Where does the money come from?
When trying to explain Steemit to others, I often encounter a reoccurring question -
“Where does the money come from”?
When you think about it, we should be compelled to ask such a question, especially since most of us are accustomed to thinking in “old world” monetary terms of the FIAT economy.
I find that this is often a hard point to get across.
Zero sum game
In the FIAT universe, generally speaking, if you got paid for something, it had to come out of someone’s pocket. Somebody had to pay.
Hence, If we exclude the monopoly certain entities have on “money creation”, we can think about the FIAT economy as somewhat of a zero sum game.
In the crypto universe, new technology enables and facilitates the creation of economic micro-verses, in which trade-able and fungible currencies (= digital assets) that can "communicate" with the blockchain, are seemingly created out of thin air.
Furthermore, If one succeeds in creating a useful and trustworthy digital asset, the asset may become popular and gain public trust (much like FIAT or tangible commodities), which in turn may lead to high market liquidity.
Non-zero-sum
In my humble opinion, here lies one of the greatest novelties of digital assets and the crypto revolution -the ability to quantify (in monetary terms) any form of activity or ability, in a “non-zero-sum” fashion.
In the Steemit micro-verse, this ability is obviously content creation, but it just as-well may be anything.
The revenue from each post does not directly come from anyone's pocket.
Rather, It is "generated" by code.
In other words, no one has to lose his Dollar bill, in order for you to gain yours.
Has this ever been possible before? I think not.