Well I've been on Steemit for almost 3 weeks now, so I'm relatively new to this platform, but I'm old enough to remember punch cards (this was the 60's and 70's). I have an IT background and have been studying Andreas Antonopoulos's Mastering Bitcoin since spring.
Most people know me because of the software that I've been working on since the 1990's for the techniques we were finding in the Hellenistic astrological texts from the Project Hindsight translations. I wrote Delphic Oracle based upon this...
Because I'm convinced that this underlying technology will create massive infrastructure inversion that will empower several billion people who are completely unbanked or underbanked, I've made an investment in Steem and powered up. Since I started investing in crypto this past February, this was a natural step. An investment of about $500 in steem will put you near the top 5% which will make it easier to get noticed.
The benefits to converting Steem into Steem Power is that you will have more influence in your posts, in your comments and your upvotes. You can of course do this the hard way by writing great posts and developing your following, but if you're one of the minnows (those who just start out with a small balance), it can seem like you get lost in the crowd. Powering up all your posts to 100% steem power instead of taking 50/50 is a better way to go if you're just starting out (IMO). This is because the payments back to you by powering down will be negligible in the beginning and holding Steem dollars isn't likely to give as much interest as your developing your account and following (if you have something significant to offer).
There are several reasons why I'm certain that decentralized blockchain technology will create a situation where eventually one of these cryptocurrencies becomes the next Google of finance. The first reason is that bitcoin (which is the king of the crypto and the first P2P solution to the Byzantine generals problem), has no CEO, no boardroom and no intermediaries in the base of its protocol. When government realizes that the banks are leaking equity because some opt to put their money outside of the system, they will have to turn to the exchanges, mining and regulation around the edges of the system. The internet kill switch is not an option because banks rely on the same networks.
Most of the miners are currently in China because they have a glut of electricity and companies don't power down due to expense, so they either waste that energy or put it to use with mining bitcoin and other crypto. If China bans mining, then they better find some Amish to help them with living off grid without electricity.
Most cryptocurrencies actually have a superior SOV (store of value) to the USD which is the world's reserve currency. The USD is being inflated at the rate of $85 billion / month. Long term this is unsustainable. The US Government is now 20 Trillion in debt. All currencies that do this eventually become worthless and when that happens, people will start dumping USD for the better currencies (this is known as Gresham's law). Andreas makes a prediction that "the full faith and credit" phrase will ring hollow throughout the world simultaneously:
One of the drivers of crypto prices right now is the 2+ billion who lack banking privileges. They've been excluded from having a bank account, but many of them have a cell phone (oops). So now they have MyCellium wallets capable of turning each and every one who has one into their own bank. No need to worry about permission, and transaction fees are much smaller for remittances (compare that to the 15% Western Union charges).
Within the next few years it will be CheckMate to the current political system. When that happens you want to be HODLing.
Donations (public bitcoin address):
3FwxQsa7gmQ7c1GXJyvDTqmT6CM3mMEgcv
You definitely have a great understanding of crypto. The wife and have been invested since April and though we are still learning, we hold the most in Steemit. We too think it will grow and grow, along with a few other alt coins. Are you invested in any others?
Thanks! I picked up LTC and ETH once it was offered on Coinbase beside BTC of course. The split of BTC gave me free BCH as well because I didn't hold my coins on an exchange. This is extremely important - never hold your coins on an exchange long term. If you don't have a 12 -24 word seed, then they aren't technically your coins and you can be goxxed (Google MtGox). If you hold bitcoin in November outside of an exchange, you will probably end up with another split coin (bitcoin gold).
The down side of holding Steem here seems to be that you aren't really holding your own coins. I haven't read the Steem white paper yet so I don't know for sure and I know of no hardware wallet that supports Steem as of yet. So while I have invested in Steem, I kind of regard it as a potential tax write off in the form of advertising revenue (that's the essence of Steem power). Whether the IRS will see it that way or not is uncertain. They're already far behind on understanding this tech and are making the mistake of equating change of address = transaction. Wallets can have over 2 billion addresses and all of them belong to the same individual and sometimes you have to change addresses because of forks like Segwit. The ethics of taxing a necessary change of address to the same individual is highly questionable.
I recommend a hardware wallet like Ledger S Nano or Trezor and if you can, memorize your seed. There will probably be a point when the governments of the world will attempt to confiscate crypto and if that happens, exchanges will go first. See Andreas Antonopoulos on this issue:
Zoidsoft - can you recommend a good solid book on cryptcurrency? You can figure I'm pretty technical, but need some orienting in order to think about investing.
http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000001802/ch01.html
Thanks Boss!
Really good article seems a bit underrated at the moment, but here's hoping to the rise of crypto
Welcome and Steem on>>>>>>>
Sounds like you have a better grasp of the market than most. When I started 3 months ago, I knew next to nothing. However, that is slowly changing with some of the great articles read here and elsewhere on the state of cryptocurrencies.
Welcome to steemit and I look forward to hearing more from you. Followed.
Thanks! I started investing in crypto last February and have been watching Andreas Antonopoulos on YouTube. He's got hundreds of videos and it one of the best sources to get up to speed fast.
To climb steep hills requires slow pace at first. Have a nice day :)
Sounds like you have done some pretty solid research. I am also new to cyptocurrencies as of June, and it has become somewhat of an obsession for me. I enjoyed your article, and I am definately going to check out Andreas Antonopoulos on You Tube.
Great insight
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STOPGreat post! Thanks for sharing! Looking forward to more of your posts. As someone who is looking to get a more technical understanding of Bitcoin. What programming languages should I get experiencing in to be able to understand Andrea's Mastering Bitcoin without it going over my head?
Thanks! You can read Mastering Bitcoin here for free. It really depends on what level you want to interact with it, C, C++, JSON, Python...
Keep in mind that this text was obsolete the moment it was published. The tech moves too fast, but you can get a reasonable understanding of the issues and solutions reading this text.
Right on. Thanks for the response!