Why I bought my brother STEEM for Christmas and how you can do the same!
This year I bought my brother 50 STEEM for Christmas and created an account for him ( @trygve ) without him knowing it (yet!). In this post, I want to share why I think this can be the absolute best thing we can do for the value of STEEM this season. I'll also give a short guide for a convenient way you can give a friend or a family member any amount of STEEM together with a steemit account.
Let us make STEEM the best Christmas present of the year!
Last year, it was a popular trend to give someone 1 Bitcoin for Christmas. Indeed, articles about ways to give bitcoin for Christmas was all over most of the popular crypto currency-news websites. CNBC is already at it again this year with an article pumping the idea of giving someone Bitcoin for Christmas. Now as some of you may have noticed, that same gift will be a little bit expensive to repeat this year. Luckily, there are other cryptos to give!
And it's a clever idea, for a few different reasons.
- It can be far more valuable than any other gift
- It can be fun for the person receiving it as they'll watch its changes in value throughout the year
- It can be educating as the person not previously familiar with cryptocurrency can now learn by doing
- It will promote cryptocurrency and blockchain to new people, and the token they are given in particular.
CNBC sharing a story this year on how to give Bitcoin for Christmas
So why would I like to encourage as many Steemians as possible to do the same?
The perfect time to give STEEM
The new year will be an exciting time for STEEM. SMTs will launch in early 2018 and Communities and HF20 should be right around the corner. The ability to buy STEEM with fiat currencies is also expected to be added prior to SMTs to ease the access to new tokens.
Long story short: For anyone who believes this will increase the value of STEEM, why would you not want to give it as a present?
It is a great way of promoting STEEM
Ask yourself: In the few weeks after Christmas, how many people ask you what presents you got? For most, the answer is “a lot of people”. Friends asks, other family members asks, colleagues at work asks, your hairdresser or dentist asks. Everyone asks. Now, if you’ve not been into bitcoin or cryptocurrencies before, and your son, daughter, nephew or santa gives you cryptocurrency for Christmas, how likely are you to share that with your friends just as a “fun” story? Very. So I think giving someone STEEM for Christmas will not only bring more value to the token directly (as STEEM is bought and stored), it will also be a great form of marketing.
Should STEEM also go on to increase on the new year with the launch of SMTs and other features, it will become an even greater talking point for the persons who have been given the STEEM. Will they start talking about how the christmas present they got is suddenly worth twice as much a month or two after Christmas?
Introducing "non-bloggers" to STEEM
A lot of people talk about how the network effect will make STEEM go viral. If I may be honest, I don't see that happening at the moment. Very few people I know on steemit have told anyone about it or tried to on-board new users. In the cases where they have, the outcome has usually been quite poor. When I ask people why the answer is always the same: "My friends would not want to write articles or blogs".
When you give someone STEEM for Christmas, it does not matter whether they go on to blog or become active on steemit. Just tell them to hold on to their account keys like they would for a Bitcoin wallet. @Ned made it clear with his second talk at Steemfest2 that with SMTs, he want the STEEM token to be a store of value, so let your friend or family member hold it as if it was a stock in Facebook. If they grow more curious over time about how they can make more STEEM by being active on the blockchain, or simply want to explore it further, then they can always do that later.
An added network effect
As mentioned, chances are good that they will tell some of their friends and family when asked “what did you get for Christmas?” that they received some crypto-currency, and specifically some STEEM. More so, throughout the year, whenever Bitcoin or crypto currencies comes up as a small-talk topic at their workplace or in their social circles (which is likely seeing how much it dominates the news at the moment), now they can proudly brag about how they own some cryptocurrency themselves! And when asked which token they have, they’ll of course say STEEM! If they are then asked “what the hell is STEEM?” Their answer will probably be along the lines of “oh it’s this social media that pay people in crypto currency. I don’t know much about it but my friend/son/cousin Bob says it will go to the moon”. While they themselves might not have been interested in blogging, perhaps this will get somesome of their friends interested!
Let us make this a thing!
So I would like to submit this idea as a great way to do something small to help boost the value of STEEM and thus make you richer yourself in the process. Think about it: You are going to spend some money on a Christmas present for the person anyway, why not buy some STEEM and thus help increase its value? If the person just wants to hold it, fine, now we’ve locked up some supply, which is only good. Furthermore, if they do want to go on to blog, now they’ve got the perfect story for their introduction post! One I am sure many steemians and curators will love to hear.
How to do it
This morning I decided to give it a go myself and was surprised to have everything done and finished in less than 10 minutes (account @trygve ). The simplest way I could think of to give someone who is not yet on steemit a lump sum of STEEM for Christmas was simply to make them an account using steeminvite.com. The account creation service is made by @pharesim to ease and quicken the effort of inviting new users and getting them an account. This also allows you to set up the account and transfer the desired amount of STEEM to it without ever needing to involve the person you are giving the gift to. Which of course would spoil the surprise!
All it requires is a small amount of liquid STEEM (about 0.2), some STEEM Power if you do not intend to Power Up the gift that you will give them (at least 15 would be recommended), and an email address.
Step 1: Log in to steeminvite.com with your posting key
Step 2: Click “Invite someone now” (make sure to have some liquid steem!)
Steeminvite.com is a convenient site that helps you send an invitation to a friend to join steem, or allow you to create new steem accounts with a few quick steps
I suggest you make the person a new email account (easy!) and then use steeminvite to send an invitation to that email. To send an invitation, you should have at least 0.2 Liquid STEEM in your steemit wallet as well as some spare STEEM Power to delegate. Note that some STEEM Power will be necessary for the account to have the needed bandwidth to make posts and comments. Delegations can of course be removed later from your main account.
Step 3: Enter their email address, ideally one that you have made for them yourself.
Step 4: Go to your email and hit the link provided by steeminvite.
Note: Don’t bother too much with the account name, if the STEEM is held in “Savings”, the person can always move it to a new account that they create by signing up themselves through steemit.com later on. Alternatively, they can keep the STEEM on the account and delegate it to their new account thus adding a new layer of security (this is done by many people on steemit).
Step 5: Double, triple and quadruple save their password and generated keys!
Step 6: Confirm the account creation on steeminvite.com from your own account using your accounts Active Key (this is needed because STEEM is moved from your account to the new one, which currently belong to you anyway).
Last Step: Transfer the desired amount of STEEM to the new account either from your own or from an exchange. Power it up or store it in Savings.
And there you go! Now all you have left to do is find an appropriate Christmas card to go along with the account keys which you can give in paper form in a sealed envelope or on a memory stick. Perhaps you could use a STEEM-themed Wallpaper made by @royalfinest , or see his guide to making your own!
Make sure to take a picture with your surprised friend or family member to post yourself on steemit afterwards. Who knows? Perhaps you’ll end up making a profit on your Christmas present for the first time!
I wish you a Steemy Christmas and hope you'll make this a happy new year for STEEM and for the person you will get onboard!
For anyone who would like to give someone STEEM for Christmas, but either can't afford the STEEM Delegation or would simply like some help: @Acidyo has offered to make the 100 first accounts for free!
Check out his post on it for more details here:
https://steemit.com/christmas/@acidyo/help-with-account-creations-for-christmas-presents-100-first-accounts-for-free
Or send him an email directly to [email protected] with the email you would like to use for the account creation.
Also: I'm really mindblown by the amount of positive feedback and attention this post has gotten so far. Thank you everyone who has shared the post and to all who will be joining in to place STEEM underneath the Christmass tree to as many people as possible this season! You're all awesome :)
Merry Christmas and Steem on!
@fredrikaa
That is a great gift idea @fredrikaa! Love the idea of gifting Steem for Christmas!
I was thinking of doing something similar by creating business cards to give out with Steemit's brief info and how to create an account, and mention my steemit account that the new user would have to send a message to to receive their $5 worth of Steem from as an extra bonus from me. I think these kinds of initiatives do go a long way in bringing new people on board.
Also, the point about fiat on-ramps for Steemit is very needed for the Steemit ecosystem, as many new steemians are very new to crypto and do not know how to navigate through the fiat crypto on-ramps safely. Steem should become an additional fiat on-ramp in the crypto ecosystem, and we also need it to be trading on more exchanges.
This is obviously one of the best things to do. Steemit is going to be huge and having them onboard now is just a perfect idea. I just recently invited a friend too and he's loving it around here.
What simple terms can you use to explain it to everyone so that they understand why they should join yesterday not two months from now
Thank you!
Just ask them two simple questions imo. 1: Do you use social media? (which pretty much everyone does at this point) 2: Would you like to get paid a little something for doing what you already do? (no brainer) thus come join our community on Steem. More and more will catch on, join and/or continue to ask about it as the whole cryptosphere continues to grow.
What about for someone who doesnt see the value in joining right now? How do you help them understand blockchain and the importance of it
They don't even necessarily have to understand blockchain or it's importance, you should be able to sell it purely from a standpoint of get paid to do what you already do using this social media platform. If you want to try to get them to understand blockchain this video is a great place to start:
Ah thank you so much!
Yes. But every newcomer have a problem, I wrote about it here. https://steemit.com/steemit/@wnfdiary/how-to-make-steemit-futureproff
This is a really great initiative. I had the same thought for my family too. I'm definitely going to see that through because it's something of great value and not just a liability like most gifts are.
I don't know about the future, but Steemit was my worst investment so far. Hopefully it goes up, I will most likely sell everything.
This is an amazing idea, and not just for friends and adult family members. After reading this I believe I will be gifting my daughters (ages 2 and 7) some Steem this Christmas. They already have Facebook accounts that we've been saving pictures to for the future, when they're old enough to handle Facebook, but this is far better. I can only imagine what their STEEM will be worth when they turn 14 or 16 or 18 and I hand over the private keys. And with them growing up digitally they'll likely know far better what to do with their Steemit account than I ever will. Thanks fredrikaa!
Yes indeed! It's exactly for purposes like this that I thought it would be a great idea :)
I regret not asking for more things whose value was likely to increase over time when I was asked what I wanted for Christmas in the past :P
This has the added value of also providing some education in something that will only become more influential in their lives: Blockchain technology.
Hope you'll do it! Perhaps you could make a post about it explaining like you did here how you think it will be a great gift for the future :) maybe it will even pay back a bit of your purchase!
While I was reading your post yesterday i decided to buy my brother 100 STEEM. Today he is already in profit. Thank you so much for this post, steemit will be huge and already is pretty big :)
This is an awesome idea!
Creating an account for them, not only will you squat them a good username if they wish to use their real name and be the first ones with that unique name, they can easily just create another account later if they want another username and just transfer the Steem directly.
This should definitely be a thing and more people should participate!
I might even consider helping people out to create a batch of accounts for their family and friends and aid them with the delegation if they can't afford it themselves and I'm sure many more are willing to do the same!
Indeed! As my brother's name Trygve is slightly rarer than mine, I didn't even have to add two a's at the end! :P
I agree, if 100 people did this I am sure that would mean at least 500 new people getting to hear about STEEM at the Christmas eve celebrations alone. Then the added network effect (explained above) will surely add a few hundred more.
It's like using your Christmas gift to boost the value of your own asset.
Would be awesome!
Like your post and your hat
marry christmas to you
...excellent...
bro vote for my post that i can also have a good X-mass holiday
you're great @acidyo
Great point, best wishes 😁 - @splendorhub
I got a bunch of ppl onto steem in the last month but a lot have kinda slowed or stopped using I’m always promoting it to ppl maybe one of them would benefit from This
Have a couple of ppl literally about to sign up too how can I apply for them ?
You can send me an email with the emails that want an invite and I'll send them one. :)
Only works for 1 email at a time, send to [email protected]
Awesome article! Will definitely be giving STEEM this Christmas! And I should also get more for myself :D
I shall call it a "Cleveland STEEMit"
Very glad that you liked it! It is the perfect time to get more STEEM, both for ourselves and our loved ones. I think it will be unlikely that you will see STEEM below 1.5$ a lot on the new year. Instead I think we have a lot of exciting new things on the horizon to look forward to :)
Make sure to tell me if you give someone steem and if they come on the platform, maybe I can help give hem a warm welcome :)
Just wish the sign up process is easier.. but i think it's quite the right time since cryptos are hot now and the small barrier to learning long passwords and stuff might not be a problem after all.
Hence why I appreciated the existence of a service like steeminvite.com which allowed me to do it beforehand :) it would be lame with a present that they had to wait a week or two to use!
Oh I'm certain cryptos and bitcoin will be talked about over the dinner table in many homes, which means this gift is also likely to be a hit for the person giving it ;p
You’re right about the conversations that will happen, wait for the burst of growth after the holidays 😁
There are also supposed to be ICO launching on the STEEM blockchain in January
Nice. I'm waiting to know more about media token :)
It's a pretty easy sign up process as it is lol. Just got to save those passwords :)
The whole sign up process is really painful. I have two friends signed up together with me several days ago. Only I got approved. It is like a random hit and miss.