Steemit is in my opinion one of the greatest social experiments to ever come along.
I know almost all of us come into steemit and it's like this...
But consider this for just a moment
Each and every one of us now have the ability to help others to earn a meaningful living in a world where the only thing scarce are jobs.
Unfortunately, the waters are a little choppy right now.
@Dan just quit and many people are flipping out, and now we have major players like @dragosroua shutting down their nodes, powering down and dumping their steem. We have whale wars going on and an experiment, that sadly is beginning to seem like a particular experiment from Stanford...
Nothing personal @abit and @smooth but here's the truth. The experiment is awesome for the reward pool, but it's going to kill steemit if you and the others continue with it. The negativity associated with a flag is too much for most people emotionally to bear. You can claim it's not personal, but people feel like it is and that perception is all that matters. They feel hurt. You can get the same result with far less effort by just upvoting whatever content you do like.
But that's pretty much all of the bad news. The good news is that steemit and steem are still in great shape, and we as a community can make this even better.
So here are 5 easy steps that we can all do to make steemit great again!
Power Up 100% on every post, every time! - Doing this reduces the amount of new steem actively entering circulation, plus it gives you clout, weight. This additional clout is power for your upvote and means that your voice carries more weight. With major whales powering down and you powering up, your voting power will be worth MUCH more in the near future.
Never flag! - unless the post is a violation of copyright, or it's trolling or abusive. I know the design here is that downvotes/flagging redistribute the rewards pool. But the part that was missed in the design of the system is the emotional impact of being flagged for earning too much money. This isn't a communist system. Yes there is the option to forceably redistribute someone's earnings. But the same effect can be achieved just by upvoting the content you like. The downvoting to remove rewards serves no purpose that isn't better served by just upvoting only the things you like.
Share your posts here on other social media! - Not just the posts themselves, but also talk about steemit on your other social media. Make your initial posts here and share there. If one of your posts happens to attract a lot of attention on other social media networks, then it brings attention to this platform. That attention is the real currency behind steemit. The more attention we get, the more valuable the efforts of each and everyone of us becomes.
Get involved! - Not just here but also on Github. A lot of discussion occurs on Github that never even sees the light of day here. But these discussions are vital to the long term future of the platform and as an example
Here are 2 feature requests, that will change the face of steem as we know it...
https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/848
https://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/947Consider buying steem whenever it droops a little! - Right now we have people that bought in at as much as $5.00 trying to exit. These people are taking a major loss just to exit. But here's the thing. This won't last. If you're an American, dumping your excess steem for a loss is a tax write off. There is a good incentive to dump because Uncle Sam is paying for all your losses and there are people including myself that are powering down for this reason alone. But this will only be true for a few more weeks. Once April 14th rolls around, the price decline will stop and most likely reverse as a lot of the pressure to sell abates. That means that there HAS NEVER been a better time to buy than right now, and there may not be another chance like this again.
Stay happy! Because there has never been a better time to be part of this than right now...
Some final thoughts...
As the whales power down, yes it pushes the price down for everyone, but it's also redistributing the economic power of the steemit platform into a more democratic arrangement. These whales who are dumping are doing so at a loss. But if we endure this short term pain, I am still confident that in a few years time steem will be trading at $10 each. We just need to focus on the long term and take proactive steps to make that happen and one of those steps is acquiring steem on the open market. As new businesses adopt steem and use it in new and innovative ways it will attract more businesses and consumers to the platform. @tradeqwik for instance powers up it's entire cold wallet and uses it to upvote our most active traders. That's hardy the only business giving steem a long hard look right now. But these things take time, so have a little patience because it will pay off in the end and you'll get to be part of all of it!
Steem On!
This post is 100% Steem Powered!
These images all came from various google image searches, if you know who's they are, let me know so I can provide attribution, thanks!