Just for the lulls

Since the hardfork and the introduction of the EIP, there have been many behavioral changes on the platform that change the dynamics of how things operate in both obvious and subtle ways. Some of the changes like the voting patterns shifted quickly, some are slower to burn, like the movement in Steem toward being staked. I think that from a content perspective, there is a bit of a lull in postings, but at least from where I have been looking, there is better content on average. It could also just where I have spent my time looking also.

What I do think though is that with SMTs and communities on the horizon, people are starting to feel that there is some potential in Steem to come and many are focusing on earning some STEEM to either sell at a rise or stake up to support the platform, others and themselves in the future. I think that over time, this sense of needing to earn will change and become a secondary function to consuming, but currently with so much opportunity to earn STEEM, the drive to earn on posting is still apparent. We can see with the large stakes though, that the sense to earn through posting has been largely shifted to earning through curation instead and I think that the higher the price goes, the lower down the ladder this will run.

What I was thinking about is what would it look like to have 10 million users and 2500 curators that can deliver at least 1 dollar votes to distribute for curation return alone. That is about all the dolphins and up and for that 1 dollar to happen, price would have to be 22x up from this point at $3.30 a STEEM. Even if we only look at the minimum of $1, that is $250,000 distributed per day to content. That is quite a significant amount and considering that currently that would get a return of 125,000 a day for those curators, that is a significant "salary" for doing the job.

Of course, that is under the assumption that all of those accounts only have 5000 STEEM Power, but an account of my size at that rate for STEEM would deliver a $10 vote and would distribute $100 worth of STEEM a day. A whale with 500K Steem Power would deliver 10x that, 1000 dollars a day. That would have to get a little bit of attention in the media and while most of those 10,000,000 users will not get much at all on their own content, they are definitely more likely to be consuming from the range of supported Steem content out there.

While during the last bullrun of January 2018 these kinds of numbers and higher were achieved, the difference was that in all of crypto there were only millions of users as it was and most were not interested in blogging, and didn't know about Steem at all. As crypto gains notoriety in the mainstream psyche, this could very well change at the next bullrun, or the one to follow, but eventually the idea of earning crypto by using the internet will gain traction and the users will arrive as content contributors, but mostly as consumers.

While 500 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every minute, that number must pale in comparison to what is consumed every minute as only 30,000 users would be required to watch 500 hours worth. There is something like 40 million visitors to YouTube daily and they watch 5+ billion videos, but they aren't watching 5 billion unique videos, they are mostly watching a very narrow set of what is popular, which is what others are already watching.

"Despacito" has about 6.5 billion views, which means that all users on YouTube have watched it an average of 3 times. I have never seen it, you? Most users have likely never seen it as individuals, which means that a smaller percentage of people have watched it many, many times. We as people love to consume, most people do not have the time, skill or patience to create - let alone build a following which literally could take years.

I think that once this "crypto thing" takes off, there will be a massive drive of adoption and the numbers pouring into all kinds of nooks and crannies of crypto will happen in what would appear a blink of an eye in comparison to how slowly adoption has been so far. The audience is already trained to consume on all of the centralized platforms, they are already trained to use the apps, install security, save passwords and - they are already trained to "upvote" with stars, hearts and claps.

The only thing that is really missing is the economics that add value to what they are already doing, and while it seems easy to integrate, adding that layer fundamentally changes the current usage of the platforms, something that will both increase user interaction for some, and turn away those who don't like change.

If for example Facebook added a Steem-like token, the way people would use it would shift incredibly and no one likes change, especially of the extreme kind that they would likely get. However, many won't mind using a new application like Steem (or one of the SMTs) where the same thing is happening. Factor in the consumption appetite and technical ability of the younger generations and uptake can be very swift. At the moment parents buy access to applications for their children, how long until they are buying them crypto access?

For example, 3€ subscription a month and it comes with the equivalent Steem bought at the current rate that can be used to earn a little but there is no limit on what level one wants to subscribe at. Netflix costs about 12€ a month, that is about 100 Steem, not much to vote with, but over time, it keeps building and as a sink, it means that the value of it will keep rising, even if the monthly purchase buys less each time.

While there might be a content lull now, I believe that those who are earning, buying and powering up are going to be instrumental in driving user adoption here if they use their votes well as price increases, rather than to extract more themselves.

At the next bullrun, I hope that all of the staked Steem users choose to use their value to increase their value by distributing millions of dollars every week to those who arrive, but really pound a few of the best of them and raise them to the heights where there is a small group of distributed users who are earning hundreds of thousands and potentially millions per year on Steem. I think that the curation projects are going to play a massive role in this process.

Things are quiet, until they get noisy.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]