My Final Pleading For The Good of Steem

Hello everybody,

I am writing this as a final post regarding the growth of Steem, at least for the moment, as I have got really exhausted with my work/life.

First of all, for the people who not know me, I am just a very dedicated person to this blockchain. I think that all of us right here should dedicate ourselves much more to this blockchain for a much higher goal than getting rich fast, or than getting rich at all. Let me start it with yet another short story.

In 2014, I was in my early college when I participated to an engineering competition organized by IBM. The competition was more of a case study where we should come up with ideas and an entire plan about a topic that we didn't knew before. Do you think what that people asked us to make?

The case study was about how would we bring Bitcoin to the massive use and how would we make it mainstream in our country.

I won't give any details about the rest of the competition other than the fact that I came up wit a pretty lame idea on the second place. With all that said, I believe that if I got at that time, the brilliant idea to distribute it through a social platform, the 1'st place would have looked like nothing.

Many people right here do not understand completely the power of the idea behind this platform and how finding it is entirely changing the rules of the crypto game. Do you see, Steem makes a much greater favor to this world, it simply serves for a better purpose and maybe it gives more opportunities to our future. Right now, this blockchain where we talk and where we interact is bringing cryptocurrencies close to anybody's use, it changes the way that regular people are seeing internet and electronic, cryptographic, money.

Is it still needed for me to tell how much this world can be and eventually will be revolutionized by the massive adoption of the blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies? Since we are already here, no, I believe that you know a few good reasons for adopting these technologies.

Short conclusion by this point: Support Steem from charity, to help creating a world that we all want to live in.

_{^{Ten points to who finds out where I took the last expression from}}

About investing in Steem

You know that there are more that 1500 coins and tokens that you can invest in. Here, on this corner of the network, there are a lot of crypto investors. Steem and Steemit Incorporated somehow succeeded to attract them here and to build an entire community of small and big investors and lately even regular internet users.

My point here is that you can chose a lot of coins to invest in, you can invest in Bitcoin, as many people were and still are investing, in Ethereum, which are yet plain old coins, you can invest in tokens like EOS which do not bring anything to the table yet but summer promises, you can invest in newer coins like Cardano or IOTA, but none of these will bring you a passive income, just for holding your money, as Steem does. Actually there are very few tokens that do this without the need of running a node, miner, whatever. Steem does offer all of these things, and you do not even need to run any complex hardware, not even for the wallet. You can just upvote people and earn curation rewards. You can simply hold Steem Power and you will get more Steem. My question here is:

Why would be even greedier than that, to upvote ourselves?

By holding Steem, you benefit for the increase of the price of this coin. Why do we want more than that? Ethereum does not give its investors anything (and I am struggling not to say "a shit"). Bitcoin does not give its investors anything. And these coins still have a lot of popularity and fees. Not to mention that there are scams and unsuccessful ICOs among them, where people would definitely lose money.

I am asking you to see the investment in Steem the same as you see the investment into any other token out there, you buy it for the long run, hold it as much as you can, then when you feel that you should sell it, just sell it or redistribute it through your portfolio or whatever. Do not see it like a way to invest and benefit of the actual inflation to get a nice ROI. That inflation was made in order to avoid fees, encourage interaction, activity and good content. Don't forget that you will anyway get a part of the pie upvoting others also.

Only if we change the way we perceive Steem rewards, we will be able to make this a better place, to increase together the value of this coin that all of us we hold right now. Just imagine the boost of the price of Steem if from tomorrow, no, actually from today, right now, we stop upvoting ourselves and upvote the others, upvote better content, engage more, express our opinions, flag spam and plagiarism, and be kind to each other. This community will boost in users and soon, there will be so many of them (of course, spamming at the beginning) who with time will get so used and attached to this better place, that will start to give value back. The problem is not at the blockchain, the spammers, the rules on the blockchain, but actually at us.

I hope this is not getting too emotional for you, for me this is the reality.

These changes and the approach that I am proposing and encouraging is much far away from the get in, get rich - get out one that some are used to it, and there will be a lot of people who will say that this is not in the favor of investors. Well, it is actually in the favor of investors, but they should not seek immediate profits. This is exactly as we tell small minnows at the beginning that they will not earn much money at the beginning, they will have to take time. It is the very same case with investors. Why would they seek for 20% profit a year by upvoting themselves, when they could help the growth of Steem and get a double of the price in less than two months?

Anybody holding Steem Power should be committed to the blockchain, trying to improve it, or to support the others who have the time to do it, and just grow together. How amazing this place would be if all of us would do that?

Others will say that this change in the mindset of the community will just pump the number of newcomers and that is not providing much value. I have already answered this one in a discussion had with @timcliff yesterday. Here is a part of my comment:

Does the over 2 billion users of Facebook bring any value to it?

Actually they do, and they make it one of the most successful social media of this world, and we all know that it is a lot of lame content over there and a lot of misinformation. But economically speaking, with an increased number of users, comes a greater value of the platform. There will be advertisers who will pay for their content to be seen, there will be companies that will want their product to reach this market and this society that we all represent, and it will come with an increase in the price of Steem. There were a lot of them who took advantage of this blockchain in order to increase their popularity, and I am sure that there will be more if the Steem user base increases. My personal belief is that Steemit Inc. should focus more on this type of income that could sustain both the company and the blockchain on the long term. If a SP delegation or upvote could increase one's visibility and considering how much are people paying for that, think about it more when the userbase of Steem will be ten times higher. Or one hundred times higher. If you can visualize that, well it will be just 5% of what facebook has right now.

That was just as a part of my replies to @timcliff's proposal to fight spam, you could follow the discussion there, but I have made a summary of my points also.

Further reading

If you want to read more about how you can make it a good supporter of the platform, in case you have a big stake, besides delegating Steem Power to curation programs or communities which target supporting newcomers, at the end of A switch of mindset that could change Steem forever! I have gave an example of a good whale on Steem. You can read the article, to get a clearer idea about the importance of these actions, or just the end of it in order to understand how others contribute.

Short note on flag war

I did not took the time to talk more about the war of flags even though I was asked about it, simply because I see no point in it. If big investors like @haejin, @ranchorelaxo, @berniesanders or anybody else involved in the war would even take the time to read and understand my pleading, there would simply be no war.

I hope you all understand what I am talking about and give it a serious thought. I know this is an utopia, but we can make it so close to reality.