Hint: It ain't steemit.com
Today's market cap is <90M. IDGAF.
Today, Steemit.com is one of the only ways to realize $ using the steem blockchain. Tomorrow, that's not going to be the case. Let me paint a picture and tell you why this is. See, the STEEM blockchain is a really neat data storage device. First off, it's global and permanent, like most blockchains. When you write content to STEEM, it stays wrote. Now, there's a community of developers writing the hell out of app after app after app for STEEM. Sooner or later, markets are going to wise up to this, as are publishers: when people realize that steemit.com is the very tip of the STEEM iceberg, and that content added to the chain here or anywhere ends up at >100 places on the web, automagically, in different formats, to be discussed by different user-bases, we're going to see the mother of all pumps.
For me, I've got to guess that this pump is going to occur Dec-Jan, and stay pumping from Jan-Apr. And it's not going to dump thereafter, either.
I can hear it now..... "But, but.... blablabla whales blablablabla"
Guys, it's a blockchain. They're permanent. The founders realizing some hard-earned profits, or selling to support software dev, or hell, buying a goddamn yacht and painting steemit on it, just doesn't matter in the long-run. What matters is that the STEEM repository begins to attract devs, and the community continues to attract devs. We're talking some serious coked-up steve ballmer shit here:
And guess what? Dev communities of this size, they don't just disappear either. We've reached a critical mass, okay? How can we tell we've done so? There are >70 web applications using STEEM! Why so many? Well, because in building Steemit.com / STEEM, the ethereum model was NOT followed. Now, let's be clear: Not one app has successfully implemented Ethereum, and I'd like to predict that not even one ever will. They built it in a way that's not friendly to anyone, and implementing it in apps is HARD.
Steem, on the other hand is a JSON-based content storage mechanism. Developers, we know about these.
But... but vaporware! This vaporware will surely nuke us!
No, surely, it's not going to, and here's why: STEEM follows rule #1 of software development: KISS. That is:
Keep
It
Simple
Stupid
You see, the web is a whole ton of content. There's this phrase about marketing online:
Content is king
...And indeed, content IS king.
My Challenge: If you're feeling bitchy about the price of STEEM today, Please, please take my challenge:
Go out, to NYSE / NASDAQ / Wherever. Look at stock prices. Now, I know, I know, STEEM isn't a stock. That'd be illegal. So let's say that it's also not-not a stock, too. That's not to say that it is a stock. It's just not-not a stock.
Find me a single web property with as much impact as steemit and an equally sized developer community that ISN'T worth more than $1B.
Right. You can't. Because they don't exist.
So, you see, the market cap is headed to >1B, the following factors be damned:
- Whales
- Vaporware
- Whiny Anarchists
- Whiny Communists
- Whiny Capitalists
- Whiny Boomers
- Whiny Millennials
- Whiny Infants
- Freakin Marx Himself coming back from the dead and claiming STEEM as "The people's blockchain"
None of these really matter at this stage, because software development has taken hold.
"But Synereo!"
No, Damn it, no! Is synereo simple? Can you figure out how to do dev work for it in an afternoon? Or do you visit their pages and the pages of their "projects" and wonder "what the hell is going on here anyway?"
Automaticc, parent company of Wordpress, there's a >$1B organization. That's where steemit is headed. I think the best thing that can be done for BOTH STEEM and steemit at this stage is to find as many ways as possible to throw money into SW dev in a structured fashion.
- Bounties might work, but the fact of the matter is that they're not as effective as cash, and do not attract the same kind of development.
- Blog posts might work, but the fact of the matter is that they take time away from punching letters into the keyboard to build the apps, databases, converters, ingestors, etc that will feed the REAL growth of STEEM.
My suggestion:
- The STEEM registered developer's fund.
It should pay SBD salaries to registered software developers who've committed to develop for our chain. Why? Because there's so much to be done, and it can boost us so very far. Look, I bet most software dev types here can relate to me when I say "I hate to think about money." So, Community, think about it for us, eh? There's no reason that the registered developers's fund couldn't fire people if needed, but with the fund in place, we could hire the hell out of some awesome devs, and do so in a way that doesn't involve their risking all the time on some blog posts. Steemit is not the lottery, but right now deving for it is a little bit like one.