Will Facebook's BLOCKCHAIN LIBRA replace STEEM?
Source Introduction
Steem Blockchain was always believed by enthusiasts to be the new determinant of social media platforms, which will empower individuals by respecting their privacy, money and time. The Blockchain technology was a key to this Utopian world, where corporations do not have any control over regular people. I think this @acidyo's gif perfectly shows the general attitude among content creators on Steem.
Source Corporations noticed this threat and decided to play our game: Facebook announced that they will create a new cryptocurrency called Libra. It seems that Steem lost its advantage - despite the fact that this Blockchain works for over three years, Steem is out of Facebook's league if it comes to massive adoption. However, do we really have something to worry about?
What is Libra?
If you take a closer look at Libra, you will probably notice that it is different from the other projects we know from the Blockchain industry. What they are primarily trying to achieve is a global financial infrastructure that will enable people to perform convenient payments. They want sending money to be as easy as sending a photo and take no longer than a few seconds.
This is definitely a noteworthy application of Blockchain technology that would probably transform the global financial system. However, Libra seems to be completely centralized.
First of all, each coin will be backed by the actual assets, thus stabilizing the price over time. This is a reasonable decision, because if Libra had a speculative nature, like Bitcoin, it would be hard to use it as a casual mean of payment. Additionally, it would be stressful and obscure for the regular people (especially from the third world) if the price fluctuated.
Source As we can read on their website:
The actual assets will be a collection of low-volatility assets, including bank deposits and government securities in currencies from stable and reputable central banks
Libra seems to be completely contingent on governments, central banks and corporations. It completely denies the idea of Statoshi Nakamoto implemented in Bitcoin.
Is there a threat to Steem?
Facebook does not intend to empower individuals by rewarding content, but to create an infrastructure of simple, fast and secure payments. Steem offers exactly the same for three years already, but lacks one incredibly important thing: simplicity.
Content creators will surely not left Steem because of Libra. Many people on this platform even think that more people will get interested about Steem, but I doubt it. The longer I am on this platform, the more I think that it is way too complicated to be massively adopted. People will not take the risk of buying Steem without understanding it. The only benefit I can expect is a potential raise of Bitcoin price.
What is your opinion about Libra? Please share your view!
Great post @neavvy. Yes, it seems that Facebook and Libra have already taken control of the crypto market. BTC on the rise only because of Libra.
Steem is the classic idea man who goes down to the businessman. Looks like the twins got dupped by Zuck again.
There are a few corporations running everything. Facebook is in the club. A stable price makes these people happy. With a third of the world already on Facebook, and with it being so easy to use, they already have in place what Steem can only dream of.
Getting paid for content creation and using Social Media really worked on Steem for a bit. I'm sure some early Steem adopters got rich quick and Powered Down.
I'm going to keep my Steem until the ship goes down. However, let me know when the Libra Air Drop starts. Ha ha . . .
Thank you for sharing your insights @cyemela!
Yeah, interestingly there are a few more corporations behind Libra including Mastercard and Uber. Seems that the "old guard" is trying not to lose the initiative.
That's true unfortunately.
I think they rather collected an enormous amount of SP and are running bid bots currently making a fortune. At least I would do so :)
Apart of the jokes, do you think that this ship will go down? Recently I have such impression more and more often...
Sadly, yes. All the new coins and air drops took the value away from Steem as well. Libra will probably stay strong and not allow that to happen.
Indeed. Steem Engine is a great project, but new tokens, for example recent Airdrop of PAL clearly leads to the drop in the value of Steem.
I think that there are two points to consider about Libra:
It will not replace steem
Since Libra will be a kind of stable coin that will be linked to the value of fiat money, it will not be possible to create value from a reward pool like steem. So users won't get rewarded for their posts. Libra will rather be a means to transfer money from one user to the other.
I think that you point out the most important "problem" about steem. It is simply too complicated for new users to understand and to adopt.
Crypto democratized
What we should understand however is that libra will be like an entry door for people to the crypto world. When you take all the users of facebook and instagram and that you offer them an entry door to the crypto world, this will contribute greatly to make this world accessible to them. Imagine that you can promote steem to facebook users who are already familiar with another form of cryptos (libra)....
Thank you for your comment @achim03.
I totally agree with you.
That's right and this will surely impact Steem and generally blockchain industry in a great way. But I am really curious how many people will decide to get out of their comfort zone and try to understand blockchain.
Well, there are a lot of advantages that I could see on Libra and honestly, I am a bit alarmed with it. However, if the adaption will be a worldwide phenomenon, them somewhere, someone would have designed a cryptocurrency exchange thing down the line. So what is the difference if I have steem or libra- its plain and simple really- I can earn steem while I need to pay to get my hands on libra.
I cannot say that libra is a threatening presence right now. Why don't we wait and see how things go?
Thank you for sharing your view @nurseanne84
That's probably the best approach, but it's always pleasant to specualte :)
Yes, we do believe that the lack of simplicity is the biggest stumbling block for steem's success. The other stumbling block is the bidbots.
If a new simpler social media platform on blockchain is introduced in the future, then steem's days would be numbered. It will be like what happened to BlackBerry phones, which despite their first mover advantage lost out to their competitors.
Thank you for your comment @invest.country!
Do you think that bid bots are really the biggest problem? I would personally point at resource credits. They significantly stop the development of the newbies.
Hi @neavvy
The issue Libra we must follow closely, I think it has a future, however I do not abandon steemit, but the fact that steemit does not leave does not mean that I can not turn my gaze towards pound, but we should also expect the events, since recently the congress from the United States, I request that the release of Libra be stopped.
Facebook urged to pause Libra crypto-currency project
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this particular topic with us @lanzjoseg. Have a nice day!
We often hear that Steem is chugging along with 50,000 active users. These are 50,000 people who were willing to invest time and energy figuring out how to operate their accounts. There are over one million accounts on Steem. People who signed up and decided the platform isn’t worthwhile. Some days, I think it isn’t worthwhile.
Facebook users, whatever many billion there are, may not be interested in making their social experience more complicated. Posting and upvoting is simple. The complication is the insistence on “quality content” by some purists, declaring income from your activities on Steem (most users prefer simple tax returns), dealing with downvotes and enforcement bots, hard forks, and whales. There’s a ton of nerdy unsociable stuff happening on Steem that average users don’t find interesting.
Libra will likely serve as an easier way to buy Steem, having enough volume to be on all the exchanges. It may very well help existing Steem users. However, I don’t think it will have much impact on growing our little city of 50,000 beyond that. We lament the lack of growth, yet jump up and down when people put up “shitposts” which are a majority of social media.
There is something dysfunctional about Steemit that keeps us here and puts off newcomers who don’t share that dysfunction. I can’t figure out exactly what it is. In the end, Libra won’t suddenly make the Steem community more or less functional. What is going wrong here is more than simple unfamiliarity with blockchains.
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Don't forget a large number of accounts are registered by bidbots as fake accounts to upvote the post promoters. Many of these bidbots, we believe, are run by the witnesses.
It's interesting how many newly created accounts never became active @invest.country
@neavvy, we notice many of the high ranking keywords have already been taken up but not active. Examples of such keywords are hotel, insurance, games, voice, flight, auto and maps. All these accounts are inactive.
There are thousands of such keywords already booked but not active. These are people who are speculating, hoping that one day steem blockchain will become extremely popular and this accounts can be sold for a good profit. Meanwhile the account will remain dormant.
We reckon the number of such accounts are more than 10,000.
Thank you for sharing your view with us @shainemata!
That's what I'm hoping for. Currently in my country it's really hard to buy any cryptocurrency, most likely because the government seems to be afraid of blockchain and limits it with plenty of regulations. Hopefully Libra will change that situation.
I think that cryptocurrency purists won’t really use it and avoid it while normies will find it easy to adjust as Facebook will make it native to their ecosystem!
What I would like to see is how the cash our process will be moving it to a bank or to another cryptocurrency
What would be a bonus is buying Libra will probably be cheaper and allow fair to crypto exchange really easy so we can bypass the shitty ones In our respective countries
Could be a quick way to buy crypto and then move it into an ecosystem you actually want to use!
It could also help expose the world to the greater crypto market other than that I don’t see much for a benefit for the consumer but it will be a huge money maker for Facebook and the group
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I agree. It may serve as an entrance that allows crypto users to move to other currencies much more easily. The volume would justify adding Libra to all exchanges.
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That would be awesome @shainemata. Currently it's really hard to even buy Bitcoin in my country (you need to cope with all of these regulations, complete plenty of KYC etc).
Thank you for your comment @chekohler
Yes, I suppose Libra will be integrated with Facebook's Messenger and sending money will be literally as easy as sending photo. I'm not sure if I deserve the label of a crypto purist, but I would willingly use such system.
That's true, but only if Libra will be listed on crypto exchanges. I'm not certain about that, but if so, I expect a huge increase in Bitcoin price and trade volumen.
Thank you very much for sharing these interesting thoughts @neavvy, it's awesome.
This post is AWESOME!
Therefore it has been manually upvoted and resteemed by @thisisawesome.
I manually upvote and resteem 1 post per day, this adds value because it does not have to share spotlight with any other posts, plus I also publish a weekly post on Sundays highlighting the posts of that week.
Thank you @thisisawesome
👍🙏😀
Hey, @neavvy... This Libra coin though it has similar name to my star Libra seems to have a totally different purpose than Steem. I know nothing of steem, but now steem having revamped is predicted to do well. Like tokens can be created in the steem blockchain and each topic has a token, for cryptos I think its @steemleo ...and steemleo has crypto communities so I heard writting articles on crypto stuff. And tokens have been airdropped to everyone in their wallets that can be checked in one link... I got some steemleo, cat and pal besides two other tokens. So, yeah steem looks serious in rewarding content makers.
Plus they have a video platform, steemspeaks or something, you can post video content that otherwise get banned in youtube. So , steem is improving and people say its price would rise(:, and I think it would grow. It are not fun, but its getting organities and forming communities.
For ex, since I have 2 cute cats, I can share it with cat community with the tag @catnet I think, similarly , creative people get one token category I think.
And Libra... some points. Its all over crypto news, that Govt. securities like bonds are giving negative yields in Europe. Their fiat not that good because of fiscal loans, so fiats could get devalued.
Plus Govt. or central banks intending to print more currencies and all, won't be liked by public, so Libra's case for next 2 years not that good. It's recession time in the world, and people may feel terrible that banks controled by Govt. policies have not managed money properly.
But I want Libra to come so to trouble my Indian Govt. , who are intent to ban cryptos, though Libra does not classify as crypto, stable coin at most. Though FB has a bad name, and it deserves it for selling off user data, its ok if they can launch Libra, it would help common man with a smart phone to transact money.
And can't blame them support banks, and central Govts deposits. Fb is always centralised, serves interests of corporations, and its easier to enter as Govts. of countries won't feel threatened I feel.
Anyway, this is the link where your other tokens would be there. https://steem-engine.com
Check it... and dear you can tag 12 topics, include @steemleo too if your writing crypto content. And check your wallet, see what tokens you got airdropped, maybe there is some technology token that got airdropped to you for your wonderful personal experience articles on AI.
Your steem username, password would open the wallet in steem engine site. Do hold on to your steem, it has bright future.
BTW I loved that graphic... its interesting.
I really don't think it will replace Steem, except if they change their mind to pay people for posting on Facebook.
Thank you for your reply @rynow
I don't think they will ever change their mind on this topic :)