Steem's opportunity to be the colossal blockchain of the next generation, despite setbacks

Japanese yen coins

.
I'm just a newcomer here, and frankly this is my first post. Nevertheless I continue to be impressed by the architecture behind the Steem blockchain. The best way I think to summarize Steem's incredible advantage verus current (traditional) cryptocurrencies is that you "mine" more coin by creating content, rather than using up hard resources. That's an incredibly lucrative contrast to platforms like Bitcoin or Ethereum where the process of mining is purely destructive, throwing away resources and time in order to generate one more token. Steem is powered purely by the creativity of the human race. New money is generated whenever something of intinsic value is added into the system.

This equation between money and intrinsic value is actually very profound, when you make a hard theoretical analysis. Money IS equated to value in classical economics, which is why gold has been always the gold standard, namely that its value to people was greater than that of any other resource of substance. In more restricted environments like a prison, cigarettes were what people valued the most and it was cigarettes, believe it or not, that would function as money.

Money is MEANT to be equivalent to intrinsic value in classic economic theory. And while gold (etc) fit that understanding well, it has been a puzzle to see how BitCoin would fit into that, because it had no intrinsic value! Having a BitCoin means nothing for you other than what you could buy with it; no one wants it for its own sake. In that sense BitCoins are directly equivalent to paper money, which while very prevalent today are nevertheless still vulnerable to the classical analysis: your paper money, like BitCoin, on its own is literally worthless.

On its own (without any considerations for what you could buy with it), paper money is worthless. If no one suddenly accepted your particular form of paper money, you'd throw it out, for it had no internal meaning and value of its own. That has always been the vulnerability of fiat currency, in contrast to the gold standard. And whereas BitCoin functions a lot like fiat currency, Steem has intrinsic value. It functions like gold, or cigarettes in prison, or a toy soldier to a group of little boys. Currencies with intrinsic value retain their value even if you couldn't buy something else with them.

Now I'm aware of Steem's recent problems. Thankfully it was before my time, and hopefully I don't get to see a rehash of it any time soon. Whether or not Steemit makes it, and I hope it does and it looks like things are on the right path, nevertheless the blockchain technology beneath it is very much the absolutely biggest opportunity in cryptocurrency I have seen yet. Bigger than BitCoin. A value in a Steem token would come from its intrinsic value, not market speculation or conversion to traditional money. A Steem token's value would be powered by yours and my creativity. What an incredible concept. I am proud and grateful to be here!