Steemit's Evil Plan for Cryptocurrency World Domination
Most people visiting steemit.com view this as a platform where you can get paid to post, but this is just the tip of the preverbal iceberg.
The real money isn’t in blogging, content generation, or voting. The real money is found in bootstrapping a digital currency. A currency owned and operated in a decentralized way by ordinary people.
The key to bootstrapping a currency is having a community which is able and willing to use it. A blogging platform that makes it possible for everyone to earn their way in is just a trojan horse. It is a means of hiding the vegetables (honest money) in the food (fun content).
Phase 1 - Bootstrap a Stable Currency
The first phase of Steemit’s manancial plan involves establishing a price stable currency. This is a currency denominated in values that everyone knows and trusts. This is the Steem Dollar.
A Steem Dollar is different from other digital currencies because you are not trusting anyone else to hold real dollars in the bank. It is backed 20 to 1 by Steem, a growing community of bloggers. It also pays people interest far beyond what the banks pay!
To bootstrap this currency we need people to have a way to earn it. This is what posting rewards are for. We also need a highly liquid market in which people could trade their Steem Dollar for Steem. Market liquidity is the key to building trader confidence and minimize conversion costs.
As you can see from this chart there is a (relatively) massive amount of liquidity with just 0.002% spread. At any moment someone could trade in and out of STEEM / STEEM Dollars in quantities of over $1000. This is in a market that is just two days old.
Phase 2 - Bootstrap a Marketplace
The next phase of Steemit’s profoundly wicked plan is to bootstrap a marketplace. A market place is where people can buy and sell goods and services. You may have heard of systems like OpenBazaar, Craigslist, Angie's List, or eBay.
A successful marketplace needs two things:
- People
- Money
Steemit is attracting hundreds of new users every day and filling their pockets with fresh steem dollars. This is an environment that is ripe for a rich market place where people can exchange real goods and services along with their ideas.
If ever there were a website / marketplace that would bring cryptocurrency to the masses, steemit.com is it.
Phase 3 - Sidechains, Smart Contracts and SmartCoins, Oh My!
Once you have a highly functional currency, a robust community and market place, and lots of content to bring in new users, you are ready to start building robust smart contracts and side chains around these assets.
Think of a side-chain as a Facebook app. It will allow developers to build new games. It will allow people to issue their own currencies. All kinds of robust financial instruments can be built on the back of the Steem Dollar and the Steem network.
Unlike other smart contract platforms, Steem will have no fees! This means app developers can build things that just aren’t viable elsewhere.
Long Road
The road is long, but the Steem community will eventually follow the yellow-brick-blockchain to the Emerald City and in the process overcome the wicked witch of the west. The Steemit community just needs to over come its fears, stop being cowardly, and find it in their heart to love one another.
Maybe the plan isn’t so evil after all.
How do we get a marketplace on Steemit?
Once we have private messaging we will have a classified tag. Posts made in the classified section will have payouts disabled.
Private messages are necessary for exchanging personal information to close the deal (shipping addresses).
We will add escrow support at the blockchain level.
I'm already working on recruiting some sellers and was planning to just have them ask for buyers to include shipping addresses as the memo on their payment. Any estimate on the timeline for these new features?
Hi Dan,
Do you have a roadmap for the next two years?
I've been involved with Open Bazaar for a long time and 2017 roadmap for them is pretty solid IF they can deliver. What I don't like is I can't earn currency in-platform unless I'm a vendor/seller... Enter Steem. Really looking forward to all you have to offer for this new platform and potential marketplace.
Will steem's marketplace be OpenBazaar? If not, wouldn't it be better if it were?
This will be LEGEN.....wait... for..... it....... DARY!!!
You should probably name it "classifieds" with an "s". If it is not plural then it implies that is a top-secret section or something.
HELL YES!! Very exciting!! How "anon" will this be?
what would be some comparable sites that you're envisioning the marketplace being similar to?
if it could be built up to the level of something like Craigslist... daaaaang...
This is Awesome!!! Can't believe it's actually happening.
Don't make the massive mistake eBay did, USE penny-start AUCTIONS for EVERYTHING, either that, or use Amazon's system of REVERSE DUTCH AUCTION. Wanna kill a marketplace and have a competitor beat you? Make all the listings fixed price. It creates clutter for buyers, it creates extra work for sellers (instead of just marking the GRADE of a common iPhone model which is a commodity, you have to repost ALL the information about the phone as if re-inventing the wheel), and it makes for a non-liquid marketplace. We've studied the history of eBay and Amazon's marketplace, as well as craigslist and Facebook market. The key is to create liquidity, and liquidity happens from prices being forced to a settling price. you should maybe do two or three versions, a local like craigs and FB market, an auction like ebay (but NOT fixed price offerings), and a reverse dutch auction for commodities (like Amazon's "used").
I think this is a great idea. Why wait...I'm offering to sell a Starbucks Gift Card now. See my post.
oh please, no more Starbucks !! terrible company really, expensive and certainly not respectful of the growers of their coffee !! i hope to see more interesting things than this nhere !! this is just more of the same of what we definitely don't need here !! tired of Starbucks rulers of coffee !!
Will the marketplace be built from the ground up or will it leverage an existing platform? Also, will a mechanism for digital good distribution be offered in the marketplace?
We can support a paypal-like checkout process that any website can integrate.
We have no plans for doing digital good distribution on our own at this time, but it would be trivial to add.
Ok, thx. When can we expect to see the marketplace?
In Canada we have "Canadian Tires", a hardware supply store. They had their own cash "Canadian Tires Dollars" that you could only redeem in their own store. It's the same concept with air miles points too. You create an easy way for people to accumulate value, give them a way to spend it...et voila! You've got a parallel economy.
But steemit brings it to a level they didn't think about: being able to trade those dollars Peer to Peer, exchange services to each other for that currency and provide a platform that leverage it's community. I raise my hat to that vision.
You're like the Wizard and I the Scarecrow getting some knowledge. Much appreciated Dan, Cheers.
This concept reminds me on netpond.com, an old webmaster forum where i used to be a moderator and where you did get paid 5 cents per every post. Bad thing about it is a lot of spam posts without any value.
Thanks, Dan for that optimistic post!
What i personally like about you is that you are dealing OK with failures. You are really strong man. I believe in you and wish Steem become next Reddit/Medium.
Dan, it is nice to see that the Team has plans to evolve the project,but my suggestion is not to rush. Reinforce the original core of the project and then make your additions to get it further on the crypto race. Keep it up!
This is what I thought as Steem from the first glance.
Many people's-court-bamboo-spearing Red Guards are just looking as Steem as good-writing-reward platform,
but they don't see the fundamentals of Steem is this.
Happy to find out this writings from the developer at the very beginning.
@dimimp Thanks for the love and support God will keep blessing you.
For me I will love to catch out because I have a lot of bills to pay and am final year student, i haven't pay my school and I will be start writing my project next month as well,all this will make me go for the Steem pay out.
Thanks a lot @dimimp,you are one in a million.
This information is important for all people steemit, success for everyone here, cheers
There is a lot of truth to what Dan says here. Many don't really understand cryptocurrency and what it takes for it to really work and become usable and mainstream. Previously I wrote "Steem is genius for focusing on real world value that is virtual: information". Plus controlling information is important and useful. I'm just glad that someone has chosen to be honest about what Steem is doing. (And I hope it is for good.) To private message me, for now: [email protected].