On Recovering From This 'Crash' in Crypto Prices. Why Invest In Steem? SMTs, Reinventing Our Image & Building Steem Co-mm-Unity!
One thing is for sure in a price crash, eventually the price will be so low that investors cannot resist buying up at 'discount' prices... The challenge for Steem is to be one of the projects that attracts attention and gets bought up once the markets change direction. From this perspective, a crash is a marketing opportunity!
For many of us who hold Steem Power, a drop in the price of Steem means a loss of income and knock-on issues that relate to that. At this point, unless you have a lot of money, it's going to be hard or impossible to rely completely on income from Steem or similar projects due to the market volatility. I do, however, ask for you to help out in recovering Steem's position.. Steem's real power is the human co-mm-unity behind it and we need to unite to produce better outcomes for all.
When large amounts of tokens are sold, lowering prices across the board, it is often the case that automated 'Stops' have been triggered that were set on exchanges historically - meaning that investments that were configured some time ago are cancelled and therefore a significant amount of capital is freed up for future reinvestment. While it is true that some investors will have made losses and will not want to return to the markets at all - it is still the case that a lot of money will be reinvested 'somewhere' as a result of the sell off. Key at such times for any crypto project is to magnetise that capital to itself - resulting in an overall benefit once the dust has settled.
Steem or Dust?
We will be able to take effective steps before Steem literally becomes dust and given the large amount of activity behind the scenes in the Steem community, it is more of a question of how/when than 'if'. Our issue is therefore 'How do we let investors know about the movements of the community and why it is beneficial for Steem'?
Marketing is still a dirty word for many people - and with good reason - since disreputable marketing truly has been responsible for a great deal of dishonesty and dissatisfaction globally for a long time (many people still don't realise the depth of this). None the less though, without some form of marketing we have no way of being informed of what the world's many projects are doing and in a sea of information such as we have today, there needs to be ethical methods of marketing and informing the world of what Steem is up to.
One great way to do this is organically, simply via word of mouth (the network effect). If we all take steps to improve Steem then news of that will spread and more people will look to Steem as a potential way to solve their problems and 'make cool things happen TM'.
We also need to take organised steps to present Steem to the world more effectively.
Evolving Steem's Selling Points?
It is clear that Steem.com and Steemit.com do not do the best job of explaining the strengths of the Steem eco-system to outsiders (and even to insiders) and this is something we will be addressing via the new @steempassport onboarding project I am running in co-operation with the other new onboarding project for Steem - @steemonboarding run by @anomadsoul and @coruscate.
The basic model of selling the idea of Steem as a blogging platform that pays you is outdated.
In actuality, Steem is a platform that rewards much more than just blogging since on a basic level, the text storage capacity of Steem allows for recording of a wide variety of information, including records of activity of a wide variety of types. Now, on top of the various apps that extend the basic rewards system to include Q&A sites, review sites, video/audio sites and so on - we also have new projects that extends Steem to include the ability to offer and reward commercial services (such as @oracle-d) and even to handle governmental processes too!
There aren't many crypto projects that I know of that are so functionally addressing the world's challenges with such a large community and especially with such a generic process for being rewarded efficiently (and in a way that allows them to compete with the role that miners would fulfill on less evolved platforms - yet without any technical knowledge being required). Steem can help motivate people to solve problems and gives us new ways to do it. We only need to organise, co-operate and educate the world of what we are doing here!
Steem unites people and while we may disagree about many things, we tend to also share a common appreciation of important truths - such as that humans need to be free to find their own destinies.
One of the main selling points that has not really been utilised yet is that we can unite and reward unknown creators in ways that then might gain them exposure to larger investors or marketers/publishers on the global scene. I really think we have a space here for us to help creative people get found and even published globally - but the details of that are perhaps for another post.
There are challenges to be overcome with Steem too, certainly, including the breaking of 'proof of brain' by the use of bidbots and other issues that many have spoken about in great detail already. However, I feel that as long as the community holds strong here, we will find solutions to all of these issues and in the relatively near future too.
Community Spirit & Heart's Courage
One of the key aspects that I think is overlooked by many with Steem is that it is a SOCIAL phenomena. Many people who focus into investments lack the kind of social understanding needed to build human community and may even simply not value it much at all. Without human community, there is very little of any value in terms of commercial or investment potential. Unfortunately, some who do not appreciate this deeply enough will tend to lean towards trying to control people in order to 'maximise profits' and this is a large part of why our world is so hurt and is, in fact, on the brink of annihilation. This is not to the time for fence sitting.
This lack of heart has been part of the cause of a situation where Steem Power is being sold to bid bots and this partially breaks the delicate system that keeps Steem useful in the eyes of creative humans. As long as votes are being sold to anyone with enough money, there is no real value in the ordering of posts on Steem and thus a large part of it's attraction to thinkers and creatives is lost.
A social system for humans MUST have HEART because living, real humans have hearts!
Engagement, Engagement, Engagement!
One solution to community disconnection/exploitation that requires no technology changes is to educate and realise that engagement is key to the community here. If you buy Steem and just hold it, you stand a chance of losing out because others in the community are posting and self voting etc. while you are not. If you don't post on Steem and get rewarded, you lose out unless you sell votes or delegate to other projects that reward you for doing so. Since vote selling also devalues the community functions and attractiveness (marketability), the only REAL way to strengthen your Steem investment is to engage the community in meaningful ways - both the community of Steem users and also the wider world community. This means possibly offering services via the blockchain, delegating to others who are active or just posting and commenting.
Money DOES NOT MAKE THE WORLD GO AROUND! TOKENS are called 'Tokens' because they are only 'token'! They represent the REAL underlying power on Earth - which is INSIDE us all!
I feel this is not being deeply appreciated and respected by many people and they are hurting Steem's potential through not realising how to use Steem optimally. Every Steem user needs to understand how to use Steem holistically if we are to be sustainable and this means working socially and forming real community - not just attempting to generate ROI from Steem because it's an investment for you.
If you want direct investment only, you may be better off looking to other systems that don't have an inflationary reward pool built in or, alternatively, you could fund the process of bringing a productive/trading business onto the Steem blockchain. At @Steemfest, @ned specifically stated he wanted to see more of the kinds of enterprises that we see with @steemmonsters as we need to have ways of drawing money into the blockchain and not just ways of sending money out from it.
There is a reason why people invest in businesses and not in village communities of people interacting in more relaxed, social ways! Everyone can be creative and productive but many know they actually achieve more through living in a more natural way, that is not constantly being pressured to 'produce more', 'work harder' and so on. We need to foster the right kind of balance so that no-one feels overpowered, regardless of their purpose.
Culture Shift Towards Voluntary Co-Operation
The surface solution, based on ideology, to the issue of Steem's constant devaluation without outside investment - is to commercialise the platform and draw in businesses to hold Steem in exchange for the ability to pay Steemians via upvotes. This can certainly work and holds part of the solution here. However, Steem is not purely a commercial system for businesses to find employees - it is a ANARCHO-capitalist eco-system that is based on principles of non-hierarchy ('Anarchy' literally means 'no rulers' and that means no hierarchy in the sense of there being no non-voluntary control by any means - even including control by economic means).
The system contains some apparent contradictions since on the one hand we have the idea of anarchy as being in opposition to hierarchy, yet we also have Stake weighted voting which inherently introduces hierarchy!
The whitepaper for Steem attempted to explain some of how this contradiction could be resolved. The mechanics include, by design, space for wealth redistribution - but it was perhaps not considered deeply enough just how the bigger investors would retain their wealth on the platform - or at least it wasn't expressed in enough detail that many would literally NEED to delegate large amounts of Steem Power to others to use to curate with if the system is to be in a position to remain sustainable and functional at all.
There is a need for those with large amounts of Steem Power to use it in some way that brings them rewards and there is a need for those with smaller amounts of Steem Power to access Steem Power to help them achieve their own goals. The obvious solution to this is to work together for common goals - which means we need communities and communication to take place among those who have common goals. Those who do not interact in such social ways may be left with only the option of delegating to bid bots in order to retain the value of their Steem. It is in all of our interests to engage everyone!
This is quite a clear choice actually - connect with others through the heart or hang out with robots! Your choice!
SMTs, Communities & Balance
In such an environment it is necessary to think differently to reach the balance points. We do not yet know if SMTs will fully allow for the somewhat divergent positions to co-exist completely peacefully - however, the communities features should go some way to resolving all of this in a powerful way and I am excited to find out what we can achieve.
In the meantime, we are somewhat limited by what we can do, however, there is nothing stopping us from networking and talking to each other much more than we have been. We can take steps to make our own use of Steem in more effective ways such that community is strengthened and from it can come new and exciting solutions.
What do YOU want to see in Communities? How do YOU want SMTs to be experimented with?
My Own Vision?
When I think about why I love Steem and why others should consider investing in Steem - my mind goes in many directions.
I see Steem as many things, including a communication vehicle that allows us to share ideas and to reward each other for doing so. I might not be able to pay you the £10,000 that I think your idea is worth, but if you share it with the people here (who may all benefit from it in ways that far exceed £10,000) they/we collectively can reward you for your willingness to co-create new realities with us. This kind of creativity is what I feel is missing from the 'normy' world that often seeks to simply exploit and horde resources for personal gain and competitive edge.
In my understanding, having analysed this for a very long time, humanity will never solve its challenges until we learn to unite in a truly voluntary way that respects individual liberty and that is what I want to see come out of Steem, SMTs and future communities on Steem. I feel that if we can embody this and let the world know we are doing this then Steem will truly become a force to be reckoned with in the world. This kind of system has never existed before - monetising the wisdom of the crowd - so our world needs to be made aware of why it is so powerful. THIS IS a unique selling point.
Steem is also uncensored, another unique selling point that is undervalued by most people until they come to try to change important things in our world and find they are heavily censored regularly (Check out my future post on the class action lawsuit against Facebook for censorship that I am participating in!).
As already mentioned, Steem also supports commercial ventures through it's core feature set and I see nothing wrong with that being pursued here too.
The challenge is going to be finding the balance such that everyone gives and can receive VALUE into and out of the system.
I see that personal evolution and generally improving our own state of being as the absolute requirement for this to work on all levels. This is part of why I am still planning to integrate an SMT into my own (now slightly dusty) social network at https://www.ureka.org - when the time is right. Ureka is entirely founded on the principle of healing, balancing and evolving. Currently we have a reality where people pay vast sums of money to gain health and help when they need it - but what if we form entire communities of enlightened beings who can perform such tasks in a shared way on the blockchain? What would that be worth to humanity? We don't have a simple answer to that, but if done correctly it would be vast.
The bottom line is that Steem is an ECONOMIC system AND a SOCIAL system - a Social-Economic Network. Anyone who participates needs to take steps to up their 'game', both in terms of understanding economies and also in terms of understanding social interactions. If we all do this voluntarily with an intention to heal, balance and evolve - we cannot fail to succeed!
So.. Learn, Share, Educate, Inspire, Collaborate, Communicate, Grow, Evolve.. Let's make things better than they were!
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
Vote @ura-soul for Steem Witness!
(Witnesses are the computer servers that run the Steem Blockchain.
Without witnesses there is no Steem, Steemit, DTube, Utopian or
Busy... You can really help Steem by making your 30 witness votes count!)
"Steem is not purely a commercial system for businesses to find employees - it is a ANARCHO-capitalist eco-system that is based on principles of non-hierarchy"
You definitely understand these concepts better than most, thank you for a great post on this subject, resteemed!
This aspect of systems and humanity/freedom/will is one that I have studied the most so far of all the many topics I have looked at - as it is the most important I know of! Thanks!
I'm saving this to read it again, and am resteeming it. Thanks to @walkerland for resteeming it in the first place. I agree it's become far much more than a place to earn money for your posts (this initial selling point is what brought me here, but like for many, isn't what keeps me here). It's the HEART that keeps me here. I've talked about Steemit on Facebook about three times and had no bites or interest UNTIL I shared my little promo video for Natural Medicine (if you're interested, check it out here - it's about 2.5 minutes long and you might smile) and promoting the beating community heart that is very much @naturalmedicine. Sure, many of us are thrilled when we get a whale vote or earn a lot on a post, but what it's become over the last few months is a place to ask for help, to get support, to throw ideas about (without censorship), to be human. I don't see those members going anywhere in a hurry. I worry about new members - three of my facebook friends decided to sign up and are still waiting for accounts and I feel I haven't been entirely honest with them about the rest of STeemit - but how do I even begin to do that? I think one of it's great selling points IS the community here, the connections we make, the support we give, and the creativity that is encouraged and supported. Like me, so many people have come out of their shells here, realising they have far more worth than they originally thought. That's just bloody beautiful to see. I'd love to see SMTs be used for natural medicine in some way, but have no idea where to start really - at the moment, I'm just a facilitator trying to bring people together without censorship and with a whole lot of fucking love and maybe if there's some financial reward for that too, all the better.
Thankyou! It's true that many people don't engage with social networks much unless video is involved - so video certainly is a powerful tool. That said though, I'm not sure how valuable people are to a community if they are only passively consuming video - the more the merrier though!
Having promoted my own social network on Facebook and elsewhere (with no budget) for a fair while before Steemit existed, I know how challenging it is to get people's attention and inspire them to experiment with other options. Even with the incentive that they will get paid, many people never leave Facebook. This may partially be because so many of the accounts there aren't from real people and are actually created by marketers or social engineers.
The slow signup process is the main issue I am attempting to tackle by @steempassport - Unfortunately, we are limited by the inability to re-delegate steem currently and haven't had any signs that anyone is inspired to even work on this issue yet. There are other options available for solving the issue of creating free accounts, but none are straight forward - I will explore them all though!
Love this vision and the emphasis on balance between heart and business savvy. Thanks to @enginewitty for resteeming it so this came up on my radar. Keep doing what you do—this is exactly what we need. I'm looking forward to seeing @steempassport and @steemonboarding in action.
Thankyou for your support and witness vote. :)
It's essential to not get lost in the NUMBers of our support systems - our world draws our focus so effectively that reminders to go inside can never be too much! <3
Glad some people still have their resteems on! Happy you like whatbthey got in mind too, should be of some help😀
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Very nice post ura-soul. I agree with several points but not all. I am frustrated with bid bots, though not because I think they shouldn't exist, but because they are too greedy, when the point of Steem is to profit content producers, the bots take up all/almost all, and sometimes put posters into the negative.
The key issue we're facing on Steemit/Steem is greed. Way too much greed and selfishness, nobody upvotes others. I have had people actually like my posts, comment but not upvote. Clearly, this is because they are trying to reserve that value for themselves. I would like to see certain features implemented to fix this:
*For example, let's say Joe is buddies with Bob, upvoting Bob the first time is 100%, next time 90%, then 80% and so on. This will lead to people being more liberal with their upvotes to strangers. I think creating Steem to become too clique-oriented is a bad idea, this will only lead to it being a 1 billion dollar blockchain instead of its potential to be a 1 trillion dollar blockchain.
@hobo.media upvoted you for $0.01 and resteemed your post, because I'm wicked cool like that. If you want future random upvotes/resteems just follow.
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Thankyou! The bidbots really steal a lot of the passion from the network - we lose the competitive driver of creativity when we know that the most exposure is bound not to great ideas but to the size of the wallets involved. We could have a space where people really prize the ability of getting onto the trending page because it really does mean their ideas are great - but instead we have a much watered down version that is just .. meh.
I think the reason why there isn't a block on self-votes is that it is simple to just create a second account to upvote yourself from and bypass the block. Your idea to diminish the voting power if we keep voting on the same account is interesting, but it can still be bypassed (and would be bypassed by those with intent to do so). I could actually create an app that you pay $50 to and then it will create you a bunch of accounts that will upvote each other in whatever way is necessary to bypass the limitations you are thinking of introducing. I think we are a bit stuck here without either: a) some kind of machine learning that can detect circle jerking or b) oracles that can reliably enforce 'one account, one human' or something similar.
When you have hierarchies of power, rather than hierarchies of competence, it will collapse.....
Power dictates here,(Sp), and not competence.
If competence dictated, then we would not be bleeding users and instead growing them instead.
Business 101.
@themarkymark estimated that there were around 12K active users (about a month ago)... after 2 years as a social media platform!?
In what world does anyone live in to think that is a good metric ?
Too many techy dreamers, with no head in the business world, with no experience of business.
And that's needed, imo.
Everyone is so focused on 'the future', the present is sinking quicker than the titanic.
What would I know?
I'm not a techy whizz kid dreamer...but I have grown lots of businesses in my time...and grown them spectacularly. ( small ish enterprises).
This is not pessimism, but realism - however people on steemit seem to see hard truths as pessimism, which is very indicative of their sensitive natures, fragile ego's and emotional immaturity - and such sensitive souls as this are not good for the 'business world' hierarchies.
No matter how big their SP is...
There are currently around 60,000 actively voting accounts on Steem (from the data on Steem Ocean) - though many of those will not be humans directly causing the voting activity in a normal way. None the less though, for a system that has the backing of over $100 Million, that is pretty poor, I agree.
I agree that there is a lack of business experience among many of those involved and the logic appears to be based on academic theory rather than actual experience. The result appears to often be that the aim ends up pointed towards theoretical targets that don't reflect tried and tested reality. A large amount of cryptocurrency pricing is based on hype and so some of those involved are certainly sensitive to anything that isn't positive hype - none the less though, 'negative is the mother of evolution' and is absolutely necessary to improve things.
Ned's idea of using oracles to identify users specifically, is one method of enforcing '1 user, 1 vote' which would certainly make a big change - but beyond that - other than methods of irradiating bid bots, the options are fairly limited. I am all for experimentation though and I see no reason not to use the reserves of funds to hire more programmers and work on coding more experimental solutions. Maybe they are just waiting for SMTs to be finished - but in that case I would have hired more developers to work on that.
Yeah, I'd be as much help contributing to 'the steemeit business', as an iceberg would be of use contributing to help the titanic on it's way...
...way past my pay grade.
I could always go the next steamfest and pop some idealistic bubbles, though...
I can be bitter medicine that some people need, around these parts.
lmao
(Btw, I really am an optimist, by nature! honest.)
Masterpiece
Thankyou! :)
Great Post and read. Lets get the word out of Steem and show people for what it can be used for. There will be a community for every kind of interest it doesn't matter if its Gaming, social activity, Sports or Betting. Steem has it all and it only needs some more month of development and a good marketing to get the Start right.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!!!!
Thankyou! Yes, it will be very interesting to see where we are at this time next year!
You are one seriously dedicated witness. Thanks for your great work!
I enjoy the sound of ureka.org being focused on healing, balance & evolving. And it is only natural that it should have its own SMT.
Let me know when the dusting is done and I will join you there. My hair is growing back great btw ;)
You are welcome, thanks! There is already plenty of material to check out on my social network, but not so much realtime human activity. I guess it will have an SMT before the end of next year - but it's hard to know any more accurate than that since I don't have all the details about SMTs and when they will launch.
Btw, I have some useful info for you about hair - I can mail you if you like, just contact me at [email protected].
Very thorough post - it's encouraging to see a bit of affirmatiion in the dip (although I'm not going anywhere!).
I'm with you on getting the message out there... the question is how to do it as simply and impactfully as possible...
Something I'll be thinking a lot about in coming months.
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Our world is one where marketing and 'powermongers' have done a lot already to dumb down our thinking - so I am all for edu-tainment that mixes enlightening education with the entertainment that people are conditioned to seek and think they need. I would love to have time to maybe make animations or computer games to demonstrate the power of the concepts baked into Steem. We need to combine simplicity with the depth of what Steem is and maybe we need some good visual metaphors to make that happen.
I couldn't agree more. \n\nAs a teacher I've always strived to have different depths of resources - \n\n1. Very simple 2-5 min main point blast (often a hook to draw people in)\n2. 5 - 20 min presentation summarising 3-5 main points.\n3. The main text/ audio visual resources that would take an hour to.several hours to read.\n4. Beyond that it's just linking to other resources. \n\nThat way yr dumbing down but providing the opportunity for more depth. Which I think is fine!\n\nAnd yup pretty animations can play a role...
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This is the longest post I have ever read and enjoyed on this platform. Thanks to @meno for resteeming this. You touch on many things. I think community interaction and growth is one of the things I picked.
Frankly speaking, I think the community spirit is dying. A lot is automated here. People just want support to grow and fail to interact and this is detrimental to the steem ecosystem.
I like what musing is doing with their platform. For the first time in four months since I joined this platform, I have been able to connect with more people and earn something decent for myself. And I have met some nice people there too and gradually we are creating a community of dedicated steemians who are interacting with each other.
My point basically is that we need to ignite the community spirit and being 'heart' back into the system. People should care about what they do here and what other people do here and still earn something decent for themselves. It is possible.
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Greetings! Hehe, thanks. :)
I feel that without a passion driving us to grow and expand technologies they do tend to die or be replaced. In my case, I am passionate about freedom/liberation and I see Steem as delivering some important features in that regard (such as censorship resistance and open source code). For those who aren't so passionate about such things, Steem can just become a system to game. I feel that by focusing on and growing the more real, deep, human connections we can use the technology to meet our real needs instead of just viewing it as something to exploit.
I'm glad you like musing, I will have another go at using it soon. :)