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Steem Has Likely Become Your Most Important Investment
About one month ago at ICO Examiner (there are two of us), we posted an article on the Datum ICO because it grabbed our attention and we figured that other people should know about it.
We came across Steemit, almost by accident, as we went looking for a platform where there was a healthy and vibrant crypto-savvy community.
The reaction to that article tugged at our curiosity - how exactly do these up-votes work, what exactly is Steem Power, what is the difference between a Steem Dollar and Steem itself etc? We did a little digging and very quickly realised that we might be onto something.
After reading the White-paper and doing a little bit more digging, we then went off and bought a bunch of Steem.
The reason we did so was because, like all of our crypto-investments, we saw real potential with the concept and we saw too that the Steemit.com website was rising exponentially in the Alexa rankings.
Married to that we just enjoyed being on the Steemit platform itself - engaging with a whole bunch of people whose insights we loved and who were engaging with us. The enthusiasm was absolutely embedded.
Buy and Hold - Or Not?
We therefore went all in and converted all of our Steem to Steem Power. We were in this for the long-term because we believed in the platform and the concept.
After a few weeks, however, we started to get a little bit worried. We kept asking ourselves: "What exactly are the developers up to?"
Our investment was also predicated on observable, incremental improvements which we naturally assumed were on their way and which would drive up-coming added-value. We weren't, however, seeing many of these, at least not enough to inspire confidence.
We got a tad concerned. And despite the ongoing Alexa ratings-rise, there didn't seem to be a corresponding increase in the USD-value of Steem. We got more concerned. Maybe we were just a bit too enthusiastic, we thought.
And then we saw this: https://steemit.com/steem/@ned/announcing-smart-media-tokens-smts
Just over five hours ago, we got the email - the official announcement from Steemit in relation to the new Smart Media Tokens.
We're still taking all of this in, we're still reading the White-paper. But here's what we have surmised so far:
- Smart Media Tokens will allow other content platforms to integrate a Steemit-type reward model
- Smart Media Tokens leverage Steem
- The people behind the Steem platform have essentially just released a suped-up equivalent of the Ethereum-based, ERC-20 compliant token model but for content ICOs of the future.
- The people behind the Steem project have a proven track record in promoting their products
We know now what was holding back those developers. And we know why Steem's trading volume has multiplied by ten over the last 48 hours.
The announcement is just a few hours old. The ramifications are still to take hold within the crypto-community. We're still reading through the white-paper. Our suspicion is, however, that Steem has just become the to-to platform for content-based ICOs.
For those of us that missed the Bitcoin and Ethereum wagons, let's be honest - we didn't know what HODL'ing was before, and I suspect we're just all about to find out...!
