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First, a brief disclaimer: I'm no cryptocurrency expert by any stretch of the imagination. The ideas included are my own, and represent things that have occurred to me in my brief time on Steemit. Also, I'm the first to admit to my own woeful ignorance when it comes to Steemit and Steem. If this doesn't deter you, read on.

Not to sound overly grandiose, but I believe that Steemit and Steem represent a potential turning point in cryptocurrencies, and in currency in general.

Physical money is an industrial and pre-industrial idea, one that doesn't belong in the current epoch of human civilization. In the industrial age if someone took a can of something off of the shelf, there was one less of that thing. Physical money and it's online analogs are very much a part of the same idea. They are physical, semi-zero sum game ideologies applied to information systems, which can disseminate nearly infinitely by comparison.

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For example, if you give out a digital can of something, you still have infinite cans of that something left (for as long as you have the blueprint for it). The real miracle and potential of cryptocurrencies, aside from their decentralization aspect, is that they have the ability to model value directly. For example, with physical money ideologies you need ridiculous and clunky methods (such as commercials and advertising) to extract value from valuable products of various sorts.

But with cryptocurrencies that is changing. For example, Steemit has no need for advertising to clutter up and detract value with its ugliness for exactly this reason. It can represent the value directly. In other words, the fact that someone values something should be enough to generate exchangeable value.

This is the thing that has been fully realized with Steemit.

As far as I know, nothing else of this kind exists. Imagine a world where anything you do or create is inherently valuable. You wouldn't have to worry about 'monetizing your passions', you could simply begin on your life's work and not have to worry about things like, ya know, eating and having a place to live.

Steemit is new. And there are a few people on it who will happily inform you that it isn't perfect. But there's a real opportunity to initiate a change in paradigm away from traditional ideologies. I think we're going to see more things like Steemit in the future, things that begin to ultimately transform the world.

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And as I make clear in this article, I think it's going to happen a LOT faster than anyone expects.

We humans, I think, often fall into the trap of believing that there's a 'bottom' to value. We say that this or that currency is not valuable, but is based on some rock (gold, silver) or other form of value that is. We say that that's the actual value, but even here we're wrong. It's just a rock or whatever else. The real value any form of money/currency is the amount of associated permanence of value and the history of the currency.

Gold is considered valuable because it's been valued since the dawn of civilization and many, many people have fought, bled, died, and killed for it. In other words, the idea of gold is more pervasive than that of say, any given currency currently available.

But with the advent of cryptocurrencies, the possibility of decoupling value from physical currencies and their analogs has made the direct expression of value possible. That possibility has been realized, as far as I can tell for the first time, by Steemit and Steem.

Follow: @jenkinrocket