Rethinking the future of investing

I have written a few times about a future with a Steem price of 100 dollars which I use because it is a nice round arbitrary number. But, have people really thought through what it would mean if that was to come about?

Lately I have been thinking about privacy or anonymity as considering this is the blockchain, everything is visible. At this point it isn't such a big problem for most of the users here but what happens with 100 dollar Steem? Pretending that Steem is 1 dollar now and an account carries a 10 cent vote, that vote draws the same on the pool but, at 100 would be worth 10 dollars / 100 dollars a day. It is a straight line.

Of course, this doesn't factor in all the new users who will have some stake drawing on the pool but, if this was your account, what would change in your life? I am not just talking about what you would buy or do with the stake here, in your location of the world, what does 100 dollars value a day mean to you, your family, community or... the people who might want access to that value themselves?

In some countries, 100 dollars a day is 50x the average daily income. Will this cause new problems in life that people haven't considered very deeply? Remember that if Steem is $100, a $100 vote only draws 1 Steem from the pool. In this scenario, a large account that has a 100 vote today would have a 10,000 dollar vote or a $100,000 draw per day voting at 10 times. They would still 'only' draw 1000 Steem from the pool though.

This takes us all into a new realm of possibility and unfortunately into an area that I didn't think I would ever venture. All though they aren't healthy for the system in the current state, Bidbots in some form will become the norm except, most normal users aren't likely to have access.

A large account with that kind of draw on the pool will still want to get a return on investment but is unlikely going to manually curate posts and bump them $10,000 each. But, their staked resource is highly valuable and could be used for other purposes, like funding Dapps, startups, research, large scale community projects.

If we want Steem to really make a global impact, it has to become more and more connected with the real world and one way to do that is for large staked players to not only distribute but fund real world businesses in various ways to be able to support through crypto and blockchain rather than have them turn to alternative currencies like, fiat. The investors come into add value to the blockchain, the blockchain sends value back out to add value to the world in which we live.

This is essentially what all blockchains and currencies need to be able to do but Steem and similar have somewhat of an advantage as it is not narrowly focused, has a growing community and can work in conjunction and alongside many other crypto projects to satisfy the diverse needs of businesses and communities.

For the individual users who are here now, many who are building and thinking long term are going to find themselves in some surprisingly uncomfortable positions perhaps though. When mainstreaming happens and your friends join, are you going to vote their what is for lunch posts or that promising new company developing energy tech? The one that is offering percentage in exchange for your support?

A 5000 Steem Powered account (minimum dolphin) currently has a vote of 28 cents. 100x that (82 dollar Steem) is a vote value of 28 dollars / 280 dollars a day. That might be a decent amount to be part of crowd sourcing investors in new projects. How much of the 280 would you use for yourself, your family and friends or, at a chance to make more from it and support distribution and decentralization efforts while growing the cryptosphere value?

This is again something that everyone has to remember that in order for crypto and blockchains to take the value of centralized currency, it has to put value into the businesses and communities that currently rely on traditionally sourced funds. This means that it has to change hands at crypto level and not be used to continually covert into fiat by users. This takes a mountain of infrastructure that is yet to come but eventually, we need to break ties with fiat by supporting crypto only economies.

At the moment people talk about investors earning passive income through bidbots and this is part of the problem. It shouldn't be passive, it should be actively working to develop the cryptosphere and bring more and more business users into the crypto-economies. In time, the largest investors will realize that to truly make a lot of value, they need to support and create crypto powered businesses with a lot of value rather than those who are cashing back into fiat to support the centralized economies.

I obviously haven't thought enough about this yet but this is my first foray into the area to see what I know, don't know, have mistaken, or can add to. Again, the value of Steem is in the community and the information and value we hold to empower each other in a multitude of ways and in time we will expand dramatically and welcome in a whole new generation of Steemian. Hopefully we can find ways that will support them and replace the crumbling centralized infrastructure currently in place.

For those with any stake at the moment, a future where all this works out is going to raise personal questions of what it truly means to be a part of Steem, you local and the global communities and economy. Perhaps it is worth thinking it over a little now, just in case we get what we want and Steem goes to the moon.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]