What happened to this post?

This post was originally composed in Chinese in replying another reputable Chinese Steemian. Now I made this Chinglish to accommodate English literate crowd. One of my very precious friend( I don't wanna tag her now as she just expressed a cut throat sign to me over the other post reply) took the trouble and try to understand my original post by using translator and gotten her confused. So I decided to make this post, and the liquid Steem being paid to this post will be donated to the #cn-malaysia community for future development. Original post can be found here at 【再聊steem二】谁付了我的烧肉钱？

Translated article

From previous discussion of who paid for my roast pork, the below article are solely my personal opinion and not representing any other party. Should you think there's room for improvement or if I spell any wrong information, feel free to comment me at the comment section and I will do my best to improve.

Steem is a crypto. From what I understand, it is a digital asset. In real world, it is not a currency, it has no face value. The actual value of a digital asset lies behind it's UTILITY and or SECURITY peck, until one fine day the person whose own these digital assets decided to sell these crypto off with exchange of fiat currency, by that time it's VALUE comes to live and now it is a cryptocurrency with a real VALUE.

For example, I am one of these old school kids back in the 80's whose always go to the amusement center for arcade game. One of the most significant influence is Galaga if you remember the spacecraft shooting game. But, before we start any game, we need a token that is recognized by the machine. So we need to bring some cash and exchange these cash with token, so we can use it with the arcade machine. Back then, it was 20cents a token. As for how long the game will last, that really depending on how skillful we are. Some of the better player can throw a token in and sit there for hours until the game ends. There's one time, the guy who played the game half way, probably needed to take a dump, so he asked me to take care of his game whilst he take a shit break(this is what we call DELEGATE). Anyway, by the time he got back, the game has ended earlier due to my lack of capability to control. The guy who is supposed to play until the end, what he experience is "LOSS" of playing time, and what I earned during the short delegation time was "CURATION" reward. By the time for my turn to insert my token, it's about time to go to tuition. I bring the token to the counter, but the dude said no refund. So I have no choice but to HODL on to the token which I can't use it for bus nor buy food.

Source of image from Pixabay

As day goes by, I'm having more unused token on my table. The amount accumulated which I couldn't possibly finish it by myself or I'll have to snap my finger if I insert them all to the machine and play. This is what we call "ACCUMULATE". These token has absolutely no other usage other than for a game at the arcade game center. And due to more people accumulated these tokens, the amusement center decided to print more of these tokens. Besides in the early 90's Street Fighter II make a big hit. By that time, tokens required to play a game increased from one token per game, to two token per game. Now this is what we call "INFLATION".

Come to end of 90's, due to global financial crisis in the actual world, spending power became steep declining and things become less affordable. Game price restructured. Instead of increase the number of token required, best to increase the price for the token. Per token price increased from 20cents up to 50cents a token. This is what we call "BULL RUN". I have a pail of these token at home, so I brought it out and sell them for 40cents, I'm still getting a good deal of people come and purchase from me. However, the shop owner weren't happy where I selling his token to his customer. I had no choice but to wait until he's not around and bring some of these token to the counter, and that dude promised to give me back 35cents per token he sells. And the dude is Blocktrades as we know here - middle man.

Now, the shop owner noticed more token collected by end of the day, then the amount of cash collected from the counter! He become worried and fierce since these bunch of little investors (we call them "STAKE HOLDER" here) does rogue speculation. Shop owner brought in new technology, called Prepaid Card. For customers, in order to enjoy discount, all they gotta do is purchase a reload card, invest cash into these cards, and they can enjoy 40cents per game. They're still allowed to buy token over the counter(We call it HARD FORK), but that will remain 50 cents for the token to be inserted to the machine. By that time, the shop owner started to collect back the tokens and try to limit it's circulation (We call it Damage Control).

Finally, came the information technology era. Everybody goes to internet cafe. Games no longer require token. Those unsold token still in my house. If I go back to the closed down arcade center, the paper on the wall still said these token worth 50cents. But I can never find anyone to buy them anymore. This we called, HODL TO DEATH.

I know for a fact that, in Steem I don't pay myself. I contributed my time, my brain juice, my electricity and my internet fee in exchange for these tokens. The roast pork I ate, paid from my pocket, but someone would have bought the token from me and I used that someone's cash to pay for the roast pork I ate.