The Steemit Economy

This is a comparison with bitcoin to see what Steem needs to do to build a similar ecosystem

Earning coins

In this area, steem is way ahead of bitcoin. In order to earn bitcoin you either need to raise millions to build a mining operation, or persuade your employer to pay you in bitcoin (very rare). In addition there is a minor economy on bitcointalk where people sell goods and services for bitcoin.

However, you can earn steem (or steem backed dollars and steempower) through writing on steemit, through curating on steemit, and through mining.

Suggestion - it would be nice to have a gig marketplace, listed in the panel on the top right under the three lines, where employers could write help wanted ads and prospective employees could sell services, all paid for in steem.

Scrypt pools

Scrypt mining pools like those belonging to prohashing mine profitable scrypt coins, and then sell them and get paid in the coin of their choice. Most of the time people choose to be paid in bitcoin, but according to their website, people choose litecoin, dash, ethereum, doge etc.

This creates a buying pressure for the coin that the miners are being paid in. Sadly none choose to be paid in steem - but that is always an option if we can persuade enough scrypt miners that steem is the coin of the future.

Gambling

Gambling played a huge part in creating a "use" for bitcoin, and a steady buying pressure where people converted fiat into bitcoin in order to play. Who remembers Satoshi Dice?

Some alts have developed a small gambling industry - looking at gamblingwithbitcoin.com you can gamble with Ethereum, Monero, Litecoin, Doge, Dash, Peercoin and Reddcoin. But there have been no games developed for steem.

Voucher Sites

A whole industry of voucher sites sprung up where you could buy amazon or walmart or target vouchers with bitcoin, and then spend them. Services like Gyft allowed you to use an app on your phone to buy in actual shops, not just online. Sites like Crypto de Change allowed you to buy vouchers using doge, litecoin and dash as well.

With Christmas looming, we really need a service that allows people to convert Steem into vouchers without having to go through the cumbersome process of converting steem into bitcoin and then bitcoin into fiat and then paying in fiat.

Payment Processors

If you are in Europe, you can pay for stuff using Steem via Bitwala, but they say that hardly anyone is using it. If Steem is to take off in it's own right, people really need to use it, otherwise these services will just drop the coin.

A substitute for the fiat system if it breaks down

A big driver in Bitcoin going mainstream was when the European Union seized the savings of the people of Cyprus in 2013 without warning. Not just savings either - businesses who had deposited cash in order to make payroll by direct deposit got the money swiped, which meant their staff went unpaid. And when Greece had all it's banks shut in 2015, people started to look for alternatives - what do you do if the fiat system doesn't work, how do you buy food and pay your bills?

I've read a lot of posts by wannabe anarchists on this site - but none has acknowledged that Steem can't step into the breach if the fiat system dies, as things stand . Which means that in a crisis, people will use bitcoin. If we want that to change, if we want Steem to be a contender, then the ecosystem that allows you to spend steem needs to be built.

Conclusion

There is a lot of work to be done to build the steem ecosystem, and the developers need to stop tweaking Steemit and let it settle down, and focus on building these other relationships and systems so that a rounded economy starts developing.