Is Steemit the Ultimate Cryptocurrency Onboarding Tool? Interview with @razvanelulmarin

Steemit takes it’s users on an educational journey. It’s is a journey through which it’s users don’t just become Steemit experts, but one in which many become Cryptocurrency Converts.

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Solving the Cryptocurrency Onboarding Problem - Steemit White Paper

It isn’t easy to get into cryptocurrency. Someone who discovers Bitcoin and wants to try it out quickly learns that they will need to sign up with an exchange and fund their account with a credit card or wire transfer. What would Facebook’s adoption rate have been like if you had to fork over money and a two forms of ID?

Steem solves this problem by giving everyone a way to get paid for doing simple, but valuable, tasks. This will help to widely distribute STEEM tokens. This is helpful because cryptocurrencies have a network effect (i.e. more users make it more useful; for an extreme example, consider that if Satoshi had kept 100% of Bitcoin for himself, Bitcoin would be worthless.)

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I personally think the key here is that;

Steemit is a free lesson in Cryptocurrency

Who, when starting out in Cryptocurrency, made a mistake which cost you money? I certainly did! 2 years on from this, in my first few week on Steemit, I transferred a bunch of Steem to account @steemit by accident.

• Annoying? Yes
• Did it make me fearful of using Steemit? No
• Why? It didn’t actually cost me a penny/cent (it was all rewards)… Oh, and @Steemit (i.e. @dan and @ned) gave me my Steem back anyway...

I decided to talk to someone who I know very well on Steemit, @razvanelulmarin. We got to know each other on steemit.chat some time ago when he mistook me for another user, @wings. Well not too much time after that, myself and @repholder were having a chat about, you guessed it, Augur Reputation, when @razvanelulmarin interjected with;

What is Reputation?

This was the moment I realised that not every user on Steemit was a cryptocurrency fanatic. We can call @razvanelulmarin a test subject, because here we are a couple of months on…

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Q&A

Is Steemit the Ultimate Cryptocurrency Onboarding Tool?

HNIO:
Thank you for agreeing to answer a few questions today @razvanelulmarin. You are my perfect test subject for this post. Tell us a little bit about how you became a Steemit community member, and what you believed you were signing up for..?

RM:
Hello Everyone. I think above you wanted to say “this was the moment I realised that @razvanelulmarin was a noob" 🙂 But yeah, I was and frankly still am, just a more educated noob.

I got really lucky, seen a link somewhere about this site where you might get paid to write. This has basically been a dream of mine since,.. Forever. Of course, I was sceptical, but I signed up anyway. I still remember the Trending List when I signed up on the 2nd of July. Lots of Introduce Yourself post. This lead me to join the party and introduce myself alongside everyone else.

I had NO IDEA what I was signing up for. In fact, that's why I chose such a Romanian Nick. Initially, I thought I could change it at a later date to something more English-friendly. Oh well, you guys have to learn to pronounce Razvanel now 🙂

But basically, I thought it was all a bit tooo good to be true…

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HNIO:
What was you level of Cryptocurrency understanding upon joining Steemit?

RM:
Wow. Is there a level for “WTF is crypto?” If so, that was my level. After the 4th July, when I kind of got the memo that those SBD and STEEM are worth money I started to do my research. A lot of my education came through Steemit. At the beginning there were a lot of good articles on Cryptocurreny, Steem and Blockchain Technology.

I confess, my desire to understand didn't come from passion but from necessity. I had to understand how to make the most of what I had on Steemit. It's like, if someone pays you in food, you'll learn how to cook right? 🙂

But after a while, I just got more and more interested, and here I am today, discussing crypto with you 🙂

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HNIO:
What would you say your level of cryptocurrency understanding is now? For instance, would you feel comfortable performing any standard cryptocurrency transaction?

RM:
My understanding is limited by the more technical stuff, but I get the gist of it now, Don't Quiz Me! . Still, the more I read about Cryptocurrency, the more I understand it. The dots are not yet fully connected but I'm well on my way.

Sure, not because I’m some kind of genius. The Exchanges make it easy for people to be a noob and use their services. I learned the ropes in the internal market, and then transitioned on Poloniex and Bittrex as most people did.

Again, Necessity was the greatest motivator for myself!

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HNIO:
How about the Community?

RM:

Well, I was actually very impressed,. I remember back in the early days seeing yourself, @repholder and @wingz talking about cryptocurrency on steemit.chat, and I just felt like a dumb-o, and was sure "these guys will make fun of me!".

However, true to myself, I still asked some stupid questions and,.. surprise, surprise,.. I got a lot of very thoughtful information, help and good advice. It was really heartwarming how nice everyone was to me. I don't think that's my doing, it just seems that Crypto-Heads are just cool people, from my limited sample 🙂

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HNIO:
Are you now a Cryptocurrency Covert?

RM:
It's certainly part of the future and the possibilities are exciting! I'm not paying for my groceries with SBD just yet, however the more I learn, the more I like it!

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For anyone interested. These were recommended by @razvanelulmarin for anyone wishing for a simplified explanation of Cryptocurrency. He would like to thank @repholder for his recommendations..

Cryptocurrencies - The Future of Money - HERE

Explain Bitcoin Like I’m 5... HERE

Is Steemit the Ultimate Cryptocurrency Onboarding Tool?

I certainly think it could be. @razvanelulmarin is certainly not alone in his journey on Steemit, through the cryptocurrency world. I think the key point he brought up was Necessity. If you are awarded Cryptocurrency which has some value, you are certainly incentivised to work out how this value could be realised someday. This in turn, forces the user to learn the cryptocurrency basics.

I’m sure that one day, Steemit will have a UI which will take care of all the cryptocurrency intricacies for new user. Until that day comes, it will continue to be a cryptocurrency educational tool like no other…