The most valuable year in a lifetime?

You know what is funny? All this FUD around Steem this week makes me think this is a goer. While people are worried about the future of Steem, I don't think there is too much to be concerned about but there are obvious issues that will need to be addressed over time.

One of the problems that Steem faces over nearly all other blockchains is the visibility of transactions. I am not talking about the transaction numbers themselves of course as essentially all blockchains have that capability, I mean the visibility of the people that are making the transactions. For the most part, when moving any other crypto there is no one watching who is doing the moving, there is no visibility to the people behind the hash unless they make a mistake or let people actually know.

What this means is that people can be as greedy and manipulative as they like behind a complete mask of anonymity and while on Steem there can be anonymity, there is still the very real sense that people are actually involved, not some faceless entity one will never meet. In some ways the other blockchains and currencies are akin to being on the line to an automated message, no matter what they say, there is no point in arguing as it will make no difference. On Steem however it is like talking to a real person from a telephone company after they double billed you, even though they aren't directly responsible for the error, they take the full force of the attack because, they are there.

This is something else I find interesting with the crypto scene as all the other coins are nearly entirely speculative with very few people having any understanding of what the chain is actually for at all. Hands up how many people have bought a coin without having much else than a vague idea of what it does. (My hand goes up). I still have some coins I hold that I don't know what they are supposed to be designed for.

Supposed is the operative word there, hence the italics. Most of these projects ARE NOT going to ever see the light of day and will therefore only ever be speculative in nature until they slowly die away. Steem however is one of the very few that is actually doing something, not just promising something. Yep, internally we know that SMTs and communities are yet to arrive despite roadmaps but, even while there are holes in the plan, the chain continues performing and people are able to visibly use, create and earn on the Steem blockchain.

Ask all the people you know who have made money in crypto that aren't on Steem and find out how. What's the bet it is through trading, not usage. All those Bitcoin millionaires out there didn't use Bitcoin to earn, they bought and sold it and rode the price upwards as interest gained. The Steem model is different as it has actual utility outside of trading and has the ability to earn it with zero buy-in.

People are all doom and gloom but this last year of a declining market could very well be the highest earning year in your lifetime if you were investing into crypto - and on Steem, you didn't even need money upfront. At the all time high last year my account was worth about 105k. That was incredible and while it is only worth a fraction of that now, if that ATH comes again, my account will be worth 290k. I have more than doubled my Steem in the last year through some purchases but mostly, through working my goddam ass off.

Of course, it is always those who aren't forced to sell that will benefit and there is no way around that, which is why I have so much work to make ends meet in the walking world. Crypto is my hail Mary future, not something to buy my noodles with. Working in the real world gives me the chance to work on Steem without having to use it meaning, I can hold. Just because someone hasn't been able to manage their life to have the chance to hold, doesn't mean I should be ashamed to earn.

But, on Steem we can see all the people whether they are holding or selling, spamming, shitposting or doing their best. We can see people doing what they can do to satisfy their demands and when they do things we don't agree with, we have people we can shout and scream at. When you see Bitcoin getting rammed from behind because of a large selloff, who the fuck are you going to complain to? On Steem you have people to outlet onto, a community to rile.

This can make it a pretty horrible place in many ways because people are very emotional when they feel they are losing something and it is worse when what they are losing is money. Combine that with the Greed mindset of crypto enthusiasts who only care about maximization of their wallet, and there is going to be a lot of conflict and on Steem, publicly.

It is pretty interesting considering we have one of the most used blockchains in the world yet, the very people using it do not regard it as good as projects that have literally zero usage other than speculative transactions or like EOS seems to specialize in, gambling applications. Perhaps people are just too close to it all to gain some perspective, perhaps that includes me.

Yep, I want this place to workout and go to the moons of Saturn so that I can be much more picky and choosy about the work I do in this world, rather than be forced to work to make ends meet until I retire or die. I never plan on retiring, I do plan on dying though. Living forever is for chumps who think too much of themselves.

Anyway, you do what you want to do, I am going to keep doing what I want to do also. Who knows, perhaps what you want and what I want could be the same thing.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]