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It's gonna be huge. Won't be long before steemit is in classrooms as the online message boards and digital communications. Basically as a currency for any sort of digital interaction which earns reputation.

Will undoubtedly be dozens of variations, but Steemit is sprinting out to an early lead and is already a $1 Billion ecosystem. Pretty incredible.

What about privacy?

I have heard of some variations but I haven't investigated. I think the competitors are very small and limited.

SafeX will be implementing a privacy coin based on cryptonight, that's one to watch. Monero and a lot of the other cryptonight coins are very centralized from what I've seen. They are easy to get via minergate though, even regular computers will be able to get a non-trivial amount if they set up an account with them.

I've actually come across several interesting privacy coins as I'm doing some research on Crypto-Bridge. Will be discussing those in the near future along with the BCO token. Some interesting stuff over there.