the biggest screaming is that steem has to be a ponzi since money is coming from nowhere. However, it is a very poorly designed ponzi as newcomers are not asked to put money in, but rather are paid money. Hmmmm. what type of ponzi doesnt require people to pay anything?
As to the money from nothing, it seems that finding a SHA256 hash with lots of leading zeroes is pretty close to nothing too, as are all the fiats.
Money is money because people all agree that it is money and it usually just comes out of thin air, though gold/silver as a currency is an exception the problem with those is that the economic growth is tied to the physical supply, which is an artificial constraint
You've put into words the concept that still baffles me...I just don't quite understand if Steem dollars actually translate into actual currency that can be used for everyday life. Without a basis, a physical supply, where can the money come from? Having said that, I also know that while our US dollars are based on gold, our treasury doesn't actually have that much gold and thus much of the US dollar is based on thin air too. But still, I don't quite "get" it. I'm new and maybe in time I will and I think I'll try to cash out a small amount and maybe running through the experience of this may help clear things up.
um. US dollars havent been backed by anything for decades. It is just an IOU from your govt.
Steem dollars trade at roughly $1 via several markets, so regardless of how either is backed, they are convertible to each other.
Have you heard that "time is money"?
There are also new thinking that "attention is money"
steemit's currencies represent the time that the content writers and curators put in and the attention that this content gets. In the information age, this is actually closer to real value than some lump of metal you have to pay to store safely.
Steem dollar is basically a freely transferable financial instrument that tracks the value of USD.
Gold and silver are not an exception. They're still valuable (especially gold) simply because people value them and when used in a monetary role it is because people agree to do so.
Thank fuck you're on Steemit jl777 as you crop up on most of the posts I read and seems to tell it like it should be. Many thanks for your input and please keep commenting.