How Steemit changed a young filipino' life

Sorry for the dramatic headline, but this is a story you won’t hear on the mainstream news, so I needed to add some intensity to the title…

On June 5, a young Filipino man by the nickname @darthnava posted an article on the social media platform Steemit, sharing that he needed an operation that was more expensive than what he or his family could afford.
Image from @darthnava’s public article

“The titanium alone will cost nearly 200,000 Pesos ($4,050), excluding medicines, the doctors’ professional fees and my stay in the hospital.”

Within minutes, donations from his followers (and lots of strangers) started pouring in, which soon covered the costs of the operation.
1 STEEM = $2.35 USD and 1 SBD = $2.07 USD at the time of writing this article

This kind of charity between strangers is mindblowing, but there’s more.
Here’s what’s so remarkable about this:

In addition to the donations people sent him out of their own pockets (image above), his article has so far generated around $16,000 USD simply through “upvotes”.

See, on Steemit, users get paid for publishing content. It’s like Facebook, only that every LIKE (which is called an “upvote” there) means actual money.
This is what very few people know.

This is what very few people believe when they first hear about Steemit.

“Money doesn’t grow on trees.”

That’s true.

Money has never and will never grow on trees.

But it does grow on the blockchain.

On Steemit, users receive STEEM and Steem Dollars — the native digital currencies of Steemit — which they can then exchange to Bitcoin or their local currency.

At the time of writing this, his article collected upvotes of a value of around $8,000 Steem Dollars.

The Steem Dollar is worth around $2 USD today, which results in $16,000 USD.
The blockchain — the underlying technology Steemit runs on — is changing the world at rapid speed

Not only does it have the potential to include people from all over the world into the financial system, and enable them to earn an income online, but it also allows micro transactions for little or zero fees.

Sending a $1 or $10 donation to @darthnava would hardly be possible through the traditional banking system, because it would be eaten up by transaction fees. So the simple absence of high fees makes donations and mutual support possible.

In addition — the money that @darthnava’s article generated, did not come from other people’s pockets. It came straight from the blockchain. It belonged to nobody.
How is that possible?

The STEEM currency gets generated in a “mining process” similar to Bitcoin and other digital currencies.

While, normally, mining is an activity reserved for “geeks” who run mining computers; on Steemit the mining is done by publishing, commenting and upvoting content — something everyone knows how to do these days. They don’t even need to care about the mining process, they just do what they have always been doing on other social media sites: posting and engaging with others.

@darthnava can now pay for not only the minimum costs of his operation, but also for medicine, doctors fees and his recovery in the hospital. All from his “Miracle Votes Post” which will go down in the history of Steemit.
This is how the blockchain and borderless currencies are improving the world and foster compassion and community.
And what about you?

How could a social media platform that pays you change YOUR life?

You can open your own Steemit account here whenever you are ready to step into the future of money and the new connected economy. When you do, please come and say Hi in the comments of one of my posts there