RE: Get Ready for a World Currency
@anonymint Thanks for your comment, this is a very important point that you brought up:
"Steem is vying to be that system. Do we value our STEEM as much for what we can do with it as the investment return on STEEM (or the STEEM that can be extracted by blogging)?"
This is crucial. It's amazing that so many people are using Steemit without even being aware that it is a Blockchain or that it has a cryptocurrency making it work. I suspect that a higher and higher % of new users will not know about this ether and that people will use Steemit without knowing about blockchain in the same way that people use the internet today without knowing about the http protocol.
Sorry to hear about your illness, glad that you seem to be doing better now. When did you first hear about cryptocurrency and how did you become involved in it?
You said, "system that gets users as interested in what they can do with their cryptocurrency tokens that they can’t do with fiat systems". Not quite sure what you meant by this?
That is a good point that if attain mass adoption, most users won’t even realize they are using a blockchain.
I mean when there exists desirable things they can’t do with fiat. For example, earning tokens from writing and commenting. Beyond that is for example displacing all the centralized databases on the Internet, smart contracts, distributed microeconomies/micronations, decentralized speculation, new forms of gamification and monetization of Internet and computer activities, etc..
As I wrote at the bottom of my blog, I read Szabo’s Bitgold in early 2009 after writing something somewhat analogous 14 days before he published:
I heard about Bitcoin sometime after that (perhaps it was 2010), but I was distracted on other life matters. Risto Pietila and I were dealing in physical silver from 2008 to 2009 (we had met on Jason Hommel’s forum). In 2012, he asked me about getting into Bitcoin but I told him I was preoccupied with my illness (which was acute hospitalization in May). In early 2013, he asked whether he should sell $100,000 of silver and buy BTC at $10 and I said yes. I wasn’t able to join him because I had lost $75,000 of fiat in 2012 (side-effect of the flight or fight effect of my illness) and “theft” of my silver and gold over the years. From 2013 to present, I became expert on blockchain technology, having been a computer programmer since age 13 (age 52 now).
My bad I forgot you mentioned having written something analogous to what Szabo wrote. Not many veterans like you in the space now, definitely glad I discovered your blog!