Thank you for that very enlightening explanation. My best friend has been asking me and asking me to tell him how it works. I've been too busy having fun posting, commenting and learning about the platform use that I haven't read much on the technology and structure behind SteemIt. With your post, I think I can safely leave my Steem in my account as an investment rather than pulling it out for a little bit of money. I'm fact, I've been looking at which coin I wanted to buy next after my Siacoin and verge purchases yesterday. I may just put it in to Steem after reading this article.
Steemit has a working product and a user base. That puts it ahead of just about any crypto project that I'm aware of.
That doesn't necessarily mean it'll reap the most profits in the short term, especially with the current ICO market.
But parking coins on this platform and earning from it (even just passively), is an attractive lower-risk option IMO.
Thank you, I'm convinced to put my next purchase into steem.