Flirting with Steem

Over the last couple days with Steemit Inc powering down into secure wallets, @Ned's talk of revamping Steemit.com on the PAL network and a whole lot of community FUD as per usual, I wonder, what has actually changed? Pretty much all of the events have been discussed before including large sell-offs from Steemit and the possibility of forking the ninja mine out of existence (It won't happen) so why are people so reactive to it?

Has your view of Steem changed in someway, have the applications stopped working, developers stopped developing, is the Steem blockchain dead? I seriously doubt it but of course, I could be wrong. Perhaps the difference between me and many others is that I don't mind being wrong and I even plan on it. Remember the rule, don't invest what you aren't willing to lose.

That isn't "lose partially", lost is lost, it means - completely and utterly.

While people keep buying into the FUD that is being spread, it would be interesting to know how many actually bought into Steem itself? I know that I haven't put in a huge amount of money, my Steem has nearly all been sweat equity earned over the last two years. I wish I could have done the same all of my life and been able to invest into startup industry business with nothing more than the words I can write.

Imagine if we could have earned shares in Microsoft or Apple by writing about the things we liked in the 80s. Just think, when Facebook IPO'd in 2012 it was the largest in technology and hit 104 billion in capitalization. Think about that. For 6 years people had been filling Facebook with content and building their business model for free and then when launched publicly, they had to buy in if they wanted a some kind of return on their work. People had been pouring their content onto that platform for years and then were told their work was worth 104 billion but, the work they had put in so far was worth nothing - years of updates and likes, inviting friends, photos and shares.... cold, hard cash suckers. 7 years later, the people who actually give Facebook value still don't get a return.

It is interesting I think that people tend to forget that over the last 3 years, the Steem blockchain has paid out something like 70 million Steem in rewards and a great deal of that has been sold along the way and many were selling at 7-8 dollars. Literally millions of dollars generated, distributed, sold and spent from inception. How many startups can offer that to investors who never bought in? Quite a few of the people on Steem who have any other coins likely owe it to Steem earnings too I would predict.

I was talking to some colleagues about blockchain, ICOs and investing and how so many expect to have their returns much faster than traditional startups. The company I work for has been a startup for 10 years and is now moving into a 'real' growth phase. It has 500+ employees globally. Think about the initial investors who put their faith in an idea and had the willingness to lock their stake up for a decade with no guarantees and no potential return for most of that time. It is a different world to crypto.

Yep. I don't know about you but I am prepared to lose every cent of value in my Steem in the chance that it will actually become something later and as far as I am concerned, not much has changed with the actions of Steemit Inc as, Steemit is not Steemit still. I really do hope that @ned can turn Steemit.com into a killer interface that flagships Steem but, it isn't necessary for them to do it. Just someone.

And my faith in some of the people of Steem is solid still because I know them, I have met them and they are keen on developing this space with or without Steemit Inc.

Foolish? Perhaps. But then, sure things don't have much value and, they don't make for much of an origin story to be told years later.

I like the chase, I like the flirt, I like the results. Why settle for average? Live a little.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]