The other day I wrote how the largest companies, by market cap, are those with the strongest ecosystems. It doesn't matter the product or service, the value lies in the ecosystem. Take Uber and AirBNB as examples. These two companies own very little. Uber operates sans a fleet of cars while AirBnb does not have one hotel room. Nevertheless, both these companies were able to upend their respective industries. In fact, they are so disruptive that they are causing pain for their cometitors.
STEEM is a disruptive force since it using blockchain technology. While this is still in its infancy, we are going to see blockchain radically shift the landscape of the world we live in. Power structures will be altered. Abundance is coming before us yet most people still fail to see it.
One of the most successful companies the last 15 years has been Apple. This company was a marginal computer company that created high end products which focused on specialty markets. However, it went through a stretch where it totally revolutionized a couple different markets. The first was the music industry with the introduction of the IPod. After that, the IPhone, really upended the cell phone market. These two products were able to garner billions in sales.
At the core of all this is the IOS operating system. A large part of the ecosystems we see today are some type of operating system. Microsoft made a fortune with the Windows platform that is still widely used on all laptops and PCs. Google really started to take over the cell phone market with Android. We see that what lies "underneath" can be very valuable.
Yesterday, I read an article talking about the "IOS Economy". How much is this entity worth?
It is important to note that one of the advantages Apple (and Google have) is it created a system whereby people are free to use their own creativity to develop products (apps) which can go on Apple's ecosystem. Of course, it requires their approval and Apple takes a decent cut of the proceeds. Hence, the power of owning the operating system.
In this sense, they decentralized. They created a huge market of developers to create an assortment of apps which help strengthen the Apple ecosystem. This also provides enormous revenues for the company.
According to the research in this article, it is believed that the IOS economy generated $380B in revenues last year with the hardware. Even if we remove that from the equation, we see that it produced $180B for Apple. This company generated almost $200B in digital files which were created by people who do not even work for Apple.
For full article:
http://www.asymco.com/2018/01/08/the-ios-economy-updated/
Can you now see the power of decentralization?
Apple was able to expand the potential of its system by letting others do the creating for them. For this "benefit", Apple paid almost $90B to developers, almost half of what it generated.
So how does this compare to STEEM?
It is vital to mention that STEEM is 100% decentralized and enables anyone to put whatever they create on the blockchain. There is no permission required. Apple is known to have a rather tight approval process which means a lot of effort was wasted if one's creation did not meet their criteria.
This is where STEEM differs. One does not meet the approval of some committee. Everything created can be put on the blockchain. Here, the community decides. If people gravitate towards the app, then you have success. The question of whether it is accepted is not in the hands of a few but, rather, the users. It is up to each of us to determine which apps we use.
Blockchain is a much different structure than the traditional business model. However, it does have a few similarities, at least from an analogical perspective. A blockchain can be thought of as an operating system. Everything is built on top of it. Just like app developers create their products to interact with IOS, those on here design apps for the steem blockchain.
Please bear in mind that Apple is the 3rd ranked operating system in terms of placements behind Android and Windows. This exemplifies how loyal people are to that ecosystem to generate such huge revenues.
STEEM, at present, generates more transactions than any other blockchain even though it is newer than most. This is a big deal in this environment. People are still trying to determine how to value these entities. However, one of my basic points is what is taking place on the blockchain is crucial. That is the real barometer. If people are using the network, then Metcalfe's Law kicks in at some point. Over time, with continued effort, the number of nodes (users) should grow. This only makes a blockchain more valuable.
Also, there is a major difference between STEEM (and some other blockchains) and the traditional models. On STEEM, many, if not most, of the transactions are "new" money. The reward pool means that people are acquiring tokens. These transactions are coming from the blockchain and putting never used-before STEEM in people's wallets. I think it is safe to say that every dollar spent on the IOS platform was money that was issued out. From an accounting perspective, the IOS purchase mean a deficit (in terms of money) for the individual while, on STEEM, it is a surplus.
The final piece of this puzzle is the fact that anyone can enter this ecosystem at any time....for any reason. With Apple, one needs to basically purchase the phone to partake (although ITunes does work on Windows). This is not the case with STEEM. Some might have no interest in Zappl yet D.Tube is attractive to them. At present, we are dealing with similar apps (social media) but over the next few years, we can only imagine what people will create. My point is the barrier to entry to this ecosystem is nothing.
Can STEEM be as big as IOS?
That will depend upon development. As long as people are creating applications for this blockchain that are attractive to people, more will be joining us. The real kicker could be the Smart Media Token technology. Through this, STEEM has the ability to draw millions of users to the blockchain via their present interests. STEEM does not have to convince millions of users to come over, only the site owner to embrace tokenizing his/her website. The crowd will follow.
The social media platform contains billions of daily users. This is one of the largest markets on the Internet. STEEM is the premiere social media blockchain (actually eliminate social media...premiere blockchain). If 50K daily active users can create 1.5M transactions a day, can you imagine the volume of activity when there are even 5 or 10 million on here? Let your mind ponder if D.Tube and Zappl take 1% of the traffic away from YouTube/Twiiter.
As you can see, it does not take a large penetration in any one market for STEEM to be enormous. Is a $1T blockchain out of the question? Down the road, I do not believe so. Ultimately, I believe we will see hundreds of billions of dollars worth of transactions done on this blockchain.
Billions of people are posting, upvoting and commenting on a daily basis but only 50K of us are truly getting paid for it.
This means there is a bit of room for growth.
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Seems like the potential is the total quantity of money so perhaps many many trillions?
It could well happen....when you look at how big the total blockchain market can be, it is astounding.
We will see how much of an effect that SMTs will have on it. If they really bring many companies on here, it will be a gold mine.
yea, waiting patiently for SMTs to be opened up. Hopefully 2018 is revolutionary.
I think it is a bit far fetched but hey bring it on!
Yes i think blockchain tech will change a lot of business models forever. As you mentioned uber and airbnb, are both great examples which could be done with blockchain technology, instead of being big companies. The same goes for an app store and something like a search engine a la google. Time will tell were we are heading. And with all the smart contract stuff maturing, even more is possible. The sky is the limit.
This site is interesting, by their estimation, that could be way off,
DTube currently worth $868,000
https://www.worthofweb.com/website-value/d.tube/
Steemit $97,000,000
https://www.worthofweb.com/website-value/steemit.com/
YouTube $102,650,332,250
https://www.worthofweb.com/website-value/youtube.com/
I do think Steemit could be worth $1T in the future but there's a long way to go just to catch up with YouTube. Hopefully the masses will see the advantages of Steemit and DTube over the traditional sites.
I think the making of STEEM as a platform depends largely on a killer app. You could argue that Steemit, or DTube are killer apps, but it's too early to tell.
Both would have to be as slick, and [especially in Steemit's case] easy to use for new users as other platforms they're competing with. For DTube, that's YouTube and Steemit (with the introduction of Communities), you could argue it's up against Reddit, Facebook and possibly LinkedIn at some point.
YouTube is playing right into DTube's hands with their treatment of small creators, and as more find out about DTube's benefits for content creation, that could be the spark which lights the STEEM platform.
But to fully capitalise, Steemit needs to be much slicker (especially on mobile - with official apps with slick interfaces), and easier to understand and get started on for new users. You'll never get mass adoption until it's easy enough to explain in a sentence or two. When newbie A can show newbie B what it's all about over a 5 minute coffee break.
Innovators and early adoptors are great at working with clunky interfaces and finding their way around early versions, but the mass market is not. They need slick, simple to understand and easy to use.
Steemit has massive potential, and could be a $trillion platform, but the apps need careful management and development to stand the best chance of being #1 in such a crowded, established space...then, with the rewards model STEEM has, Facebook and the rest would have to copy or die.
I agree completely with everything you wrote here @m-ssed-t.
There is a lot of work to be done by the developers. This is not something that it fully ready for the masses. A lot needs to be streamlined to make it attractive to them.
The possibility does exist...which is exciting.
Plus, the SMT protocol, when released, will be huge because then millions through other sources.
It IS exciting. I just hope they can pull it off.
Blockchain tech can take the Internet in the direction it was originally intended to take, with decentralised systems, not big players controlling it.
And the whole premise of STEEM, allowing the community to profit from the community is the most exciting thing I've come across on the Internet since I first came to it in 1996/7 (screeching modems & all!)
Great post. Crypto is the future. Steem has great potential and it is amazing platform, that solves a lot of real problems and saves lives, specially in those countries whit bad economy, like Venezuela. But I still think that $1T is far-fatched. Most important think for now is that we are growing at a fast pace in almost everything.
Mind-boggling and best left to the imagination. With steem ,people do not really need a lot of convincing to be a part of this epoch-making platform because of its decentralized nature . Yes ultimately transactions on this blockchain is going to plummet to astronomical propensity, and it's all happening in no distant time.
In my opinion steemit has no boundaries, it can grow to something really amazing. Steemit is far better than any other social media, and steemit doesn't have owners, so greed can't destroy this place. Interesting article, thanks:)
Where can't improve there is no power or decentralization, because the present world want to make own power dominate, but where there is no power there is no democracy, for that the owner of the community need to decide as decentralize so so anyone can participate their capability
I think the more and more people that start to use steemit and the other applications. The sky is the limit. Just like apple people started to accept it and use it that's what made it worth so much. Think the Steem platform has incredible potential all we have to do is keep working hard and promoting it.
I also think about the potential for existing sites with HUGE existing user base to adopt SMTs. We could literally see tens of millions of people added to the Steem ecosystem overnight if some big player would decide to use SMTs on the Steem blockchain. Think what that might do to the value of STEEM. It's exciting and sometimes unimaginable.
I just love reading your posts, they always get me so excited about the future here for us, it all sounds totally plausible and even highly likely. I'll just keep hanging out here and Hodling tight.
Interesting take, and I agree, to the extent that I can understand it all. But I don't have to completely understand it to know that this is big - very very big. My spidy sense tells me to go all in - and I never doubt the spidy sense. Steem ON!
Market cap of all of world's stock market is close to 73 Trillion . Gold 8Trillion , Derivatives 500 Trillion . USD is bubble , they are printing money at exponential rate . Crypto market is only 500B now , It may increase to Trillions this year . Even if small percentage of that money shifts from there , it would make a huge difference to cryptos and Steem.
Fb is worth more than 500 B that too without any incentives for it's users .When people will realize how steemit works and the value it gives to it's users . They will shift to it . I am sure Steemit will go higher but how much that is to be seen .
After reading your article, I wondered, but how much is 50 thousand? And that's how I answered it myself. For comparison, Facebook has 2 billion active users and this is 40,000 times more. And now imagine that 10% of these users will actively use Steemit. In this case, the number of active users of Steemit will grow 4 times. From that moment I began to actively think about the promotion of steemit in social networks. Good luck to you and Good.
I think a better comparison is Reddit.
From what I can gather, they have 250M users....which is 500 times the user base here.
Again using your 10%, that is 25M people on here....and that does not include the people who are on other blogs commenting that might end up here because that site creates a token.
Thanks for the great comparison.
Great article. Quite thought provoking - I have recently been thinking about how much Steemit (and other cryptos) could potentially be worth, if the market grows in a positive direction and cryptos are widely adopted. While my numbers were not as high as $1 Trillion, I agree that it is not out of the question. I guess it will depend on what you mentioned - the future innovations based around Steemit!
I am curious what your numbers were.
Yes innovation is going to be key. Many made the comparison to MySpace. The difference comes down to what is continually developed. If there is innovation on here, which there is a good chance since it is totally open, we will see rising success.
I'm still working on them in truth, I'm trying to factor in the economics of it all, it's a small side project that I have going on. Will be doing a post on them when I have them all finished, but still working on my passive income series at the moment! I do agree that Innovation and continuous development generally correlates with monetary success, so I'm excited for the future of Steemit and the market as a whole!
Even though the Steem blockchain might actually work quite well as the ecosystem you describe, as an underlying architecture on which a blossoming range of dApps can work which would have Steem be worth $1T down the road for sure, one of its founders thought there were some elements not perfectly suited in Steem to do just that.
Isn't that what EOS is meant to do precisely? To be an infrastructure for decentralized applications?
Why do you think Steem would be better suited for this than EOS? Or could it be that there's so much capital and so much potential in the space that there's room for both and more...?
Using that reasoning, the same could be said about Bitshares...is that one cooked too?
I think there is going to be so much activities on blockchain in general that there will be the capital there for everyone. We are talking a hundred trillion or more of commerce in 10 years being done on the blockchain. That is a lot of value which will be spread over millions of blockchains. Obviously some will be bigger than others.
That said, I like STEEM since it focuses upon the social media market. The curation/reward system is what is valuable. Will EOS have this? Perhaps yet we didnt see it added to BTS.
Besides, at some point we are going to have interoperability between different blockchains. It is inevitable.
I think you will see the market cap for blockchain in the hundreds of trillions. We are going to see the greatest capital creation in the history of the world. That is why I feel abundance is coming.
And if we look at bitcoin, it hit about $250B, 1/4 of the way that I project and that blockchain doesnt seem to rival this one in any way. Sure we can make the case that BTC isnt worth that, and that could be true. Nevertheless, it does show how the numbers are going to grow a great deal.
Rewarding content creation and curation is indeed a $1T idea, I must agree with that. Ironing out the perfect settings to this idea will probably happen with SMT's.
And I really don't know if there will be a Steem-like app on EOS. I don't know if there will be a DEX on EOS. But I do know the capital poured into EOS is pretty formidable. That could mean something about its potential.
But you are absolutely right about the fact that interoperability betweens blockchains is coming. That will change everything!
It's amazing to me that people still flock to Apple for their latest iPhone, $1000 for what?
I've never owned an iPhone. The first time Apple came out with their phone, and you could replace the battery on your own, I knew it was a piece of crap. Being forced to return products to the manufacturer for repair is ludacris. I can get 8 new phones for the price of one iPhone over a 12 year period. The main difference is, I can get a new phone whenever I want one, not when Apple bullsh*ts everyone every 18 months.
Sorry I went off on a tangent. I think I have dTube down now, when posting a video. I haven't checked out Discord yet. And I'm not sure about Busy. Once the new apps are created and working properly, I'll check them out to see if I need them.
Steemit rewards the daily users, and when we figure that out, this place will explode with quality content and comments. Carry on Task.
Great analysis. I think we heading this direction.
Absolutely...I agree with you @oldtimer.
I think the SMT protocol, when released, will add a ton of users to the blockchain. So many blogs/sites have commenting on them that are all prime to be put on here. Overall, this can add millions of users who might not be on steemit but will be on the blockchain.
I think in due time we will be seeing huge value being placed on the blockchain, right now is just the tip of the iceberg. We're in beta still right now, and like you said, we have only 50000 people, which isn't a lot compared to how many people are using social media. Tell your friends!
Hey man,
I heard your interview on DSound and I did not imagine you having a voice like that. I was reading your posts in Taskmaster voice and now that voice changed. Heh.
Wanted to congratulate you on the interview and let you know I think it rocked, even inspiring me to think about the future even more.
Cheers!
When you compare how many users are on the steem blockchain with how many are on facebook I can see that if we would draw only a fraction of them to steem how explosive that growth would be.
I'm gonna have a toast in your name when we reach $100 per steem :)
Where did you learn how to analyze things like this? It seems like you can get these things very spot on, and since you write a lot, you can also see things like this very fast.
Without any roadblocks, I have no doubt that Steem could reach $100 in no time. We will have some roadblocks for sure, but Steem will definitely continue to grow. I’m really excited to see what SMT will add to the ecosystem. I’m wondering if SMT is any different from the other crypto that allow you to create your own token like Waves or Dragonchain?
This site is interesting, by their estimation, that could be way off,
DTube currently worth $868,000
https://www.worthofweb.com/website-value/d.tube/
Steemit $97,000,000
https://www.worthofweb.com/website-value/steemit.com/
YouTube $102,650,332,250
https://www.worthofweb.com/website-value/youtube.com/
I do think Steemit could be worth $1T in the future but there's a long way to go just to catch up with YouTube. Hopefully the masses will see the advantages of Steemit and DTube over the traditional sites.
Though Steemit doesn't have its sites set on FB it does have its sites set on Reddit.
My mind reels at what Steem will be worth if Steemit reaches a user base that size.
The very fact that Steem pays you to post when combined with a rising userbase tells me it could climb pretty high.
Great Post, lets see how the steemit economy develops
We are already seeing development of new forums based on steem platform we have seen steembay, recently a wordpress plugin was launched maybe in future we may see platform for freelancers in future like upwork
The potential is enormous
Lets see how quickly developers join the dots and complete the economic chain
Indeed only 50k users are generating so much activity here already, I can't even imagine what numbers we will see when millions of people will be using this blockchain.
App development and the number of users is a huge indicator of how useful a blockchain is. Steem is one of the best right now in terms of this and really undervalued. I'm in the pricess of adding an app for royalty-free stock photos that will run on steem
Keep us up to date on the progress of your app...would love to see it when it is done.
That sounds like something useless...
Is it akin to Google Images?
I'll keep posting updates. I wrote a detailed post a couple days ago. It will be like pixabay.com which gets 60 million monthly views but on steem
That's a hard-hitting way to look at the big picture! ☺
Thanks for such an amazing article as always.
Do you know the release date of SMT?
I also believe, steemit will eventually have competition, because this concept is too good for it to be only 1 option. I know there is a Russian steemit, but I think there will eventually be new competitors. Just like coke and Pepsi for example.
I have to wonder... if the Blockchain will contain all of the content of all those people, won't it become so large that no regular user will be able to participate in the blockchain?
Downloading the BitCoin Blockchain right now is already a big task with ~200GB or so. This could lead to a situation where only certain individuals or organizations could continue to actively participate in the Blockchain.
Am I missing something or is this a problem that needs to be tackled?
This wonderfully chimes in with the post I just wrote about the revolution that STEEM represents!
Indeed, STEEM can become the new social OS - and EOS for the rest, as I wrote in my article about the new operating system of the Web 3.0. I only see a lot of competition in the crypto space, since STEEM really is kind of a "one in all solution", that makes so many other cryptocurrencies obsolete.
Keep in mind that Apple doesn't even make their own stuff...just design it. Drop shipped from China!
Steem is far more legit. We own it!
Very well said dear @taskmaster4450. A very comprehensive and logical blog on the subject. I totally agree with your stance that ecosystem is the key to success in recent time I love the example you have given of Apple, IOS and further relate to steem. Thanks a lot for this tremendous blog. keep it up!
This is a typical @taskmaster post, full of fresh and inspiring knowledge. I personally believe that in the nearest future STEEM will compete with coin such as bitcoin.
This is a great read.
I also noticed this sir. These past few days, steem is really low although a lot of new users and its very popular nowadays. Aside from that, apple company isn't actually making their own products. They collaborate with china wherein the labor is very low.
I think its much worth it in steemit. Aside from orginality, and also has a quality content.
1: Steemit
#2: $20
#3: ein anderer Grund
#4: ja
#5: keinen
#6: nein
#7: 8 (habe meinen Acc. approval erst seit Samstag)
#8: etwas anderes
#9: Etherium
#10: Steemit DACH
Nothing can stop this Steem-train!
BLAST 'EM!
JGV
nice Post on steem yes it is a great platrm where billion of user 😊
Informative article. Thanks for sharing and keep going to inform us about Steem
I think cryptoes are future
STEEM has an infinite potential; so many possibilities with it.
$+100 at the end of 2018
very helpful post. thanks for sharing such a nice post with us.
Extraordinary investigation. I think we traveling this course.
valuable post..thanks for sharing