]
Helping others is the most enriching thing I've ever experienced, on part only with being helped myself and so I'm very grateful to everyone who ever came to my help. Sincerely.
I, once more, want to acknowledge the plight of the less fortunate, those who are victims of injustice or anyone currently suffering for whatever reasons. We all have suffered at one point or another and we all know there isn't any worst feeling.
I consider myself very fortunate for the most part and I'm very well aware this could change at any instant.
I look forward to help as many people as I possibly can and working on becoming better at it.
Steem is allowing us to pool our truths, our forces and build upon each others truth. The more popular the Steem platform will become, the greater the force behind the Steem truth shall be. So let it be!
"Some things are neither true nor false, yet consensus is required and the result of that consensus has impacts on all of society."
...
"Who shall determine the truth? From what frame of reference? Show me any process that is guaranteed to arrive at the truth and I'll show you how it will fail."
"Only individuals can make an estimation of truth based upon their own perceptions. Consensus is the result of the majority of individuals coming to the same conclusion."
"Assuming all individuals can communicate and have incentive to live in the truth then truth will prevail. If there is incentive to believe a lie, then the lie will prevail. This applies even on an individual basis." -
I haven't shared this video in this series and I find it very fitting so I though I'd share it. It's surely one of the very best speech ever utter.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) tweeted this yesterday and got seriously roasted. The whole thread is priceless and can be found here. I found this tweet on Reddit here.
Most Steemians don't support any witness yet. Be counted, be among those who support witnesses. Let's work toward making Steem second nature for as many people as possible.
Witness votes are like 24/7 votes you cast on 30 people! Put together they are some of Steemians most important votes!
Would you consider voting for my witness to help us Steeming the world we all long for? https://steemit.com/~witnesses
Thank you for reading and for commenting! I read all comments!
Share the fun by inviting your friends!
I use Markdown Pad (free version) to create my posts and I recommend it to everyone.
How to align pictures.
The chat rooms are some of the best places to makes some friends.
@fyrstikken 
@fyrst-witness (24h/7 Voice chat)
@aggroed 
@ausbitbank 
@teamsteem & More (Minnow Support Project)
@fuzzyvest 
@officialfuzzy
@sirlunchthehost 
@beanz
@steemittalk
@mrviquez
