Thinking Out Loud #1 - Getting rid of SBDs, The Minnow Makers Savings Plan & Looking Outward not in
It's Saturday evening after a long, busy and rather complicated week.
Time to sit back, take a pause and think out about what comes next.
Planting cabbages, filing tax returns, and fixing cars are for another post.
Here, now, I am thinking Steem, as I often do, for many hours of each day.
Yes I admit it, this is going to be another post about Steem.
I take heed of the increasing voices saying there are too many Steem posts on Steem.
And I as I read so many of those posts to produce the Steem News every day I feel that sentiment perhaps sharper than most.
While I am sure some of those Steem related posts are written to be on vogue and on vote, I believe the majority are written by authors who care deeply about the platform and want to see it thrive and blossom into what we all hope it can.
If those hard core, hard caring Steemians can't give their commentary, their feedback, their analysis, their suggestions and their ideas about to how make the platform stronger, then who can...?
So for my Saturday night reflection I am pitching in three more rather off-the-cuff, shooting from the hip, ideas for a better Steem...
1. Getting rid of SBDs
Steem is complicated. Complicated to the point of confusion and dismissal for many 'average users' that might look to join the platform.
Our trio of 'currencies' - STEEM, Steem Power and SBDs - doesn't help.
Cutting down from three to two would certainly help simplify Steem.
SBDs are the obvious candidate. Their supposed role as a peg to the US dollar seems to be long gone. Now they seem just to be a source of more inflation to the platform.
Steem economics are not my strong suit by any means, but I read with interest a recent post from long time Steemian and ex-witness @liberosist...
Number one on his hitlist to fix Steem is cancelling SBD...
SBD currently serves no purpose other than to destroy STEEM's value.
From the comments this idea seems to have the support of a number of top witnesses such as @yabapmatt and @pharesim.
I am sure it would not be a trivial process to drop SBDs, but I am equally sure that it is not impossible.
- Witnesses & Steemit Inc - what would it take to make this happen?
2. The Minnow Makers Savings Plan
One thing we all want is more people to buy more STEEM.
Of course it is great when whales like @theycallmedan buy 250K STEEM, but it ideally needs to happen at all levels in all amounts.
But buying STEEM is not simple. Particularly for the many people not already hooked into cryptocurrency exchanges or in countries where cryptocurrency is banned or heavily regulated.
As far as I know you can't readily buy STEEM with PayPal or directly with a debit card. You have to go through several complicated steps with not insignificant fees.
I have regularly been asked by newer Steemians "how do I buy STEEM?".
Often they just have $10 or $20 to spare but want to support the platform and make faster progress.
But there is no easy answer I can give them. It varies from country to country and in many cases much of the $10 would be lost to the fees.
Ten dollars may not seem much. But imagine if say 1,000 Steemians bought $10 of STEEM every week for a year. That is nearly 4 million STEEM at current prices.
That's a useful amount of STEEM to be taken off the market.
Wouldn't it be great if we could come up with a much simpler system for steemians to regularly buy small amounts of STEEM?
I know its money changer licenses and all that jazz...
Maybe there might be a route to explore with some sort of 'Savings Plan' approach?
Players making regular payments to third party savings accounts that aggregate the small amounts to make 'bulk purchases' of STEEM that is then distributed to the 'savers' steem accounts.
It is complicated and would have many difficulties, not least of which would be moving exchange rates but I am just spitballing ideas...
Something like a Christmas Savings Club perhaps.
With the current price of STEEM if someone was putting $10 a week into such a scheme they could go from zero to minnow in less than two months.
Imaging if we had 500 new minnows on the platform every month.
Bring on the Minnow Maker Savings Club!
- Any Steem/Crypto/Finance experts out there who could think of a way to make this happen?
3. Looking Outward not in
The default setting for many on Steem is to talk about Steem on Steem with other steemians.
That is what we do best. Myself included.
But for Steem to grow, prosper, expand and thrive we need to do a 180 and turn our attention to the outside world.
More people and more projects are now beginning to do this.
@Steempress for example recently announced their strategy for onboarding the masses in the Wordpress world. @acidyo and OCD are working in Reddit to bring people on to the platform. @Steemleo is looking to the investor community. @Travelfeed is recruiting travel bloggers. Others go to speak about Steem about crypto conferences.
It is for all of us to look beyond the walls of Steem and encourage new people to join us.
I am thinking long and hard about how I can best play my part.
Can I write different content. Could I make shows with wider appeal.
Is there anything I can do effectively on the marketing front?
I think I need to revisit my idea of the Personal Marketing Plan that I began to explore a few months back...
I am already on some of this, but I need to speed up and drive faster.
- Have you got a Personal Marketing Plan for Steem?
That's it for my first 'Thinking Out Loud'.
Tomorrow, if the rain stops a little, I am off to see some exotic animals.
Then another week begins with the second TRIBE.talk show on MSP Waves...
- TRIBE.talk - with @reggaesteem, @taskmaster4450 & @sumatranate - Monday 30 September, 8pm UTC on MSP Waves
Thank you for reading and good night.
[ image by Romuald Bézard from Pixabay.com ]
I like to talk about Steem and I like to read about Steem. Also I notice that several who were complaining about others talking about Steem also talk about it.
So, I have mixed feelings about SBD.
I totally want to see us stop focusing on our own "tinkering" and promote Steem.
Also as always I am highly concerned about the idea of Quality Content and attacking content come back to Steem.
We do not have a shared vision, but making people feel bad about what they are interested in is dumb.
Social Network vs. Content Discovery...
We know people will join website and connect and communicate casually.
I don't see any working models or making of a business model for Author Competitions.
I wish you would do a show SteemVision. Yes, this is an official request.
Changes to SBDs would need some indepth discussion and debate. Cancelling SBDs would have wider ramifications I am sure.
Determining who might determine what is good quality and what is no is thorny path that needs to be trod carefully for sure.
We still have more of a gaping chasm of unconsensus than a streamlined and refined vision for Steem.
That could indeed make an interesting show. Let's talk on that...
Yes, I would like to see us get rid of SBD. it’s a lot of unnecessary debt that adds to the complexity of Steem.
Agreed.
In my opinion SBDs can easily be salvaged by creating a smart contract that allows stake holders to create SBDs using Steem collateral; the exact same way that Dai/Ethereum operate.
This would keep SBD pegged to the dollar 1000 times better than it is today and we wouldn't bleed inflation from printing too much during the bull market.
Another idea to explore. I think I would need to see that in pictures to fully understand...
I think a good way off distributing steem would be through use of gift cards like amazon gift cards or the btc prepaid poker chips.
That would be a good idea. If I recall someone tried something like that about a year ago but it never seemed to take off. I guess regulations got in the way.
https://steem.com.ph/how-to-buy-steem-in-the-philippines
That is excellent. Thank you.
I know many people are working on onboarding new users. While this is necessary, it's also necessary to simplify some things around here and one is indeed getting rid of SBD. Liberosist has some good points.
Yes as above, I am all for simplification of all parts of Steem.
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@spinvest is already offering a savings club for the spi token and organises monthly group buys which collects fiat, purchases steem, converts to spi and distributes to investors.
The same process could be done with one less stage. It needs someone or a group to organise, and people to know about it.
Is there a way to build it into steem-engine?
I must follow @spinvest more closely.
What methods do they have for payment of fiat? Do they take PayPal?
Yes, you can use paypal and transfer to a paypal account.
I have suggested to @silverstackeruk (the founder of @spinvest) that he comes on tribe talks - perhaps you could contact him directly on discord? @silverstackeruk#3236
We've just had the first @spinvest club meeting, some good ideas coming up.
The whole raison d’être for creating the Natural Medicine Tribe was to be able to reach the global community of people, bloggers, therapists, etc who are interested in natural Medicine, health and health, provide a space where they can earn a token for publishing quality content, and use that token for a number of related uses, such as courses, etc.
SP is not really a 3rd currency, it’s staked STEEM. But yes, SBD is a bit weird.
And yes, an easier way to buy STEEM could be useful, especially if we want people coming via niches to easily get their native token also.
For Natural Medicine, I wondered if we couldn’t set up some kind of annual subscription type service where they pay something like $50/year (I made that figure up, mainly because it’s the annual
Membership for Medium), which when paid is converted immediately into STEEM or LOTUS (our token) and delivered into their wallet. It’s just a brainstorm at this stage, would need to be workshopped by economics/math/dev type people to work out how to make it viable and how to actually make it happen — like some kind of pay portal!!!
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I will follow closely how it all goes with Natural Medicine.
Will be interested to see how it goes with the subscription model.
I think while things are still hard for newbies regarding buying and understanding steem it behooves steemians of means to support the hell out of new people with votes and temporary delegations to hook them in. If someone sticks it out and sees the opportunity here they will figure out how to buy it. That's what happened to me. Now when I bring in steemians I do that. If they truly want to buy and can't figure it out they venmno or papal me money and I send the steem. Onboarding needs to become so simple anyone can do it. That was one of the things I loved about Share2steem . It was easy to show instagram influencers how to monetize their lives. It had its problems but that was my favorite dapp. Getting steem on coinbase would solve a decent portion of the hurdles we are facing I think.
Simplification of steem will be a key element of our success.