Out of the pool

I had many conversations over the last week talking about apps and user rewards and one of the things that is often an issue is that the focus of most rely on payment to come out of the inflation pool.

Many of the apps fall into this category as many are inward facing but for mass adoption, they have to be attractive outwardly and should be compelling enough to be of interest to external investors that are willing to buy into the project itself, not just Steem. @steemmonsters falls into this category currently and I hope @chibera will too.

The pool is a limited resource and no matter how many staked users there are, it is distributed proportionally through the vests that draw upon it. It could be through votes or interest earned and of course the 10 percent for witnesses but, it is always limited.

The fastest way to gain access to the pool of course is to buy stake on the open market and currently there is about 53 million Steem up on exchanges at ~60 cents each. That makes a 3 dollar cup of coffee worth 5 Steem but because people have an expectation that Steem should come from the inflation pool, they drink the coffee and complain their post doesn't earn enough whilst at the same time say Steem needs more investors.

Yesterday, I bought some Steem after selling some EOS nonsense I have been holding. EOS might do great things in the future but, I don't really care enough about it to learn what it can do. I am spread too thin in life already. Holding some more Steem even to sell later makes more sense to me at this point.

But, why is it that there is an expectation that Steem must come from the pool, why do so many think that in order to earn here it can only come through posting or buying votes. Everyone wants Steem price to go up but that requires but pressure but if no one is willing to buy, the exchanges keep filling with sellers.

What many don't recognise though is that people are buying, and they are happy that others aren't because that would increase prices. Those who are often buying on the exchanges are the same people who already have draw on the pool but want to increase their investment. Those who only plan on earning from the pool are going to be pushed out of the draw and those who sell what they earn are going to always be reliant on others and at some point, the tap stops altogether.

Of course not everyone can buy on exchanges but it is interesting that people who could think that the pool Steem is somehow more valuable than the exchange Steem. They believe Steem will increase in price but not enough that they will forgo the coffee or chocolate bar. The Steem in the pool is not free either, it comes at a price to earn and a risk cost to holders to distribute abd while people talk of greedy big fish, they forget that there is a large risk if the project fails the more one holds.

I sometimes look at my purchases in the real world in Steem and consider how much work it takes to earn it from the inflation pool. A hundred euros on groceries is about 200 Steem and would take about 50 hours work to earn from the pool. I watch what I buy carefully a5 the moment. A drink at a bar in Finland is 8€ which is about 12 Steem or something like 3 or 4 hours writing. Finns drink a massive amount of Steem in a night.

When we change the perspective and reframe our view of the world, we are likely to change our behaviours to match our new paradigm. What happens when rather than expecting Steem from the pool we find new ways to get it on the exchanges like a part-time job or selling useless items that clutter the garage, would it be so bad?

One thing that tends to happen when people get 'free Steem' from the pool is that they don't appreciate it in the same way as if they bought it with fiat. How many people here have never bought Steem with external worth? I'd say quite a few and it is interesting to consider why.

Whether bought on exchanges or earned from the pool it takes work to get hold of Steem so the question becomes which is the easiest way for each individual and for many at these prices it is likely buying externally.

A hundred, thousand or million Steem has the same vested draw on the pool no matter where it comes from but ones attachment to it can differ significantly.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
_{(posted from phone)}