Over the last couple of days, I had to do more research about block chain activity and the rise of cryptocurrency considering I am barely new to it. It’s a big task and figuring out where to start can be a bit daunting. Steemit Is Like Reddit, but here, upvotes equal a cryptocurrency payout which had indeed boost my feel for blogging with unlimited opportunities. It probably comes as no surprise that I think using a story in year-end about blogging and social networking website on top of the Steem blockchain database. In the first place, it had always been every bloggers' dream of having their work be recognize not just with the number of followers but with the right content and pure value, monetizing becomes so easy. It's safe to say at least that hardwork does pays off with Steemit.
Since its launch in 2016, some experts say it's all too good to be true. News like " A homeless man can afford to buy an RV thanks to a popular blog post" as well as " A woman earns a year's salary from a YouTube makeup tutorial" then "An African writer starts with three hours of electricity per day and ends with over $40,000 dollars." Crazy to be true right but it happened. YES IT DID. But as with any new cryptocurrency, there are key questions over stability, sustainability, and underlying motivation. As it stands, the bulk of the site is made up of quickly-written, poorly-researched content, some of which is remunerated into the thousands of dollars. Yeah it was expected as what like starting companies are once leashed into public. At present, Steem has enjoyed an explosive growth in value in only a few months of operation, but with payouts for contributors coming from the creation of new currency, there have been accusations within the cryptocurrency community of the project being a pyramid scheme, with continued new investors required to keep the system afloat.
We do remember that over phone and email, CEO and co-founder Ned Scott, a former financial analyst, talked about his vision for the platform, and the criticisms that have been levelled at it.
"It's a new and groundbreaking way of rewarding people for sharing information with other people," Scott said. "And over time we start to see this as a more stable way for journalists to participate in the content economy. I can also see new types of content being incentivised: Wikileaks for example, or investigative journalists ... But there's other economic layers to add in, like the idea of a peer-to-peer marketplace like Craigslist or eBay; with those layers it becomes less like a social network, and more like a social economy." Man, he was really on point. I actually found an article from Coinmarketcap.com stating:
"At the time of writing, Steemit had a market capitalisation of $167 million,ranking it the fifth largest cryptocurrency."
As a purist of value and content creation, it was just a matter of time for me to find that Steemit was indeed a raw,vast untouched goldmine. I found it early September 2017(and felt I am already left way out but not to some extent). I always consider myself a poor writer sharing my blogs everywhere within social networking sites with the only sheer appreciation of getting likes and positive comments. It comes to a point where bills are piling up and though I got other means of income aside from my day job and a new digital business venture that has not reap any ROI yet, Steemit was suddenly my safe haven. I'm going to pay off some of my debt with it too!
On the one hand, the platform has a solid community of developers and it's not hard to find insightful posts on mathematics, cryptography, and other esoteric topics, with a range of community-built web applications that plug into Steem being deployed at a rapid pace. The overall effect is that the Steemit reward system currently has something of a casino feel to it, as the promise of big payouts and a general air of unpredictability spurs the creation of a huge range of content, and makes some users overnight successes almost at random.
Early March 2017, we can recall that Daniel Larimer, the founder and lead developer behind the blockchain-based social media platform, announced his resignation. With Larimer’s abrupt departure, some Steemians have also begun to question the long-term viability of the entire platform. The resignation of Steemit’s lead developer comes at a time when the value of Steem tokens is trading near all-time lows. Smells fishy and looks controversial right? Hence, new faces join the ranks. The world’s first decentralized social media platform has made a huge leap in its evolution as a crypto-enterprise by hiring blockchain tech and marketing aficionado Mitchell Loureiro, who will helm the new kind of growth strategy by April 2017. By then, it has become an unstoppable steam rolling machine and Steem bounced back into the top 10 rankings on CoinMarketCap again on Tuesday, after losing some of its glory and having been wandering in the wilderness of crypto rankings for some months after within the stretch of 2017. But it just bounced back with a vengeance. How amazing is that?
I have actually opened an account last September 2017 and have started posting and commenting. I was actually introduced to it by a mutual business partner @travellife91011 and had been guided by our Steem PH masterminds:should I say @surpassinggoogle and @purepinay who are really doing massive conferences in Manila and Cebu enlighting and introducing the platform especially to the young ones who are fond of writing as well as their personal advocacies of reaching out to the poor and giving back to the needy. I couldn't be much happier connecting with new people thru Steemit and looking forward on 2018 with them build a stronger community in the Philippines. Now I've only earned a few dollars with cents here and there but I feel it has a lot of room to grow. The fact that you can earn by doing stuff you already do online is a great concept.I get onto Steemit to see what there is to see, a shiny new user awakened from a long journey of posting without any kind of monetary reward, and I step boldly onto the front page. It's alright. It’s a little…jumbled? Much like, it contains everything posted onto. There’s some humour, there’s some nice pictures of animals. There's quite a lot of discussion about cryptocurrencies. I am confident Steemit will just blow up.
Steemit is an interesting concept, working from a diametrically opposed angle to traditional social media platforms that seek to control your information for profit. On Steemit however, by tying the platform into a cryptocurrency, it opens the whole game up to everyone. As 2017 is to wrap it all up, I wanna offer a cheers to y'all here and stay tuned.
2018, STEEM ON!