Wealth is just a tool and not an end in itself. I'm here sitting at my desk, in front of a white slate, back to square 1, just like everyone else. Well I guess I'm not totally at square one, I'm the top 36 most followed Steemians with 2257 followers and that's the thing, I have to deliver. After reading me, people need to think something like: "Now I know why he's top 33!"
A Summary Of What I've Done So Far
- I've wrote what is the best (my opinion) and most in-depth explanation of Steem #2 #7.
- I've built one of the best guide on how to use Steem. #3 (One good, possibly better alternative to mine.)
- I've created the clearest guide to understand witnesses and why it's so important to vote for them. #7 (Still not understood well enough. Make sure to read it if you haven't.)
- I've described my most fundamental goals all throughout my series beginning with #1.
- I've talked about the positives impact Steem is having and will have on our world all throughout my series and in particular #4 #6 #8 #9.
- I've given very empowering stats and tips about cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Steem in particular, #6 #7 #8 #9.
- I've put together a very fun overview of Dan Larimer's views on our world. Find it here. (Main inventor of Steem)
- Helping the @minnowsupport project. (With @aggroed, @ausbitbank, and @canadian-coconut) (Explanation here) (Discord channel)
- I've been Steeming 30-40 hours a week since June 2016. (Possibly way more.)
- I got 5 friends to sign up to Steemit in the last 4 days.(They all did so after seeing my video I posted on Facebook.)
- #2, #3, Dan Larimer's views and possibly others reached best paid posts of the day, while most other posts of the series reached top 5.
Mom, dad, my sister and me!
Where I'm Heading!
Now that I've done a pretty good job of explaining Steem in detail, I've begun to do some more outreach.
Reach Out To Your Friends!
I plan on doing 2 live video (French and English) to officially invite all my Facebook friends on Steemit. These are easy to do. Also, 10 months ago I created a Facebook event inviting 500 friends. I do this kind of outreach mostly to give my friends this pretty cool opportunity to join Steem very early. This is also a good way for everyone to make loyal Steemit allies. (My last Facebook post/video mentioning Steem has reached more 800+ views.)
Doing Mass Outreach!
The Influencers
Many of us on Steem don't have the capacity to easily reach out to thousands of people even less so to many hundreds of thousands of people. But there is a way to achieve this indirectly. Reach out to other people that have those kind of audiences. Many people with huge audiences are already on Steemit. Among them, these 5 Youtubers. Don't get me wrong, there are many more Youtubers and influential Steemians already.
- @theywillkillyou (843k subscribers)
- @dollarvigilante (92k subs)
- @rerez (124k subs)
- @jerrybanfield (168k subs)
- @world5list (746K subs)
@jerrybanfield joined Steem less than a month ago. He is one of them who has really begun to do some serious outreach on Facebook and Youtube. The video below is an ad Jerry has paid to put on Facebook. I discovered it just as I was writing this and headed to his blog.
In summary, the first ad campaign we funded has already reached over half a million people online with less than 20% of the total budget spent so far!
Over the next two months as the ads continue to run, we can expect that for the total results the first campaign will reach about 2 million people with the good news about Steem an average of 2 to 5 times each! @jerrybanfield
Read more about it here. I've only check 3 minutes of the video yet and it got my mind totally blown away.
@jerrybanfield was into cryptocurrencies before discovering Steem so it was easy for him to transition, understand the technology as well as get enthused by its potential. Not only did he joined Steem, began steeming a lot but he also bought a lot of Steem. He already has 37K Steem in his account.
The Investors
@jerrybanfield is clearly one kind of person we should all look for to get on Steemit for obvious reasons. One of the other kind of person are the big investors that we know personally or indirectly. Those who are looking for the next big thing to invest in.
These will be a lot harder to convince if they aren't into cryptocurrencies yet but they will reap you big reward if you succeed. They might look for you to help them. They might put you in charge of their voting power through Streemian or delegated Steem Power.
The People You Most Want To See On Steemit
Your favorite friends, mentors, bloggers, thinkers, dancers, musicians, comedians, etc., reach out to them privately or whatever mean possible. The sooner they will be on Steemit, the greater their advantage will be to influence others and gain influence over those who will join later.
The reason is simple. The more competition there is, the more difficult it becomes to get noticed and to get votes. Now, you want those people on Steemit because they are creating the kind of world you want to see. This is all pretty obvious stuff but I wanted to mention it nonetheless.
Steem's Skyrocketing Popularity Is Moving Forward!
3 Days Ago
Today
I can't really see it being reverse without a major black swan event. This rise in popularity is most probably going to accelerate if it isn't already. Steem links are about to get a lot more viral than they already have. More authors, means more diversity and also better content.
Sure, the mainstream propaganda arm of the richest, commonly called the mainstream media are ignoring Steem as acknowledging it would only fasten their own demise but that's okay, where we're going, we don't need them and in fact everything is much better without them. Steem, seemly inevitable overtaking of the web, is one of the reason why outreach is not my greatest priority right now.
Richest: I'm referring to those who own the biggest stacks of enchanted papers.
My Main Priority Is My Influence!
Steem outreach is an essential pillar of any sensible Steemians or Steemers and that's one of the reasons why I'm talking about it and monitoring it with a lot of interest but my main priority is the overall influence we have on each other, it is the influence our actions have on our world.
Mass Adoption
"We’ll get to a point where it’s a no brainer and people are waking up to it." - Ned Scott Steemit’s CEO - on Steem mass adoption (source)
Sooner or later it seems almost everyone will be on Steem just like almost everyone is on Facebook and it even seems like Steem will be even bigger for obvious reasons. For those wondering, chats will be built on top of Steem just like busy.org has done.
Busy.org give access to the Steem blockchain just like Steemit.com and has an integrated chat. There is also many other apps currently being develop on top of Steem to mimic some Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Twitter functionalities, just to name a few.
For more information on busy.org.)
Steem's Bigger Impact
The art of war is of vital importance to the State. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. – Sun Tzu, the Art of War Lived (c.500–320. B.C)
I think pretty much everyone can agree this is still true today. Countries arm themselves to be able to defend their integrity, their existence. For a country to exist, there must be a ruling power to be defended in the first place. Ruling powers use force, deception and cunningness to rule. Countries with no armies or smaller armies must rely on other countries to defend them or hope other countries have bigger current interests than trying to overtake them.
Putting An End To The Initiation Of Violence
All warfare is based on deception. – Sun Tzu, the Art of War Lived
To try to put an end to war and the need for the initiation of violence we need to create greater incentives for honesty than dishonesty. People have incentives to be dishonest when it can bring them value, that is, if they aren't getting caught and if the negatives feelings usually associated with acting deceptively doesn't outweigh the perceived benefits.
Those who act wisely grow in influence, those who act poorly shrink. Dan Larimer
People on Steem can lie and get away with some deleterious actions posed to the majority but as a growing number of people join, there will be a growing number of people who have incentives to tell their truth and take actions in right proportion to how damaging other people lies and actions are.
Everyone Is Better Off When Everyone Knows Each Other's Truth
Some things are neither true nor false, yet consensus is required and the result of that consensus has impacts on all of society. Dan Larimer
Consensus is based on the individual estimation of what we value the most. We need to know what we and others value the most to understand our self and others. The more people there is seeking a consensus, the less trivial or the more valuable the consensus.
Steem allows us to settle our most important "truth", information and decisions. This is necessary if we want to avoid unnecessary initiation of violence. The group of sentient beings that we are, have an inevitable impact on one another. We should strive to do the best out of it.
Influence Is Of The Upmost Value
Being able to influence our self, others and the universe we live in are of the upmost value. Steem is the most advanced technology for the purpose of consensual influence or nonviolent influence, the most efficient form of influence.
Because being able to consensually influence one another is the most valuable action people can take, there are very real incentives for people to invest in Steem. Steem allows to influence people's attention. To earn Steem, people can create consensus and receive votes on their posts. People can also buy Steem.
Steem's Consensual Influence
Steem can be bought with US dollars or other national currencies. When people buy Steem with US dollars or other national currencies, they leave behind currencies which are created out of thin air by a centralized institution who preserve their power by force and the threat of violence rather than consensus or consensual influence. Money and people's ignorance in regard to the power of money, more precisely money creation, are a big part of these people's power.
The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. John Kenneth Galbraith
Cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin can also be used to buy Steem. Bitcoin and other proof-of-work cryptocurrencies incentivized people to plug and maintain hardware miners at the lowest cost possible.
These hardware are computer running 24/7. They are running as efficiently as possible, computing mathematical equation called nonce. This has for purpose to secure the Bitcoin network or other cryptocurrency network. These computations have no value besides securing the network. Because of the growing Bitcoin mining competition those computers are using an ever growing amount of power to find the same amount of Bitcoin. (Bitcoin emission rate gets halve every 4 years.)
One positive thing from these different proof-of-work cryptocurrencies is that they are freeing us from the shackle of the different centralized money creation systems currently run by nations. National currencies have fundamental problems one of which is that no one can ever be able to prove how much money has been created and to whom it was allocated.
N.B. The purchasing power of the US Dollar is less than 5% of what it was in 1913. (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis)
Cryptocurrency's Positive Impact
These different cryptocurrencies are having a very positive impact on the world. One interesting fact to keep in mind is that more than 50% of every Bitcoin that will ever be mined has been mined before January 2012.
This means it cost mere pennies, to a couple of dozens of dollars to mine most Bitcoin. Today 1 Bitcoin cost more than 2 thousand dollars to mine. Someone who owned $50M of Bitcoin one year ago, own more than $150M today. These people exist. #1 #2
Currently, the competition and thus the cost to mine Bitcoin is going up and people won't sell below what it cost them to produce/mine them which lead to rising price and a virtuous cycle.
Difficulty To Mine A Bitcoin Overtime
Price of Bitcoin
This is also true of Ethereum which is the cryptocurrency with the second biggest market cap.
Difficulty To Mine A Ethereum
Price Of Ethereum
Crypto Millionaire
People owning many million dollars’ worth of Bitcoin have nothing better to do than studying their investments and where they should diversify. They want to avoid getting out of crypto to avoid paying taxes.
Looking at the trends they see that if Bitcoin's trend over the last 6 years continue they will make a 300%-600% gain. The trend is more than 2400% over the last 4 years and +300% for the last 365 days. It is doubtful that most people with that kind of money in Bitcoin are looking to spend those gains. These kind of crypto fortunes are for the most part, investment money looking to be fructified.
Diversifying
These people have very real incentives to diversify. If something goes fundamentally wrong with Bitcoin, a bug or another catastrophic thing happening to it, then they would lose everything. Other POW cryptocurrency have the same incentives and thus have seen their price go up also. Because all Bitcoiners and other large market cap crypto currency owners have those same incentives to diversify, this also help other coin's prices.
Last 3 Months Top 11 Cryptocurrency By Market Cap (24 days old data)
Steem's Success Depends On Its Monetary Incentives!
Steem monetary incentives will have to succeed for Steem to succeed. FOX brought in around $247M in ad revenue for the 2017 Super Bowl alone. The value of all Steems is currently less than double this amount at $478M.
Steem can do so much more than any 30 seconds ad can do and is rapidly growing to be the world most visited website with nothing in sight to stop it or so it seems. How much will it be worth if the 2017 Super Bowl's ad revenue was around $247M is anybody's guess.
More For Everyone
If 2 billions people would be willing to spend at least 2,50US dollars to buy Steem, Steem market cap would be at least $5B obviously or around 10 times what it is right now. ($478M)
[I really need to try to shake off from the mentality that I need more wealth for me and try to see that in the future there might really be more resources available for everyone with less effort. See Understanding Money.
I'm pretty sure there's more than 2 billions people willing to lessen the influence of the US Dollar and those who profit from it and by the same token empower themselves and everyone else. The 8 richest men own the same wealth as poorest half of the world. (OXFAM)
How Fast Can Mass Adoption Happen?
How fast could Steem become the world's most popular website is a pretty interesting question to ask ourselves. Everybody on the internet is literally one click away from clicking on Steem and discovering it. This is not comparable to something like how fast will people have a TV in their home or own a cellphone back when these 2 technologies were invented.
Steem and other software adoption rates are very different from adoption to physical technologies. The adoption can be much faster and have almost no limit.
Let's Free Ourselves!
Let's free ourselves from those systems which have incentives to make us lie to one another and from those who ignorantly defend those systems and let's invest our time and efforts in technologies that have incentives to make us more truthful and better persons.
Everyone will end up with what they truly merit and everyone will be much better for it, literally everyone. (See my previous post for more details.)
Great Accomplishment Require Great Efforts!
Abuses, lies war and the initiation of violence are all sorts of things we should look to free ourselves from. I'm very well aware this is no small task. (The art of war is my favorite book.)
But this is not a reason not to try to accomplish these tasks, in fact, all things of great worth require great effort to accomplish. This is a simplistic way to put it but you know what I mean and if you don't, then you might want to take a look at this post "Stop Asking for Easy!" by @hilarski.
- A collection of quotes from The Art Of War. It's actually better than the book itself.
Some Final Thoughts
"Every sovereign individuals thus every Steemians have as their highest interest the dissemination of the most mutually beneficial knowledge. In contrast, all other institutions, companies, governments, armies, etc., have as their highest interest the empowerment of themselves at the expanse of everyone else. Generals, elected leaders and companies always have more empowering knowledge than their subordinates and competitors and their power depends on it." (source)
Who knows? We might be up for a future very different than what we expected.
"How would this Steem consensus of many millions possibly billions people compare to the power of a commander in chief or the power of any other institution and how would it affect the power structure of society?" (Source)
Steem on my friends!
Wealth Is Just A Tool!
I'm working on some more.
I'm here helping in the creation of decentralized systems which empower and bring Joy to all.
Wealth is just a tool and not an end in itself. Joy is what I'm all about.
Hardfork 19
Hardfork 19 just got release and is scheduled for Tue, 20 June 2017 15:00:00 UTC
I plan on updating to v0.19 this Saturday. I'll be trying to keep up with everyone sentiments as much as possible on that matter until the actual hardfork.
Approving My Witness
Please consider looking at the list of witnesses here, I'm #59 and if you think I should be higher up the list than consider voting for my witness. If you vote for me it doesn't mean I'm better than the other at being a witness it only mean you think I'm better or you want me to be higher up for whatever reasons.
For that matter, I would seriously be in a rush if I ended up in the top 20 witnesses as I currently doesn't possess some of the knowhow for these top spots. These top spots are clearly not what I'm aiming at right now and not necessarily something I aspire to either. I know I'm very far away from these positions. I just wanted to clarify.
I signed 10 blocks yesterday and I think this is going to be my new steady rate. Thank you everyone!
"What Are Steem Witnesses And Why You Should Support Them!"
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
Thank you!
Thank you for reading and for your comments! I read them all! Most of your answers can be found here: "Steem: An In-Depth Overview!"
I use Markdown Pad to create my posts.
Chat
Get on the chats. Not in private messages but in the chat rooms. These are some of the best places to makes some meaningful Steem friends.
- Official Steemit.chat
- SteemSpeak.com (24h/7 Voice chat)
Find Out More!
- #1 "Stand for What Feels Best!" (Money in the world today is created out of thin air by a small elite group at the expense of everyone else.)
- #2 "Steem: An In-Depth Overview!" (The most in-depth and clearest guide to understand what Steem is and what it can do for you!) (Reached top #1)
- #3 "The Ultimate Steem Guide!" (How to Use Steem: The revamped edition.) (Reached top #1)
- #4 "Steem: The Most Enjoyable Governance Tool Ever Devised!"(Everything we ever did was an act of governance.)
- #5 "Make More Steem: Verify Your Introduction Posts!"
- #6 "Some Steem Stats" (The most empowering cryptocurrencies stats you'll read all day.)
- #7 "What Are Steem Witnesses And Why You Should Support Them!" (The clearest guide to understand what are "Witnesses" and why you should vote for them.)
- #8 "Some Steem Tips For Some Steem Success!" (Who to follow and many more Steem fundamentals every serious Steemians should know!)
- #9 "What Will You Be Steeming When Billions Are Watching!" (Soon millions of Steemians will be Steeming us to a much better world!)
- #10 "I Saw Your Dance Video And Now I Know You're Rich!" (Cool post pack with goodies as usual.)
- "Thank you Dan Larimer! You are a great mentor!" (Dan is the Ex-CTO of Steemit)
- "Steemit.com Set To Become The World's Most Popular Website" (Part of The Ultimate Steembook)
- "The most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard" (My best paid post at 8,000$)