Ride The Wave!
Surf's up - 2017!
All big waves start small, even in the cryptosphere. If you're here reading this right now, let it be known that you couldn't have been more at both the right place and time. This little wave right here just recently cruised past #8415 in global traffic ranking. In order to continue its march into dominating the attention economy, Steem and its ecosystem will need to focus on strengthening its core value of being the gateway into freedom.
There will be a million and one different communities / apps / tokens in the future. People will need a platform to discover the ones that are suitable for them, seeing that the beating heart of the capital world is now snowballing into a globally shared pool of assets through smart tokens, each with varying flavours of function and distribution. It's just blockchain technology taking on a life of its own, manifesting itself as many different kinds of tokens out there, to appeal to as many people as possible. The way to achieve this level of adoption is principally through social means, so Steem is in a great position to make this happen and be the center of it all.
This may all sound quite delusional, but is it really?
Huge chunks of the attention economy are in fact, captured by platforms like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Weibo, and so many others. These are all at their core, social and trust networks. That's the layer of the Internet that Steem is in position of improving, all by enabling the sharing of value creation. I can only imagine the expansion of Steem's capabilities further down the road as we experience growth in adoption. It could even become a decentralised exchange, the mother of community tokens, a place for app discovery.
So after spending the past couple of months diversifying my crypto assets, it just dawned on me today that it seems rather odd for anyone not to be dividing up their cryptocurrency holdings proportionately to their time and attention. I've seen users going big into other coins they never spend time in, and weirdly, light on the platform they're investing most of their attention into like Steem. In that sense, it's pretty much full Steem ahead for me now because it turns out, I'm hardly using any other coins at all. But of course, not everything in one basket. It's just that I'll remain heavy on Steem since I happen to gravitate towards it!
"And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave..."
"So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark — that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
We will never know where this grand experiment will take us
But I believe that the future of decentralisation is already on its way to distributing itself far and wide into many good hands. Massive changes will happen with the coming of the Big Wave, and you may soon find yourself resisting from within, hanging onto your board before the wave breaks. Ride it out, and you shall be free.
Similar to when you finally find a word to describe something that you have been doing for a while, but were unable to describe as you did not know what it was called. This is what this article has done for me. I heavily invested in ETH from the start of my crypto journey one year ago. Then as it gained value I sold out and diversified into many different coins, often buying and trading coins, only after reading short articles, or viewing a chart and seeing possible room for growth. About one month ago I realized that I knew very little about many of the currencies that I was investing in, breaking my number one rule, "Do not invest in something that you don't know, or understand." At the same time, I had rediscovered Steem. I now hold very little in other cryptos and most in Steem and Ethereum, which I know the most about and use the most. Thanks for another great article. BTW, Vaporwaver f***ing rocks!
I sold a couple hundred ethers for steem when it was 2 bucks - somehow regretted that move since ether mooned quite hard after, but i guess its okay, I'll take the latent value of the currency as we build it. Been diversifying a couple btcs here and there especially for index coins like TaaS, BCAP, Ethereum rivals like Lisk, and recently on some IOTA too, using the 80% 20% rule for my holdings. Thanks, share out the music!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle - Needed to a reminder of the 80/20 rule. IOTA has some very interesting capabilities. Plus, Bill tends to be right on things! Just saying.
80/20 rule rules! It works in almost all aspects of life. With only 20% of the effort you can usually get 80% or more of the result.
One thing we know for sure - It's Hard to not keep all Eggs in one bakset, when an opportunity like Steem comes along!
when there's enough people then it'll be quite safe :) but still, dont go 100% lol
hey my friend , Follow me back , thank you
Wavi
the gateway into freedom
nice dream...
so, lets make this dream come true and spread the juice ^^
selling the dream ;) lol spreading the juice! sounds so wrong
hahahah
you make me feel dirty now ^^
where's my whip?
Haha
Good analogy Kevin, because like a wave, it swells forward and backward; remember this time last year? It was swelling, and now it is again! I get a feeling it is more sustainable this time; I think it's about to break over the banks of the internet. :-)
Cg
Plenty of metrics should that it's indeed more substantial than we were at last year! I'm already getting 10x more IRL friends recently asking me about cryptos in general and that's quite a sign..
@kevinwong & @cryptogee... YES... Agree with You Both... it seems there is now a "critical mass", a significant, dynamic/scalable Crypto WAVE that is currently encompassing the entire planet while each country's domestic currency suffers from decades of over-printing.
"FASTEN Your Seatbelts"... because this summer I believe there will be a surge of MONSTER Waves that is building right before our eyes... (( This scenario is explained pretty well in this YouTube video link below:))...
ALSO... IF You like the feeling of actually being "Inside the TUBE"... see one of my latest posts from the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii... ( This is a shameless plug... >> : ~ ))
https://steemit.com/photography/@sacred-agent/exceptional-photography-by-clark-little-with-short-video-intro
Click the link above for an incredible photographic view of being "Inside the TUBE"
This is a metaphor... those that are holding Bitcoin, Ethereum, Steem & other viable, functional, useful & practical crypto... WILL Be Riding the Crypto WAVE... instead of being CRUSHED by holding fiat currencies in various forms of stocks, bonds, real estate or savings accounts.
Thank You again Kevin for Your insightful, ongoing Posts...Have a Great Week !!
Thanks for the link :) We'll see how the game turns out to be. But what I think is people with plenty of capital could finally see there are great ways to distribute their wealth in cryptos more effectively.. well that's what i think about what's happening, with Bitcoin being that first blackhole :)
Kevin, You're more than welcomed... You really create some Great Posts igniting the minds of those who read Your posts.
I believe You are correct and the "proof is in the pudding"... Total Market Cap went from around $20 Billion to $100 Billion in about 60 days... of course, it took about 9 years to get to $20 Billion.
HOWEVER, now we see the Market Cap at $115 Billion with a normal pullback, resting/waiting period for the NEXT WAVE to reach $150 Billion... most likely to "appear" within the next 30 to 45 days.
Time as we know it... is being compressed, so that each consecutive WAVE tends to come FASTER & FASTER... because of the decades of abusive GLOBAL fiat currency creation.
Thanks Again Kevin... Great Post / Great Metaphor !!
Yes, me too! Although I do think that is more linked to the much publicised boom in Bitcoin recently. Though there is definitely splash back onto Steem because of it :-)
Cg
Yeah, great article @kevinwong
I am on Steemit for ten days, but I see the potential in it, and I already started investing in myself by promoting my posts. The only thing about promotions here, that bothers me is that your promoted posts get in the Promoted bar.
I dont think that user will be clicking on that bar at all, they will check Trending and New posts tabs, but I highly douby anyone is going to click the promoted bar.
I think promotion must be somehow more widely shown, not just to users in the Topic they are viewing, and especially the promotrd bar.
Best practice I think, would be showing your promoted posts to everyone, just like it is on Facebook, just without the target audience. So when I promote a post, it be shown on the homepage of all users, and maybe there should be some rates announced, like for 1SBD your posts get shown in the feeds of 1000 people or less, but there deffinately should be some rates, so we know exactly what are we paying for.
Okay, this is just my thoughts on this subject. It went a bit lenghtly, I maybe should make a post about it.
As far as I know, there are people definitely looking into the Promoted page, even upvoting stuff there! In any case, promoting actually burns steem dollars, so it'll raise the floor price in general. So far, I think it's far better to engage with other users and figure out what people would like to value first, before going for the stuff that really interests you :) Yeah make a post bout it! All the best.
Okay, I am trying my best to engage and comment mindful stuff, but its hard for us the little sardines. I appreciate your upvote on my comment. Even though i never made a good post, with enough reward, i know that i can always make a buck or two while commenting.
Try to lessen the resteem and shortposts at the moment, try to build a meaty blog in the beginning, so when a whale comes by they'll see what your blog is about. You can be more casual once you've built rep and all - but that's just my suggestion!
Yay !To the world filled with little Stitches like myself !!!
Hope this wave lands to a paradise island one day.
No one controls the wave, but we can try our best to steer :) and smile like that lil fella in the pic lol
Yaaaa !!! 😁😁😁
You let the wave do the work.
You don't fight the wave.
You can't fight these big waves.
-Big Z-Surf's Up movie .
Great post, @kevinwong!
I have been on Steemit for a little more than a week and I'm already hooked. I'm not yet able to spend a lot of time here due to other obligations, but I will in the near future.
I owned a few bitcoin at some point but had to sell them to take care of an emergency. Right now, I may not be in a position to invest in Ethereum due to the price spike. While my intention is to write and earn some steem, I may also look into investing in Steem once I have money to spare.
Thank you for your post. It motivates me to spend more time here.
BTW, loved the analogy.
The platform is free-to-use. Although it'd help to buy into Steem Power, it certainly won't require you to actually invest in the currency since you can earn it. Investing time is legit too :)
I know it is. I would like to invest more time and move ahead. Just that, reading all those blogs about Steemians who had invested and are now making huge sums of money.. can be tempting. Thanks for the reality check. :)
Omg wth those waves are massive! I feel I have to much in Bitcoin right now. I'm probably going to moving some of my holding to steemit tomorrow!
I have only 1.1 BTC now lol, some in cold storage. If you've been having fun using the platform, why not? I feel it's a tad expensive right though.. but then again, it's low compared to other coins in the top 10. All the best!
I have close to 1 ether and I am considering converting in to Steem Power. But as you said, it's tad expensive at the moment, so I will wait a bit to see if it will go down in price :)
Similar thoughts..
I can watch the Steemit blockchain live at Steemviz.com to remind myself that this crazy idea isn't vaporware. Nor does it lack enthusiastic users.
Wow been a long time since I went onto Steemviz, don't even know what's really going on with the community anymore, except for the circles I'm in. I guess that's a good thing :)
I think this next Hard Fork that is happening in 6 days is going to be huge. A huge surge could happen after that!
It could go the other way too! Let's hope the rollout is smooth!
I feel like it will be. People didn't like the unfairness of the platform and it didn't make sense for investors to bring in outside money because their vote still wouldn't be worth enough before.
The "experiment" was a good idea and helped a lot I feel this will be a step forward as well. Hearing that this was being addressed honestly raised my hopes. I feel like it is all a big reason for the renewed interest in STEEM and this platform.
Yes I think the linear rewards thingiemajig will work wonders, the effects of it can already be seen to a lesser degree in recent months :)
I sure hope you're right about it being the gateway into freedom...
Plenty of new stuff to learn just being around the platform. I think it made quite a significant effect on me ever since I changed my daily feed from facebook to steemit last year..
do you think the steemit platform is here to stay for a while? your response would be appreciated :)
I've been using it for a year, my first online community so I'm definitely in the bubble and will say that it'll stay around for quite some time. People are looking out for each other too on this platform, and that's quite valuable imo.
thanks for your input...I am a minnow :)