Bias

in #crypto6 years ago

When I was still studying I had a certain resentment of how things worked in the world such as employment and working for "the man". Growing up at the same time as the internet was developing I saw my future self working for myself, not doing labor work which someone else was profiting from more than me while he orders people around. It wasn't much about being jealous that someone had a certain idea first and created a business out of it and fairly profited from it more than others that did not take the risk. It was more about certain jobs that were unnecessary to have a middleman to begin with.

A lot of these jobs were due to the early internet phase, many not understanding what it was and how it worked, many things becoming easier due to it but not as easy as they could be, such as payment options. If I could send an email or a text message for free to person x in country x within seconds, why was it so difficult to send them money? Why did there have to be so many different payment providers and services that only accepted some? A lot of it still seemed wrong to me in many ways.

I still remember the first time I stumbled upon Bitcoin, it was quite by accident really when I was getting desperate about buying something for a game I used to play and there were no options for me to pay for it. We've all heard that a lot of people, although I'm pretty sure many like to pretend they've heard and known what Bitcoin was really early on, stumbled upon Bitcoin as well for a short time. I guess its quite understanding considering it was still so new but those that had bought or mined into it wanted to promote it so more people bought it for their own interest in profiting from it. A lot of people didn't quite get Bitcoin though. It's not that it was that complicated to understand, if you were to explain to someone today what it is and what it enables I'm sure they'd have a much easier time to get it, or maybe we've just gotten a lot better at explaining blockchain technology over the years. The importance of Bitcoin was still not big at the time, some of it due to market cap probably, some due to the small userbase but most of it due to not making it obvious what it was and stood for I believe. I consider myself lucky that I was bored and procrastinating on homework that I decided to jump deep into the whitepaper and other threads about Bitcoin in the spring of 2013. I was curious at first and as I was continuing to read I saw a connection to when I first learned about p2p torrenting and at some point it just clicked and it blew my mind.

That is one of the reasons I consider myself lucky to have been an early adopter and stayed interested in blockchain and all the projects and currencies that sprouted around it. I am sure not many bothered with digging deep enough to get it on the same level as me to interest them in it as much as it did for me. I remember when altcoins started popping up, most using the same fundamentals of blockchain tech as Bitcoin was. Many were similar and in a way unnecessary but many had differences that could have real world use cases, one of the big ones I got fascinated with was Ethereum which if I remember correctly wanted to create their smart contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain but as we've learned the Bitcoin developers are not keen on developing much.

I still remember the early times of trading Ethereum on Poloniex and trying to let others know about it, back then I was certain that it had the potential to even pass Bitcoin very soon and it hasn't been far off. A few of my friends did listen to me even though most of course did not get the same interest or just did not get it and thought I was just trying to get them to buy something so I myself would profit from it. The internet was filled with scams and certain high yield high risk ponzis, I don't blame them that they thought this would not be anything different and just vaporware for what they actually had planned. The same thing happened with Ethereum where the more you read about it the more your mind was blown and you saw the potential of the huge changes it could bring to the world and the internet.

Then came Steem.

With a history of being a very active Redditor it took me the shortest amount of time to see Steem as the next big thing and this was way back where it was only about blogging, not all the other aspects it can now revolutionize.

Without trying to brag too much about me being interested in the right things very early, knowing many of you did not have the chance just because you didn't hear about it in time or something had made you not want to learn about it more because we know how mainstream media works and the reputation of Bitcoin that Silk Road brought to it. I want to get into the bias of it all.

There were many who after having already invested or mined their Bitcoin stake saw everything as a huge competition and became big maximalists about it which to me felt kind of ironic cause every time I tried to let others know about Bitcoin, especially those invested in stocks and similar were really against it the same way as Bitcoiners were against altcoins. Even though most of my own investments were in Bitcoin and Ethereum and I didn't even felt the need to keep trading between the two as both had already brought me decent profits over the years, there is always the greed factor that wants the highest amount of profit from one thing and one thing only.

Steem had a huge red flag from many back in the day, not just because of Tone Vays unfair allegations of it being a scam but the whole Bitcoin maximalist sector not giving it a break. Steem did not care though, it continued to distribute its stake to anyone that came to the platform and worked for it and also distributed profits to anyone who bought at the right times and held long enough. I myself did not even buy any Steem with my holdings at first and just spent most of my time on the platform instead, but as I was trying to let other people know about this opportunity they kept shutting me down. Calling me a shill, someone who is biased towards it because he probably has a lot of stake (its not difficult to keep stake on exchanges or alt accounts of course), etc.

It felt crazy to me, especially since I didn't have much Steem to begin with and was only talking about what I had read about it and how fascinated I was by Steem's blockchain and its advantages to proof of work ones. It seemed perfect for the things it wanted to accomplish.

Things have not gotten any better lately as my stake has grown, it seems like people have an even bigger excuse to called me biased towards Steem because of my holdings. Weirdly enough it never seems to cross their mind that I've been biased towards a lot of other crypto projects in the past and that I'm only trying to "shill" the blockchains I believe have actual value and real world use case - which many currently existing lack.

I believe that the last all time high of most cryptos went way too high, it was not ready for those gains and it could've easily been manipulations that lead to those numbers so certain individuals could profit more than what naturally would've occurred. I hope that this next accumulation phase doesn't take too long but it wouldn't surprise me if it did, one thing I would really appreciate is if the dumb money would stop just pumping up everything and people did some research during this decline to know which projects actually have some real potential to change existing centralized services and bring more fairness to the world.

In the end it doesn't matter much what we are biased about as long as it is better solutions to currently existing problems and I hope blockchain and crypto will be a big part of it.


Thanks for reading and as always feel free to discuss the post in the comment section. I read most of them and reward good ones.

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Fact of the matter is this: Steem is still undervalued. We're just over two years in, and we have a platform that allows you, to with a single sign on - get rewarded for contributing to an equivilant of Wordpress / Live Journal (Steemit, Busy, Steempeak, etc) , Instagram - Steepshot, Twitter - Zappl, dLive - twitch, Dtube - YouTube, and many other on-chain applications.

We've also got Steem Monsters as well, which add value every single day.

Then there's all the other initiatives like actifit, the elegance app for showing off art, and so many others to list.

There's still so much potential, and we're not even out of neutral yet.

Things have not gotten any better lately as my stake has grown, it seems like people have an even bigger excuse to called me biased towards Steem because of my holdings.

I've got the same problem with just 6k SP people still think I'm doing it only because of my stake which is making me biased.... Yet they can't realize that I'm only telling them about Steem so that they can do something good for themselves and get involved now when it's still "early".

I believe that the last all time high of most cryptos went way too high, it was not ready for those gains and it could've easily been manipulations that lead to those numbers so certain individuals could profit more than what naturally would've occurred.

Yep, I feel like the last pump was highly manipulated to benefit certain individuals. If I was only smart enough to sell some steem in the hype and buy back in in in the dip, but at least I've learned a valuable lesson and that's what I plan to do in the next pump. Sell at the top onl to buy back in at the bottom (have no plans of selling any Steem/SBD for a long time, just want to increase my stake here as much as possible).

Everyone has a bias for something and I don't see a problem in trying to introduce people, friends and family into projects you believe in! I don't know about the really early days of Steem but these days there's no shame in promotion Steem, we have a good amount of active users that will surely keep growing, especially when HF20 comes and we get easier account creations, not only that, we have over 50 projects been built and worked on in the blockchain with many more on the way....

I would dare say that we have more value that certain projects that are ahead of us on market cap... but the free market is the free market and we can actually take advantage of the lower prices since we can stack more before everyone sees the potencial of Steem.

Unfortunately, most of the people will always turn off and put aside their brain when they see the chance to get rich quick, rather than thinking a little bit more longterm and looking at projects that really could work.

If you would ask all those people investing in dozens of ICOs, etc., most of the people would probably not even able to explain you why they joined 10% of those. Other than the fact that they have heard it will be the next big thing of course.

You are really bad at shitposting.

I'll try harder next time!

Thanks for relating your experience. Mine is similar but I missed the early Bitcoin boat. I stumbled upon Bitcoin somewhere around 2011-2012 time period. I am not a very techie person in terms of bits and bytes but I did know what I was looking at...while also not knowing what I was looking at. I told myself I have to put $500 into this....of course, I'll do it later took over as other things distracted me. Hence, no buying of BTC at that time.

I am called a shill or cheerleader for STEEM. That I have blind allegiance. Actually, being optimistic does not mean overlooking some of the challenges. We all know there are issues but there are issues with everything. That doesnt deter from the long term prospects of this blockchain.

I feel fortunate to be in cryptocurrency right now. Even though we moved a long way from the days of 2013-2015 in terms of pricing, we still are very early. The adoption of crypto-economics that comes from web 3.0 is going to take years. We are maybe a couple years into a decade long growth phase.

It is going to be fun.

Hello there @Acidyo

I am glad to see this sort of writing from you. And this is exactly what this platform needs at the moment to grow. Experiences from people who have been in the crypto game long enough. See...we might be familiar with words such as BTC, cryptos, block chain etc but trust me...99%+ of the world is totally unfamiliar with...

Trust me when I say that i talk about steem and a few other cryptos that may have real life use to people, even my family, and they look at me like I am crazy. I try to convince them for their own good since I have nothing to gain from that, not to be late in this party like I was but they are in a constant denial.

So I couldn't agree more with you that my hopes for mass adoption is probably through Daps. And if Dlive - Dtube goes viral then we can say that this project, steemit/steem project is 100% successful.
Have a nice day brother

Things are changing very fast mostly in the last years. Just some years before we had no mobile phones and we had to write letters. Now we are writing blogs and also earning some reward. But every technology has its up and downs, as well as positive and negative side. But I am glad to be here :D

I can see a lot of other people holding their own alt coins having a strong negative bias towards steem. We have all these dapps, creative people, and an almost limitless potential in a direction someone could take things. At on top of that how much faster our blockchain is then there’s and we have no transactions fees. I could see some being rather jealous. If the alt coin they are into takes off anywhere they are going be paying thought the roof in transactions fees and have a very slow network to accept the transaction as it becomes bogged down.

There are people who just want do things in this world. This platform enables those kinds of people.

The beauty of Steem is that after Steemit, Inc has rolled out SMT's and all the scalability updates the success of the platform will no longer be in their hands. It will be up to thousands of yet unknown people some of whom will develop those apps that will draw in the consuming masses willing to pay to use the apps. That is the real value proposition of Steem and not what goes down on this primitive blogging platform. All the stupid fighting over Trending and bidbots will be history by then.

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