For this article, it is going to be very important for those in the West to put their experience aside. Essentially, this is not something that many of us understand. The United States, Western Europe and we can even through in Japan, all have stability when compared to the rest of the world. This is true for both the economy and the currency.
The announcement yesterday by 
Sadly, it is at this point we see the advanced economy thinking.
Fiat is not required for the explosion of the Steem ecosystem, at least from the user perspective. Why does STEEM need pairing with Fiat for users? To buy STEEM? Most of the world does not have money to buy food let alone cryptocurrency. Where fiat conversion is vital is for investment. This obviously will translate into more development since funding will be able to go directly to where it is needed.
For the users, fiat comes into play, not entering the ecosystem but leaving it. Most of the world needs a way to turn cryptocurrency in their native currency.
That said, having the ability to convert Steem-based application tokens and transact with it, is enormous. We are about to enter a new era which addresses a major challenge throughout the world.
Steem allows people to get tokens. Each application pays based upon something different, but they do pay. Many of the tokens reward in a fashion similar to STEEM and based upon the same premise. Posting, commenting, and upvoting, in some form, are rewarded. Others pay for activities that are done and use the blockchain as a verification system.
We are literally seeing a new economic system being constructed.
Here is a comment that was left on the article I linked above.
https://busy.org/@taskmaster4450/smts-going-to-be-listed-on-daybit-exchange
That is the value of what is being created on here. Without getting into the validity of the numbers, we can expand the idea out beyound 
What will determine the value on these tokens is the ecosystems supporting them. Those that are able to attract a lot of loyal users will thrive. This is one of the reasons I am so optimistic about Steem. There is a foundation of people in place who are intent on making this a screaming success.
SMTs are just one type of token that we will see on here. There are going to be others created to do things we cannot even imagine at this point. The next few years will see an explosion in creativity (and copying) throughout the entire cryptocurrency world.
Then add to the picture the fact that these assets can appreciate and be accessed from anywhere in the world via a smartphone.
Naturally, Steem will not be the only game in town. This is what makes those tokens that do use the SMT protocol so powerful. They will mirror the characteristics of STEEM. Hence, whatever one can do with STEEM, can also be done with an application's token. This is important simply for the fact that so many people are accustomed to posting, commenting, and upvoting. With the Facebook trio having over 2B monthly users, there is a wide range of people who are already involved in what we have to offer.
The only difference is they basically do that stuff for free. On Steem, "Get Paid to (fill in blank)".
For now, the key is getting people involved in the cryptocurrency world. The idea of targeting people to buy crypto is short-sighted. The masses will not be doing this. Instead, it is vital that we, somehow, get crypto into their hands. This will open up the door of an entirely new economic model to them.
Fortunately, we have a number of applications in this ecosystem that do just that. Trying a single application can change the fortunes of an entire family.
This is how powerful an undertaking this all is.
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