Where’s the money coming from? 1 month of STEEM, an honest perspective.

I joined Steemit in May on the advice of my money guru, Gregory Mannarino @Marketreport. I trust the guy, he’s up front, tells it like it is and I believe him. Straight up, he said Steemit pays users to blog.

Can’t be true I thought. How can a company devoted to profit, simply pay users to blog or comment? Where is the business model? Nevertheless, I joined and promptly got swept away in the digital rapids surrounding cryptocurrency. I’d heard about bitcoin but STEEM? Never heard about it. Stay the course I reminded myself. Greg never led me wrong. I began to blog, comment, vote. And I noted some pennies rolled my way whenever I did those things.

I wrote a couple short stories. BAM. Three of them spiked over one hundred votes and I was hooked harder than a whale on a harpoon. (Bad metaphor here but the whales will understand)
I got ‘paid’ to do what I do anyhow. I write, I tell jokes. I comment on the news. I share funny stories and recipes. And I keep watching money accumulate in my wallet.

Where does the money come from? I wondered. In my quest for answers, I stumbled on @sykochica. She’s like the oracle of Delphi, she knows everything. From her and others, I understood that an algorithm generates so much steem every day and it is distributed among the community. Hence the give-aways and competitions. So far so good.

Users are rewarded for their participation and content with upvotes. Still, so far so good. But what gives STEEM value? I’ll admit, I’m not certain about this. I know value comes from people and that STEEM gets its appeal and worth, from the users/community. It seems literally to hold the value we give it as users.

Then I thought about fiat currency. Money is really cotton and ink. Yet the value of these pieces of paper is not linked to any tangible asset like gold. The value of money comes from the representatives of a country agreeing with its people to use it as a unit of exchange.

Just like STEEM

I made my peace with Steemit when I realized this fact. Cryptocurrency is all the rage because it is a store of value completely divorced from Governments, from theft and may be untaxable as long as it remains as cryptocurrency. I love Steemit though, because it rewards me for my time. I’ve actually written more articles, commented on more posts, taken more pictures and helped more folks here than on any other social media.

Where the money comes from? Doesn’t matter for now. Is steeming worth my time? Hell yeah! I’ll encourage anyone on the fence to try it. Sign up for an account. Make some posts, try a few comments. Get in touch with your creative side and watch it blossom, cause that’s what Steemit did to me. It's making me more creative, helping me to grow as a person and I love it.

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Thanks guys for reading. I’m grateful for finding this community. Will be happy to stick around and share the good stuff as it happens to us all. If I've gotten anything wrong in my understanding of cryptocurrency and steemit, hit me up in the comments. I'm a newbie, I'm liable to get a lot of things wrong.
Cheers.
J.