+1 I know I'm very late to this thread but if Steemit did this they could undercut all the 3rd parties as they'd only need to pay for the initial cost of creating the initial systems, and then the processing costs that come from the conversions. It wouldn't need to charge any fees (the profit comes in the form of the user). They could even get some kind of deal with 3rd parties to make that happen for mutual benefit. An exchange for example could offer a much better deal than it would normally since it would be guaranteeing such a large amount of new custom.

If Steemit want to ultimately be a social media system that can compete (and outpace) Facebook and Reddit they need to create the tools to be able to make it as simple and easy as absolutely possible to get set up with Steemit, and they need to do it quickly. Even just understanding what passwords I'm meant to guard with my life or not has me scratching my head. (Steemit should also get hardware wallet support so that people can feel even more secure with their account)

For there to be the sort of reach Steemit hopes it needs to appeal to those who aren't interested in cryptocurrency apart from the very basic pitch that a site like reddit can pay them to use it! Frankly there should be a simple way to purely invest with Steemit where people just want to use it to get the compound interest reward of Steem Power without the need for the social media benefits.

Jerry Banfield talked a lot in his videos about those guys on Twitter and Facebook with the massive following coming over and bringing their followers with them. Yes that would be ideal, but that's never going to happen when the barrier to entry here is too high. Oh sure you can get an account fairly easily after approval, but there needs to be basic and easy to use internal system created ASAP, so that's it can get as close to ease of use of Amazon, PayPal, Reddit and Facebook. Won't that be the goal anyway? The sooner it's improved the more people it can attract.

The barrier for Steemit taking off really isn't the crypto market getting stronger and more well known, it's the actual site itself and they can do something about that right now. I don't know if they are? Because the longer Steemit doesn't have the user friendliness I'm talking about it leaves an opportunity for another competing platform to appear with all the features I'm referring to all at once. Steemit would then be in a very dangerous position because the new platform would be riding Steamit's success as proof of it's own. Coins would be so cheap it would be worth people grabbing them and it would be suddenly super easy for everyone - even the normies - to jump on board. All they'd need to do is prove their platform was as stable as Steamit so long as it had the same support. It will be much harder to do this if it's allowed to get to this point.

See what I'm saying? I'm still trying to figure out how to get Steem into my account. It shouldn't need to be so complicated.