Steem Worth Trillions: Fun With Numbers

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Yesterday I put up a post that compared the Steem ecosystem to a country. In it, I made the point that we are going to see a similar path that is followed by countries. Over time, people are going to turn to Steem for income, entertainment, shopping, and interaction. We will also see governance mechanisms designed. In short, as our world becomes more digitized, we will see platforms like Steem grow in value.

It is no secret how companies operating in the digital realm become worth a fortune. Amazon and Facebook are still two of the most valued companies on the American exchanges. While they pulled back some, there was a time when they were each pushing the $1T marketcap.

When doing a bit of searching around, the United States is the largest economy by GDP with close to $20T. This is a flawed statistic yet it is what is commonly used so I will point to it.

Right off the bat, we see an area where Steem has a leg up. One of the drawbacks to GDP, as a statistic, is that ii misses a lot. For example, what does picking up trash at the park contribute? If you are a paid city worker, it is X dollars per hour. However, if one volunteers to do it, there is no impact.

On Steem, with the CLEAN token, we have valued it. The same is true with @actifit. This is an application that pays people for moving around. How is that figured into the GDP stats? Obviously, walking and other exercise is not in the statistics except for expenditures made.

GDP is akin to the revenue stream. It really does not tell how much something is worth. According to estimates, the United States has a worth of between $225T-$300T. Naturally, this is much higher than the GDP figure. It is taking everything contained in that country and putting it together. The accuracy of the numbers do not matter much other than the fact it is a multitude of GDP. In this instance, we see a 10 X.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/much-entire-united-states-america-170634255.html

In looking at populations, I noticed Spain has about 46M people. This is a country with a GDP of $1.3T. Using the same multiple as before, we have a value of about $13T (if you don't like that number, make it $10T). Could Steem become something that rivals Spain?

To start, 46M people sounds like a lot when the entire platform has roughly 40K accounts transacting daily. We are looking at a thousand-fold increase. However, if we consider the fact that Fortnight, one of the more popular games, has over 200M users, we realize how small a number that really is.

Does that mean if Steem has 45M users, it will be worth $10T? Perhaps not. It all comes down to what is built on the network. We have the ability to create and innovate on here. People are going to be earning incomes simply from their activities on Steem. Ultimately, we could see a self-contained ecosystem where people earn and spend.

One thing people will point to is the fact that countries have other things of value like land and physical assets. Obviously, this is something that is not the case with Steem. Fair enough. However, we are about to embark upon a huge explosion in the digital world. Digital assets are going to take on a lot more meaning and escalate in value. We will see things emerging over the next decade that we cannot even comprehend.

To see value, we might want to consider what the Internet is worth? According to Cisco, it was about $19T in 2014. At that time, roughly 1/3 of the global population was online. We know that in the next decade, the rest of the world will join.

Another factor is that John Chambers said, at that time, that the Internet of Things will increase it 5-10 times. Now we are looking at a value of between $100T-$200T. This is starting to rival the United States.

https://www.cnet.com/news/how-much-is-the-internet-of-everything-worth-cisco-says-19-trillion/

Personally, I think this is underestimated. My view is that blockchain is going to have an impact of a magnitude of 100X compared to the Internet. This is not necessarily in financial terms but in societal. The reason I feel this way is the open source nature of things. The Internet as presently constructed is mostly centralized and controlled. For this reason, innovation was stifled. Blockchain, by its very nature, is decentralized. Add in the fact many projects are open source and it is easy to see how the innovation curve is ready to head upward.

Please bear in mind, I am not saying that the market cap of STEEM will be $10T. What I am referring to is the total worth. This will be everything on the ecosystem combined. With the development of SMTs and other tokens, this will obviously be spread among many different assets.

Does all of this seem outlandish? To some it might. My point is to help people realize some of what is potentially coming and how big things can get. We are embarking on technologies that are going to send numbers exploding. Steem is no different. I am not trying to claim that Steem will be the biggest blockchain or have the most activity. It is not going to be the "United States of the blockchain world". Instead, can we achieve the level of Spain?

I mentioned a number of times a project called SingularityNet. This is a blockchain platform for Artificial Intelligence. It is meant to decentralize and democratize AI. What impact will that have on the world? How will GDP, or any other metric one wants to use, explode due to this technology. Could some of this be applied to projects on the Steem blockchain?

It might be difficult to see at this time but the potential is there. As long as people remain committed to pushing this platform forward on a daily basis, we will see the growth. There are many applications coming online with enormous potential. As the cryptocurrency world becomes more mainstream, people are going to start finding those applications they like. Hopefully, many of them will be tied to Steem. That is why the development curve is vital. The developers are the ones who are going to determine the future success of Steem.

Done right, we could see trillions of dollars in value in this ecosystem.

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