Forget the FUD, Let’s Make “The Steemed Rice Fund”!

Well, now that Upbit just got raided it’s time to stock up on facial tissues to catch all the tears shed at the thought of all those future-lambos that just went poof. Oh wait, no, weren’t we trying to do something different with cryptocurrencies in the first place? Like, change the world for the better or something, not just buy grossly overpriced status symbols that have huge upkeep costs and shrek the environment? Enter the pineapple.

The heck is The Pineapple Fund?

The post first dropped here https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7jj0oa/im_donating_5057_btc_to_charitable_causes/ about four months ago. As skeptical as most redditors are about crypto, the reception was warm, to say the least, and people were eager to suggest their favorite charities.

Fast-forward to the future, and the individual (or individuals, who knows, you can go full conspiracy theory and assume that it was a concerted marketing ploy for BTC orchestrated by a few whales) has given 5104 Bitcoin worth $55,000,000 to 60 charities, and you can see the charities and the amounts on the official website.

https://pineapplefund.org/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/8ieffr/farewell_from_the_pineapple_fund/

Now that it’s over, what does that mean for us? An opportunity to step up to the plate and see how hard we can really hit, of course!

I know that Bitcoin’s heaviest-hitting wallets are huge compared to the fiat worth of wallets of any other blockchain, so it would be hard for any one individual owning STEEM to amass such a fortune, at least in the near-future. That’s why I’m proposing we gather our collective energy to make a similar fund, but instead of one we can be many, and our group efforts shall not go unnoticed!

Why rice?

I would have called it “The Mango Fund” because of its popularity in many nations, I like how it looks, and how imba the item is in DOTA, but unfortunately that name is already taken.

Many foods can be steamed, but rice is a staple food in countless nations the world over, and you don’t really have just one rice grain for dinner. I think “Steemed Rice Fund” is simple enough to remember, kind of catchy, and an already familiar combination of words. It will also help ingrain in people’s heads that our steem has two e’s, not one. Or it might people think we’re all illiterate...

We here on the STEEM blockchain might think our votes aren’t that big, but like individual grains of rice they can stack up quickly and turn into a filling meal for many!

And hey, it doesn’t have to be rice, maybe that’s a bit too lame or something in your opinion. Feel free to offer up your own ideas for the name!

Smells like a scam to me!

Yes, I agree! Why should you trust me, or anyone else with a huge amount of money? What are you, new to the internet or something?!

There are obvious issues with how to accumulate and dispense the funds. Yes it would be great if it were possible to give hundreds of thousands or millions to one fund in a short amount of time and then choose all the charities for the funds to be dispensed, but then that opens up the discussion on how much any one entity can be entrusted with such a sum.

Simple greed and the ability to run off with an instant-retirement level of money aside, the security issues involving storing that much dough safely are an unnecessary headache.

So we should make sure to have a smart way to go about this that isn’t so dependent on sloshing up a giant amount of money to some no-name and hoping they don’t buy a yacht with it. I’m sure there are some people who are pretty expert on things like this, so I’d like to hear your thoughts on non-idiotic ways to go about it.

So… how SHOUDL we go about this?

You tell me! I’m just throwing ideas out here. I think that we could construct a website, possibly steemedricefund.org or steemedrice.org, rather quickly and make a social media account for steemedricefund on all the major websites.

Maybe do one poll a month on each social media site and have them staggered? We can see which voting arrangement gets the most visibility over time, which is the nice thing about having a project that’s meant to last a while.

Then we can have weekly, bi-weekly or monthly voting contests by inviting everyone to vote on which charities should get the money that week. All the social media sites have easy ways to hold polls so that should be simple enough.

The money can go as a single amount to the winning charity, or split between a few, or go out proportionally with the votes, who knows, anything goes, we can also mix this up depending on the amounts.

Posts on steemit could be made before, after, or during the polls. I think this really depends on a few factors. If we want to hype the total pool being donated on other social media then we post on steemit first to accrue upvotes, or if people on steemit are picky about what charities they want to donate to then the steemit posts could be made after the polls are held.

The website can also highlight existing charitable efforts on Steemit to bring attention to previous and ongoing efforts by other kind Steemians!

Why other social media?

Because money for money’s sake is boring to people who already sort of have enough money to live and people who don’t aspire to be ultra-wealthy. That is how most people are in regards to money. I want to change people’s minds about what Steemit and STEEM are all about. We do not differentiate ourselves from the rest of the pack by saying, “yes, among the 1000+ other offerings promising fast riches, we will also give you a chance to make money with our fantasy digital tokens.”

No, we do so by showing that we are different from the rest in at least a semi-sincere sense, and in this era of virtue-signaling we have a chance here to show that we as a blockchain and participating userbase are worth a second look, that we aren’t all a bunch of weird money and STEEM worshipping cultists, and that we are aware of a multitude of negative issues in the world at large and are willing to do things to help ameliorate those issues, and that holding STEEM helps empower us to enact those changes.

Isn’t that kind of greedy thinking?

Well, yes, it would be good for our perception among others outside of here if some of the biggest voters and many others willing to think positively on our platform could spare a vote here and there to fund charities, and for that process to generate natural positive PR for STEEM. Good PR for STEEM and Steemit can’t be bad for any stakeholders, right?

Giant counter-argument

“Screw charities, what a super scam they are!” you shout at the monitor as you slap the back button and go about your day. Okay, yes, overhead on many is high and a lot of money just flows back into the media industry via their purchases of advertisements or back into their own pockets via big salaries and the way some charities just act as fall-back jobs for any failed kids in power families, but that doesn’t mean there are at least a few that do pretty good things with the resources available to them.

That notwithstanding, there’s also the fact that many, many people who are already on Steemit or will come to Steemit in the future are probably in pretty dire need of monetary assistance themselves, and research (and common sense, really) does show that direct cash transfers are one of the most effective forms of giving. But if votes were already freely flowing in that direction then I’m not sure I’d be writing this in the first place (no offense intended to the approx. half or so of large stakeholders who do throw votes downwards and everyone else who also votes normally).

When do we get started?

Well, let’s get some consensus from the community, aka all of you, first, and see how things go. It’d be great to hear from all of you, any suggestions, critiques, support would be welcome!

Oh, and my own UBI thing is still going

Drop your request below if you aren't a spammer or scammer, so that I can add you to the vote list so you have a chance to receive up to one 100% vote from me a day!