Will Libra Help Steem, or Hurt it?

in #steem5 years ago (edited)

The release of Facebooks white paper on Libracoin has caused quite a stir. It’s a hot topic in the crypto and fintech world and I have read a lot of different opinions on the subject.

On the negative side, we have the centralization, ownership, and control by the very thing many think blockchains purpose is to oppose.  On the extreme side, there is the die-hard anti-establishment crowd which has nothing positive to say at all about Facebook's Libra coin.  Many of these would consider XRP not to be a true blockchain, although its not only the die-hard anti-establishment crowd that feels this way towards XRP.  Yet XRP has managed to hold top 3 position in the crypto world for a long time now.

I don’t come from a technical background.  I might know a lot about the inner workings of STEEM, but when it comes to blockchain in general, I am by far an expert on the topic.  I didn’t come to crypto to escape from centralized control or to protect my data.  In fact, like 90% of the world, I don’t care to much about all that stuff.  Its part and parcel with the online connected world we live in.

I came to crypto as a business person, with the intentions of exploring opportunities for online entrepreneurs like me to utilize this technology to gain competitive advantage.  And though my research I wondered here into steem.

Many of you are aware of how I have been using STEEM with my online business. If you are not familiar with what I am doing, you can check out this blog post to get the gist. The Quick story is, I teach Excel online, I publish a blog post every week which includes a learn and earn activity.  Readers of the blog that carry out the activity and leave a comment with the solutions are rewarded with upvotes.  The aim is to get people engaging more on my blog, and for my blog to become more popular than others of the same topic because I am rewarding learners with steem and so seen to add more value than just another blog that doesn’t value their reader and yet competing for their attention.

One of the challenges I have found is that people are ‘scared’ of crypto, the fear of the unknown.  The bad publicity crypto has received in the past still rings loud.  There is also a mindset that crypto is an investment vehicle and a risky one at that.  We all know only too well from the level of power-ups on steem alone, not everyone has an investment mindset.   Then there is the complexity of getting involved. Wallets, Keys, exchanges.  There are just too many steps, too many clicks for the ‘general’ people to bother with.

Personally, I see Facebook entering the crypto space as a good thing.  And I know many agree. With billions of users, all the advancements Facebook have made todate have been accepted and used by the general public. And most often, with no questions asked.  If not Facebook would have flopped by now.  Launching crypto is just another innovation from this Global giant.  Most people won't even notice it happen as it grows in usage and popularity. That’s what Facebook are good at.

I believe this will take crypto currency into mainstream use.  I believe STEEM will benefit from that and I wanted to test the theory.

Testing my Theory

Each week I create a post on my blog and market it using my email list, social media and other traditional online methods bloggers would use.  It works well and always creates a spike in my traffic.  With the announcement by Facebook, I decided this week I was going to piggyback off this topical trend.  Never before have I mentioned the price value of steem in my newsletter or marketing, and I very rarely allude to cryptocurrency.  I have avoided this because of the challenges I have found and I have kept things really simple.  

This week however I went all out.  Knowing Facebook coin is trending, I decided to piggyback my efforts this week.  The quote below is taken from one version of the email that went out.

This week, instead of a new post, you have an opportunity to catch up on some of the learn and earn activities and earn yourself some STEEM tokens. These tokens are currently valued at over $0.40 and can be easily traded for Cash, Bitcoin, and other Cryptocurrencies.  With Facebook launching their own coin soon, I’m sure it won’t be long before you can swap Facebook coins for Steem and Steem for Facebook coins.  You have an opportunity to get ahead of the game, just by learning Excel

Other social posts yesterday include the likes of:

  

Results

Damn dude, this is going to work.  Below is the daily traffic stats to my blog.  The marketing campaign yesterday (unpaid by the away) was a tremendous success.  

 

Other comparable campaigns were done on the 29th May, 5th and 12th June.  This campaign had a 65% increase in traffic over the campaign on the 5th of June.

Although it could be a coincidence I think this is strong evidence Facebook Libracoin will help Steem and carrying out this experiment has left me rather excited about the possibilities. 

Yes there will be libracoin haters, but here comes mass adoption. 

The next question is, are we ready for mass adoption??????   


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Hahaha, I am going to borrow this xD

be my guest my friend...

@theycallmedan, Shall we put a three speak logo on the bottom? and get people to blast it out? ;)

This has some dystopian potential, imagine people stealing each others' viral memes en masse, trying to exploit them for clicks and currency... Well, even if this actually happens, it will be interesting at least.

By the way I'm stealing borrowing this image too.

We'll be taking 90% of your tokens as payment to reactivate your wallet.

lol, thats epic!

What happens if you call somebody fat on Facebook.....will they kick you off Facebook and hold/Freeze your Libra coin. Don't touch it people...it's a trap to enslave us all.

Libra bad, Bitcoin Good!

I don't support Facebook and don't support another PayPal copycat with fancy marketing terms

Oh man, that is all too real...

The control capabilities reminds me of this clip of an Aaron Russo interview (not saying there's any paralells) :

Haha central control center here.

This is exactly what will happen.

wow, so decentralized, much blockchain

Nice one :)

deadly, I love it :-)

This is perfect!

Some here in Spain say that LIBRA is a trojan horse to introduce the owners of FIAT money into the crypto world. They refuse to lose control, so they will use the largest company of registered users in the world for their purposes.
That's what I've heard, I'm just ignorant.
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This is too funny ! and the scary part is it actually can happen.. Also, with Libracoin, hackers have more incentive to hack Facebook accounts

It has been determined that you are trash, therefore, you have received a negative vote.

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it will get people into crypto and get them used to it, i hope it doesn't take off as people are such sheeple but bitcoin isn't going anywhere and hopefully the right people will adopt bitcoin and get coinbase accounts. Its the future and confirmation that we are ahead of what is coming.

Starting to look like half the politicians in the US hate the idea, so it might struggle to even get off the ground.

Of course they would. The realisation their market cap will be larger than the federal reserve would make most governments nervous

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It has been determined that you are trash, therefore, you have received a negative vote.

PLEASE NOTE: If you engage with the trash above you also risk receiving a negative vote on your comment.

I need to read the white paper

Capitalism was always good in incorporating things made to get away from it.

But in case of the Facebook coin I don't think it will be (very) succesful, simply because Facebook, as it is, is already beyond it's peak and going downwards.

yes but they own instragram and whatsapp....and they are on the up :-). Also look at the partner, ebay, uber, spotify, the list goes on

I don't think a social platform is on the up when it loses active users from month to month.

You don't have to be too concerned about one of your brands declining if you have a few others that are fine.

I hope this will expore more users to blockcahin in those kind of network wich include Steemit , hope that i will help..

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art by Alotta Money

People should realize anything related to Facebook has ZERO positive intent for them. It's all in the interest of Suckerberg and his shareholders. They have already enslaved 2 billions users with dopamine releasing social network, next it's gonna be their wallet?

Interesting!

I'm fussy i know...

Maybe even a hashtag too.

Hopefully your course explodes (and we get a few more people here too).

One step at a time @abh12345, let people figure out what crypto is first before we bombard them with different coins. It's good enough #cryptocurrency and #blockchain are trending. Baby steps and before they know it they be transacting on steem like there is no tomorrow 🤑

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That's some excellent clever marketing right there - I agree that a 30% (roughly) spike in your traffic certainly suggests people are interested in what I'm going to call FaceCoin (I can't bring myself to use the real brand name, it's like calling a Prison a liberation centre).

I guess that's a lesson to increase traffic - be specific and bang on the news trend!

I'm optimistic about the impact Facebook will have... we just need to be positioned right to market this place effectively. Something I'm less inclined to do with top 20 witnesses changing the ecosystem to benefit themselves.

'Pay to learn'... please don't take me to court if I steal that idea, I can see that working wonders with my blog. Although I'd best check out the legality of my clients being mainly 17. Sure it'll be fine.

its not pay to learn, its learn and earn :-) I even have the steem account @learn-and-earn. I'm working on a program that will attract other online instructors to steem and a way to store certs of completion and course progress reports on the steem blockchain, I can't work fast enough and wish I was ready to release something.....I think the next few months will be very exciting and I would love to use the positioning of being ahead of the game, if I can get their fast enough.

'learn and earn' - yes that's what I meant. I was thinking of you paying them to earn which sounds much blunter, but when you're used to teaching teenagers BLUNT is effective!

Sounds exciting, and I know exactly what you mean about staying ahead of the game. I have big plans for total domination of A-level sociology online - whether they come to fruition before I take off to live off-grid remains to be seen!

lol I hear ya, well if there is anything we can do to piggyback off each other, do let me know. If are doing something in that space, the @learn-and-earn account will be there to support it

this: "FaceCoin (I can't bring myself to use the real brand name, it's like calling a Prison a liberation centre)." ME TOO. I CAN'T.