I have been following the various efforts to gain promotion for the Steem Blockchain. The most recent efforts were by @timcliff (number 2 witness), where he crowed sourced ideas for memes to attract new investment. There have also seen efforts by @stephenkendal to market steem to the masses.

Who has the deepest pockets?

The world of finance is so much larger than the blockchain market caps most people are aware of, in the world of finance, trillion dollar balance sheets exist. To put that into prospective, there are companies that have balance sheets with assets that are 10 times greater than the whole cryptocurrency market space.

A recent list of financial institutions with over $trillion in assets under management. Some were clients that I helped to audit/advise while working at KPMG from 2006 to 2011

Rank Asset / Fund Management Country AUM (USD)
1 Blackrock Investment Management United States $5.4 Trillion
2 Vanguard United States $4.2 Trillion
3 State Street Global Advisors United States $2.56 Trillion
4 Fidelity Investments United States $2.2 Trillion
5 JP Morgan Asset Management United States $1.8 Trillion
6 BNY Mellon Investment Management United States $1.7 Trillion
7 PIMCO Investment Management United States $1.5 Trillion
8 Amundi Asset Management France $1.4 Trillion
9 Capital Group United States $1.4 Trillion
10 Prudential Financial United States $1.2 Trillion
11 Legal & General United Kingdom $1.1 Trillion
12 Wellington Management United States $1 Trillion
13 Northern Trust United States $1 Trillion

Blockchain awareness amongst legacy finance institutions

The leaders of the legacy financial system are slowly becoming more aware of the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency, so how do we as steem blockchain users communicate and interact with these legacy players?

There are a few sources of news that finance professionals read religiously, the ones I am aware of are The Economist, The Financial Times, Bloomberg and Reuters.

When one of them mentions your project in an article, it's a great opportunity to respond and engage.

So when The Economist made the following comment about the steem blockchain:

"The most elaborate working crypto-economic model, however, is Steemit, an online forum which rewards its 1m or so registered users for posting contributions or rating content with real money in the form of steem, another sort of token. One type is liquid and can be cashed out using an exchange, which is meant to provide near-instant gratification and attract users. The other, called “steem power”, is less easily convertible and supposed to keep members engaged: the more they own, the more weight their votes have." - The Economist, June 30th, 2018

Link to article here: https://www.economist.com/special-report/2018/06/30/blockchain-technology-may-offer-a-way-to-re-decentralise-the-internet

What we should do to capitalise on this opportunity

I would encourage all of our top 20 witnesses, who in essence are the elected representatives that we vote on to respond to this article in a letter which The Economist could then publish as our response.

@gtg, @timcliff, @jesta, @roelandp, @good-karma, @blocktrades, @ausbitbank, @aggroed, @smooth.witness, @someguy123, @followbtcnews, @clayop, @lukestokes.mhth, @curie, @thecryptodrive, @anyx, @xeldal, @pfunk, @cervantes, and @drakos

I am not sure what your writing skills are like, but I have prepared an intial draft which you can use or change as you see fit.

"Dear Sirs, we as the elected witnesses of the Steem Blockchain, would like to thank you for recognition of our project and it's initiative to create a social media platform that rewards it's users directly with no middlemen or dependence on advertising. This is a model that has never been tried before in this way and after operating for more than two years, we believe that the Steem Blockchain has shown that it can survive and grow. There are still questions in respect to it's potential size and if the current rate of growth will continue, with some aiming for a social media platform the size of Reddit and others seeking to surpass Facebook. Our self governance system has allowed the Steem Blockchain to reach consensus with no central authority on 19 updates (hardforks) and we are currently preparing for our 20th on 25th September 2018.

We would like to clarify that steemit is a decentralised app that allows users to interact with the Steem Blockchain and there are other applications such as DTube, DLive, DSound and Busy which all allow users to interact with the Steem Blockchain. Allowing users to share videos and music while being rewarded in Steem Tokens. These tokens can then be exchanged for local currencies. We have users all around the world who have done just that to pay for their phone bills from their earnings in places like Bangladesh, Uganda and the Philippines.

The next major update for our Blockchain will happen in 2019 with the introductions of SMT's, much like how ERC20 tokens allowed crowd funding for ICO's on the Ethereum Blockchain, SMT's will allow projects to create their own social networks using the Steem Blockchain or transition their current social media to a tokenised system that better rewards users.

Your sincerely,

Top 20 Witness of the Steem Blockhain"

If you think the witnesses should write to The Economist, RESTEEM and UPVOTE this post!

@kabir88