An ex banker transformed sci-fi writer explains his motivations for embracing Steemit: an interview with Murat Besiroglu

@muratkbesiroglu

What made you decide to make Steemit your primary job? And what has been your journey in it?

I've been dealing with writing and literature for a long time. In 2016, my sci-fi novel, The Ultimate Debate was published in Turkey. Working as a professional writer has been my dream for decades. In January 2018, I became a member of Steemit. I started to publish sci-fi stories in Steemit. I have received very positive feedback from the Steemit Turkish community. While working as a banker, I started to publish 1-2 articles/stories a week in Steemit. As the number of followers increased, I thought I could do my writing professionally. At the end of May 2018, I resigne from the bank where I worked and started writing full-time in Steemit. By the way, I noticed that my essays and stories were translated into English through automatic translation programs. I decided to write both in Turkish and English. My essays and stories are now being followed by readers from all over the world on Steemit.

How is your background in banking helped you made that transition easier/harder?

My banking background has helped me to adapt quickly to the platform. The Steem ecosystem is quite complex. To be efficient in this environment, we need to make a lot of calculations and financial transactions. There are also many cryptocurrency investors in Steemit. My banking history made it easy for me to write articles on financial matters. On the other hand, what I wrote about myspecialityy areas of marketing and artificial intelligence has attracted a lot of attention. I benefited the business discipline from my years of banking, as it requires a serious effort to be able to stand up in the community.

What would you say Steemit as a platform is about? Where do you see it going in 5 years time?

Steem is now 2 years old. We know that the number of users of other social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit has improved tremendously from the second year to the seventh year. If we take other social media sites as an example, we can predict that the number of Steemit users will increase rapidly. Many successful projects on the Steem blockchain will also contribute to this process. I have witnessed as a banker how mobile banking customer numbers has increased from numbers expressed in thousands to numbers expressed in ten millions in Turkey. The use of Steemit will also increase considerably when people adapt to crypto currencies. Therefore, it is obvious that Steemit has an enormous potential.

Steemit is one of the only platform that pays its users to post content on the website. It’s a new platform model. Do you think that it’ll be taken by another platform eventually?

It was reasonable for social media sites not to pay of the content producers at a time when the cost of data processing and storage was tens of times higher than today. At this point, traditional social media sites generate large advertising revenues, but the content producers can't get a share of this revenue. This situation is not sustainable. Although it is not easy to predict the timing, I expect other social media companies will also transform to a Steemit like structure. As I am not an expert on blockchain technologies I can't imagine how Steemit will be affected if such a situation happens.

Cryptocurrencies have still some sort of shady and vague annotation for the wider public. What would it be a way to make it a more acceptable idea?

The crypto world is facing some problems today. One of these problems is the lack of legal regulations. Crypto currency prices that are much more volatile than conventional financial instruments is another important problem. In addition, the end user must recognize and adapt to​ this world over time. Blockchain applications have revolutionary potential because of the ability to create a mechanism of trust between people. Therefore, corporate structures such as states, banks, and large technology companies do not seem willing to accept this technology. The technologies of the crypto world need to be developed in areas such as security, scalability and customer experience. For the crypto revolution to expand and stem, progress needs to be made in the areas I mentioned.

If somebody was reluctant to use Steemit as a platform, what would you say to convince them to use it?

Digital technologies have a positive characteristic of allowing experiments. You can test a hypothesis without making big investments. Joining Steemit is easy and free. (In fact,​ you need to wait a few weeks) I recommend everyone with question marks on this subject to try the system. If they don't like the environment, they won't have a big loss. If they like the environment, they would have added a new dimension to their lives.

Is there any tips or tricks that you can share with upcoming Steemit users on how to have a fanbase and maintain engagement with them?

There's no miraculous prescription I can give to Steemit users. We need to invest to achieve a positive result in any domain. A small amount of Steem investment will be beneficial to grow more quickly. In addition, to produce quality content and interact with people you need to spend a lot of time on the platform. Title selection, topic selection, image usage, tag selection, compliance with Steemit etiquette rules, the use of Steem ecosystem tools are important factors to make the financial investment and efforts efficient.

You’re also a sci-fi writer now, how the shift for finance to dystopian futures came about?

Since my college years, I was interested in mainstream literature. The fact that the systems we set up and use at banks have become smarter over the years has fueled my interest in science fiction. I've spent the ​last 10 years dealing with big data, analytics and artificial intelligence. I have written a novel on the rights of androids by taking advantage of my knowledge of this subject.

Where do you see the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency has the potential to make that dystopia into an utopia?

One of the most common themes of the dystopias is corrupt government officials and large corporations. Blockchain technologies prevent the concentration of critical information in one hand thanks to its distributed structure. This will hopefully lead large institutional structures to lose power. So maybe we can get rid of the corruption that might occur in big institutions with the help of blockchain.

I recently read the anarchism article written by thinker Peter Kropotkin for Encyclopedia Brittannica in 1910. It seemed to be explaining communities and ecosystems of the crypto world. Therefore, anarchism, perhaps the most utopian political order, can have a chance to be realized with the help of block-chain technology.

If there’s anything you would like to tell your future self on the decision of becoming a Steemit writer, what would it be?

I hope I would say “It was the right decision and it was a pleasant journey”

Any last words you want to say to anybody before embarking the world of Steemit/crypto? Any words of wisdom?

Although it has become a kind of cliché, I like the quote "the best way to predict the future is to create it". I think being active and participating is the key to success.

I would like to thank all the readers who read this interview.