Oh Look! The Cat in a Tub is talking in his Human voice!
Rather than write in my usual Tub Cat voice I think this post is worth writing in a "normal" voice given the significance of the occasion and what it means to be, as a... I suppose you could call it... content creator.
I joined Steemit back in 2018 on what was once my primary account - 
Over time, however, I simply started posting on Steemit as if it were an every day social media platform. And while realistically, there's nothing wrong with this approach, I felt that my account no longer reflected what I intended it to be and stopped posting.
If I'm honest, I also felt as if Steemit wasn't shaping up to what it could be. Many things about the platform were frustrating me at the same time that a lot of situations in my personal life were preventing me from spending time on the platform. So I stopped posting completely. At this stage I had spent a good couple of years posting on Steemit however, and earned a reasonable amount of Steem in that time. I should also mention that I never actually purchased any Steem using Fiat. All my earnings were through posting, selling T-shirts, and creating poor quality video content.
I even tried my hand at trading cryptocurrencies from time to time along with a few other ventures that resulted in a loss of crypto, a significant decline in the value of my holdings, and occasionally a boost in the value of my holdings. I was never really good at trading crypto however, with most of my success coming from simply holding Litecoin and Bitcoin for extended periods of time and selling these coins for Steem when the ratio looked worthwhile.
Eventually I decided to return to to Steemit, and became Steemit's first Cat-Dolphin hybrid. I started posting a little again, but mostly set my account to auto vote so that I could passively earn some Steem. And, like most of us here, after Justin decided to have his fun on the blockchain things became unbearable on Steemit, so I was quite pleased when Hive was created. And here we are today.
And while that was a long introduction. It's not actually the point of this post today.
As I mentioned above, I never bought any Steem when I first started spending time learning about blockchains and trading in various cryptocurrencies. And, in turn, all throughout this time I never converted any of my cryptocurrencies to Fiat. One of my ideas right from the beginning was to see how much Fiat I could earn through creating content on Steemit. But I always wanted to hold my coins in order to be able to earn more coins.
But, after powering down my Steem over the past few months, I decided to pull the pin and convert my Steem to Fiat for the first time ever. It was quite a bitter-sweet moment. But also one that truly demonstrated to me the real potential of earning on platforms such as this one.
Below is a copy of the payment receipt after I made the conversion to Fiat late last night.
Was my timing for converting to Fiat ideal? Probably not. Do I regret the decision? Not at all. I need the funds to support my wife and I during this challenging time. My wife has been stood down from her work indefinitely as a result of this stupid virus, so being able to clear the debt on her credit card is more important than holding some coins in the hope that they rise to significant values.
At the same time, the fact that I have been able to earn some Fiat through creating content on a blogging platform without selling physical products or promoting affiliate links is fantastic. And is a huge motivator for me to continue creating content in one form or another.
So let's continue building our little home here on Hive! I'm sure we can make a little money here while having a whole lot of fun.
