RE: 1st Time | Invested in Steem
Thank you @beunconstrained.
Yes, I am willing to lose everything that I invest in Steem. This isn't an in-depth analysis but I believe there is a 25% chance that I am wrong and I can lose almost my entire investment.
That's just an opinion based on some of the research I have done. I am more familiar with the larger world economy, the U.S. economy and China than the cryptocurrency space, but I feel like Steem has some advantages over cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and EOS.
@emaferice and I have been using social media for years. I barely earned anything on my personal blog but I have already earned $18 USD on Steemit and in a short time.
We also earned $0.90 on @steepshot by uploading @zaclucasrice's Instagram photos. So we went from earning nothing to something. That is one of the things that gave me confidence in @steem.
We earned money on YouTube before but there are a lot of issues with YouTube censoring their users, they selectively promote specific content and I ultimately think they will be rolling out their own content in the future at higher rates much like Netflix is doing now.
The name of the game for networks like Amazon, Google, Netflix and YouTube is to build a network by connecting people, entrepreneurs and businesses and then hijacking the network with their own products and services.
Amazon is starting to do this, Netflix is doing this and YouTube does this to a small extent but I believe they will be more aggressive at it in the future.
If you look at the #1 trait of successful business people is that they invented something, but didn't do it for the money. The money came as a result of the quality of their contribution. I would focus that way - it isn't about how much money you make from posts. It is about the fact that the Steem blockchain is immutable and cannot be changed and lives on forever. This means what you contribute, if it is of value to others, will have a longer lasting effect than posting on a website that could be taken down if the site host loses interest or profitability in hosting it. Steemit is pretty much here to stay, so if we all contribute high quality content that people value, then the money will come organically. This is how the rich get rich. They don't do things for some short term gain. It is the longer term return, ideally passively, that makes one wealthy and sustainable. Working hard is for the birds. Working to get a small return, every day for the rest of your life, for doing no additional work is where the action is.
I think that is what I will ultimately be doing with @steem. I enjoy writing on the Steem blockchain but I think the biggest gain will be from the increase in Steem's price, not my individual contributions.
My individual contributions will still make a difference but it will make an incredible difference if my contributions are coupled with a good sized portfolio of Steem Power.
The current bear market in Steem and cryptocurrencies in general is allowing me to accumulate Steem Power at a price that I can afford. I wouldn't have been able to do this when prices were at $3 to $4 and I think there will come a time when the opportunity to purchase Steem under $1 will be gone.
I look at this as either an investor or a speculator. I've never been a successful speculator. I know a lot of people who are (day traders, etc.) but I take a far more long term, pragmatic view of anything I invest in. Before I go in, I assess risks vs. rewards. With Steem, I'm looking at where the platform might be in 5 years time. The thing that drives its success will be the quality of content. That's it. Period. Not the number of whales, upvoting bots, etc. That is all static. The true frequency is whether or not we have a platform that has content that can rival the other media distribution methods. We have to have something that can compete with YouTube, TV, Facebook, etc. What I'm seeing in terms of the quality of content doesn't yet have the draw to bring in the masses. If you look at the quality of dTube videos, for example, there is no compelling reason to have someone stop watching YouTube and start watching dTube. We all can change that by increasing the quality of what we do. By taking some sort of action in terms of being better hosts, better journalists, better writers, better videographers. The barrier to entry in producing, for example, a documentary movie is years of education, screen writing, research, etc. That is why the quality of production out of Hollywood is the best in the world. I worked in Hollywood for many years, so I've seen that from the inside. I can't do it - at least not yet. But if the only barrier to entry for someone to produce content on the Steem blockchain is their smartphone and a decent upload Internet connection, we are forgetting the person on the other side of the computer screen that is watching it. It is about producing content that actually gets eyeballs to watch or to read it. Without that level of quality, this platform will die off like some shareware software title, and your investment will die accordingly.
However if you are speculating on short term, I have no idea if this will go up or down. It seems to be tied to BTC price fluctuations like most alt-coins. I just see it as a high risk investment, and I'll keep my exposure light until I see the quality of content increasing. My hope is that the maturity of contributors and hosts go up, just as it did for YouTube in about 2007 or so. Back then the quality of YouTube content was pretty poor. Until we saw the Casey Niestats of the world enter that space. Then everything started to rise to the level of the peers, and I feel this might well happen with dTube and Steem will rise accordingly. That's the bet I'm willing to have with this blockchain.
I am not Day-trading Steem either but timing is still very important.
In order to be an investor instead of a speculator you would need a method to determine Steem's value, and then only invest when Steem is undervalued.
Since @steem is not a public company on a stock exchange, determining it's value is much more difficult.
I have a friend that has done well by following the advice from a book called The Intelligent Investor and he only invested in companies that traded below their book value. It served him well and I think that is the main source of material that separated the concepts of investors and speculators (Warren Buffet got rich by following the advice in that book).
So as an investor, @beinconstrained what do you believe @steem is worth in terms of market cap for Steem as a cryptocurrency, and what was your method for determining that value?
P.S. If you haven't already, consider downloading Steemify by @blockbrothers. It will notify you when someone mentions you and there is no need to log-in. I mentioned you in the comments of @fundition's post:
https://steemit.com/fundition/@fundition/contribution-is-one-of-our-basic-human-needs
If you already saw it, please disregard this last part of my message.
Thanks for the tip for Steemify. I'll check it out.
What is @steem worth? Hmmmm.... Well it is somewhere between what the value of an Internet domain that has a blog that no one reads or consumes it's media, or Facebook. The fact that Facebook can be measured in value because it can monetize itself through advertising revenue means that they can just track that revenue and correlate it with the number of new signups, etc. (potential audience size). From that, you can forward project value and the market comes to some consensus of value.
This is the key - two factors: 1. Adoption rate and 2. Monetization value. If this platform is just a market for upvote clickies, then I see this as worth nothing more than a stupid little Internet video game. If this platform, however, has valuable content that can take someone's attention from CNN or a Sitcom on TV, and get them to spend 30 minutes a day scouring through great content, then it is worth billions.
So my speculation on this comes down to content quality. If the quality isn't focused on what is of interest to the reader, watcher, listener, etc. then this is a failed experiment and with it your $ investment will go down the drain. But there are a number of things going for this platform - mainly that the blockchain is immutable. So if YouTube keeps de-monetizing or shadow banning video content that they don't agree with, those publishing said content will come here (or somewhere else like BitTube to publish). That will bring the subscribers with it. But if they don't choose any Steem based platform because the content quality is a joke, then they won't want to be associated with this and they will find another place.
We all play a role in increasing the value here by creating great content - not treating this like some video game where upvoting using some trickery makes you money. That might work in the short term, but it is not an "investment". That is a game, and typically you spend 10x the effort to get a return there. Investors invest in something that doesn't require a lot of human effort to get the return. At least the smart ones do.
I am willing to speculate with this platform until it proves to be pointless. I'm not sure (in the year or so I've been here) whether it has gotten better or worse. I'll make that determination in 12 months or so, and either pull my activity off of here and move it elsewhere, or ramp up as I see more audience numbers increasing.
My family just bought 200 more Steem today, and we now have 3,450 SP.
In other-words, we surpassed my original goal of 3,000 Steem 😀😁👍🖐️
@beunconstrained (off-topic),
I checked your account on SteemD.com to see if your voting power was low and I noticed something interesting - your recovery account is @blocktrades instead of @steem.
Is there a way to set the recovery account for our Steem accounts?
I'm interested to know this since I want to prevent losing any of our family's accounts, and having a good recovery account would help!
~ @chrisrice
Not sure. I didn't do anything specifically to enable this, although my Steem purchases have always been done through Blocktrades.