Priming For Decentralization Necessary?
I created my account on Steem about two and a half years ago. I started to post more or less regularly in June 2017. It didn't take me long to realize what a paradise Steem was for someone who had been blogging and taking part in conversations on various forums for more than a couple of decades. All the trash talk aimed at Steem frankly does not compute with me. Yes, Steem has some real flaws but where else is a regular internet user going to get any kind of rewards?
Naturally, I felt inclined to share my good fortune with my friends all of whom were no-coiners at the time. To my astonishment, their attitude toward Steem ranged from blankness that appeared as if something had possessed them, rendering them unable to rationally process what I was telling them to reciting non-sensical reasons as to why they could not consider joining. Steem's bad reputation could not have had anything to do with this because they certainly had never heard of it. These were people who had written volumes of text on various platforms without compensation for decades. These were also people who I'd always considered to be much more open to new ideas than the average person
Their reactions suggest to me that decentralization is something radical and novel enough to require some manner of being mentally prepared for accepting it. Remember how we used to see black people as judges and presidents on American television shows and movies for decades before one was actually elected president in 2008. The mass adoption of blockchain techonology, cryptocurrency and also Steem may require something similar. According to CNBC, eight percent of Americans owned cryptocurrency in 2018. The ING International Survey Mobile Banking from April 2018 shows cryptocurrency ownership as a percentage of the population in selected countries:
- Turkey 18%
- Romania 12%
- Poland 11%
- Spain 10%
- Czechia 9%
- USA 8%
- Austria 8%
- Germany 8%
- Italy 7%
- Australia 7%
- Netherlands 7%
- United Kingdom 6%
- France 6%
- Belgium 5%
- Luxemburg 4%
It seems that cryptocurrency adoption was barely past the pioneer stage into the early adopter phase last year. But I don't think it will take as long as accepting a black president took for Americans for cryptocurrency adoption to enter into the early majority stage globally. I talked to the same friends of mine this summer and something had changed about their attitudes. One guy, for example, had taken an interest in the details of how Ethereum worked. He said he hadn't invested in crypto but that he had looked into the workings of Ethereum out of curiosity (he is a software engineer). Another kept saying that crypto was something to be taken seriously.
Love your thoughts here. Your analogy to the adoption of a black president in the U.S. is spot on. It took many years for common opinion to change. The interconnectedness of the internet is allowing that kind of change to happen even more rapidly today, which is why I agree with you that crypto will not take nearly as long to come into the mainstream.
I forsee a day where everyone has at least some crypto. It will become a natural part of investing. Anyone with any sort of investment portfolio will hold a small amount of BTC or another crypto.
As far as Steem adoption goes, I think the best way to get noobies on board is to not have them invest, which seems counterintuitve.
I've gotten a lot of friends onto Steem by simply telling them to use an app. I create an account for them, delegate 15-50 SP to the account (so they can transact) and then I just tell them to use 1 or more apps that fit their personality. Some have taken to this and really started to use the Steem blockchain. Over time, they naturally progress to the stage of saying "I want to buy STEEM to further fuel my activity here.
That's the magic of Steem, in my opinion. The fact that you can use this blockchain and enjoy the apps here without investing. We need to change the opinion to be that of using apps rather than investing and hoping to make money.
Awesome post, you've given me a lot to think about! 🔥
I agree with you on that the possibility to earn on Steem should be downplayed. Onboard the masses and have every one of them earning $1000 per post. What could be wrong with that picture... ;)
Steem apps need to have genuine utility beyond enabling a user to put something out to self-vote or to collect the occasional big upvote.
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Hi @markkujantunen!
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Very interesting read!
You got a 28.39% upvote from @ocdb courtesy of @markkujantunen! :)
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