The Steem Economy - Tons of Ways to Spend Your Hard Earned STEEM/SBD!

in #steem7 years ago (edited)

This post is a guide for the different things you can do with the hard earned STEEM/SBD that you received by participating on the Steem Blockchain!

Buy Stuff

There are several online stores/shops that accept STEEM/SBD. Peerhub.com is an online store which accepts SBD, and sells tons of items including clothing and artwork. It is similar to eBay/Craigslist in that anyone can post items for sale, so there is a lot of interesting/unique stuff. @steemshop is a user that sells items directly on Steemit.com. You can read more about it here. SteemGyft.com allows you to buy Amazon gift cards.

Trade SBD <-> STEEM

The Internal Market allows you to trade STEEM for SBD or SBD for STEEM at the current market price. Many sites/vendors only accept one form of payment or the other (STEEM or SBD) so this allows you easily convert to whichever one you need.

The price of STEEM and SBD both fluctuate, so if you want to try your luck as a trader you can try to get more coins by buying low and selling high!

Invest/Hold

SBD tokens are loosely pegged to the US Dollar via the Steem blockchain mechanisms, so it is unlikely these will go up/down in value by a lot. Generally these are better to hold if you don't want your account value going up or down a lot. Note - it is still possible for these to lose value though. (They are not a guarantee.)

STEEM tokens however can go way up or way down, depending on the value that investors put on the tokens. Today, one STEEM token is worth about 25-30 cents. In the past, they have been worth as little as pennies, and as much as $4.00 per coin. Some day, if the value of the platform increases, they could be worth lots more!

Bitcoins (BTC) are very similar to STEEM tokens, except they have been around a lot longer and are much more established. In a lot of ways, STEEM is actually superior to BTC. One bitcoin (BTC) is currently worth about $1,500 USD. If STEEM becomes as big as BTC one day (or even bigger), then the few dollars worth of STEEM coins you own today could one day pay for your retirement! Dream big ;)

Gamble

Try your luck on the SteemDice game run by our very own @pharesim! There is also a fully automated STEEM lottery run by the @fasl account. Good luck, but never gamble with more than you can afford to lose ;)

Custom Avatars!

The user @shayne can create a custom avatar for your profile! See tons of cool examples and instructions on how to purchase your own here. This is a really awesome service. It is definitely worth checking out!

Cash it Out

If you want cash now (USD, Euros, etc.), there are various ways to cash out your tokens for 'real money'. There is currently no way to trade STEEM/SBD directly for cash, so you will first need to use an exchange to trade for an "intermediate currency" such as BTC. (BTC is the most common intermediate currency.) The intermediate currency can then be sold for cash.

There are many exchanges out there with various pros and cons (better fees, easier to use, more well known, etc.). You can research to see which one you like best, or just pick one and try it out. Some of the more popular ones accepting STEEM/SBD are BlockTrades, Poloniex, Bittrex, and Changelly.

You will need a BTC wallet to send the BTC to, which will most likely be the address provided by the website you select in the next step.

There are a few sites such as Coinbase and LocalBitcoins that will let you sell your BTC / intermediate currency for 'real money'. Depending on where you live and which currency you use, you may have to Google "how do I sell BTC for X" (fill in whatever currency you are trying to get - USD, Euro, etc.) to find a good site/guide to use.

It is recommended that you go through the whole process from start to end with a small amount of STEEM/SBD first, and then once you have successfully completed it and received your cash, you can repeat it with a larger amount.

Load a Debit Card

There are several debit cards that can be loaded up using BTC, and then used as 'real money'. Here is a guide showing how to load up a debit card using Cryptopay. Another similar guide was written for Bitwala. Another card service is Wirex. Note - the fees on these are generally high, but there is a convenience factor that is hard to beat!

Convert to Gold

You can convert your STEEM to gold, using a GoldMoney account.

Services

@elementm is a user that offers various services for STEEM, such as writing a haiku for your spouse, or covering your favorite song :) You can read more about it here.

Visit a Coffee Shop

There is a coffee shop called "EINSTEIN KAFFEE Bistro Potsdam" in Potsdam, Germany that accepts STEEM as a form of payment. It is located at Kurfürstenstraße 12 Potsdam 14467. You can read about it here!

Power it Up

If you power up your STEEM to STEEM POWER, you will gain more influence on the site and earn higher curation rewards from your votes. STEEM POWER also earns interest for as long as you hold it! (15% of the new coins that are minted by the blockchain are given to STEEM POWER holders as interest.) SBD cannot be powered up directly, but it can be exchanged for STEEM on the internal market, which can then be powered up.

Disclaimer

This post is a list of suggestions on ways to spend your STEEM/SBD, but there are no guarantees that things will work. I am not personally endorsing any of the sites/products/tools that are listed here. If you run into issues, you can comment here and I will see if there is anything I can do to assist, but most likely you will need to work it out with whichever party runs the site/product/tool that you are trying to use.

Thanks for Reading

I hope you found this guide useful and have some new found ways to spend your STEEM/SBD!

There are probably tons more that others have used / heard of. Feel free to add more suggestions in the comments!!

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Woah, definitely going to resteem this!

I was going to share it around even before I noticed that I was mentioned in it! lol

@shayne

Yeah, I didn't know you were offering this service until you shared the link the other day. After checking out your work, I am very impressed. I hope a lot more people find you through this post and you can get more of your work out there for people to see :)

It was really a helpful post .. helped me a lot 👍🏻

@timcliff thanks for your upvote as well as thanks for this post such a nice info

Yes it was

Wow! This is great from a newbie like me! Thanks!

Totally! In days I've gone from discovering cryptocurrencies to discovering cool sites like Steemit and people that will help you trade (e.g. @quickfingersluc) Loving the disruption!

How come hardly anyone is talking about STEEM? It's the first crypto based site I've found that has real functionality.

True! 8 months now since this article was written and I'm just hearing about it now. This is the only coin I understand because of it's functionality.

Great question! A lot of the talk in the crypto world seems to be surrounding hype and breakthroughs/news. I’m not sure how ‘sexy’ it is to just be delivering on the promises that we set out to do, and slowly making improvements to make the platform better. It should be ;)

I've been an active member less than 24 hours and I've had dozens of interactions with complete strangers. It's a more enjoyable experience than Facebook. Feels good to know I'm part of something new and exciting!

Never research on the issue of crytocurrencies because of my experiences with e-gold and ebullion. but in my country the bitcoin seems to be a general name for cryptocurrencies until I found out about steemit. It's getting clear it is high time I research on this

I'm more than new here. Just got approved and I am reading everything. So, I'm guessing that that could be the reason some people are not "talking about STEEM".... Still learning all about this, I love to write... so, we'll see.

Me too! A bit overwhelming needing to learn a new language!

I also sell digital files of the printable versions of the some of the art seen on my blog. I've been at it for months, but haven't had much success. Sold one unit so far!

Cool. You may want to try putting it on peerplays, and then blogging a link to the item in the store 😀

gotta say, this sounds like a really great way to earn some money and have some fun! just gotta figure out how to get my account really going...

Great article @timcliff!... Thanks for your help!
A newbie here!

Hi! I featured this post in my article, Top 3 things that get attention on Steemit :)

https://steemit.com/steem/@dfrankle/top-3-things-that-get-attention-on-steemit

Check it out!

Many thanks for the mention here. The Steemshop is small right now, but in time it will grow. We will be announcing some changes to the system soon in order that people can quickly find what they want to buy.

Awesome!

That will be great. Braco!

Great!
Awesome post! @timcliff I am new to Steemit and your publication encouraged me to try to be part of this community that is growing. I'm here by chance because I wanted to write a comment in a post. Also today I took a look at the price of Steem https://coinmarketcap.com/ and when I saw its price I also thought the same as you "Some day, if the value of the platform increases, they could be worth lots more!". Thank you for encouraging the members! I hope everyone has the opportunity to read your post !. All the best!

Been on steemit for a minute, glad i stumbled on to this page to clarify the parameters of reward. In blockchain i believe.

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