This article was inspired by my discovery of the free 2.5 LBRY Credit giveaway that the LBRY Dev team are currently doing. For more information click here to read my article announcing the giveaway. If you don’t have time for that, just follow this link here to sign up and start earning those 2.5 LBC!
So, I guess like everyone, I love free stuff. The cooler the stuff the more excited I get. Naturally, I was pretty excited when I saw free cryptocurrency, you don’t get much cooler than that! I’d heard very good things about LBRY and it was on my research list but it hadn’t yet reached the top. Although suddenly I thought if I was being given the opportunity to get them for free I might as well get started with the research now.
This deal instantly became so much cooler!
If you aren’t familiar with LBRY, as a Steemian you should be. Whereas Steem is a platform where you get paid to write, LBRY is intended to be a platform where you get paid to post just about any other art form. The concept is simple; let’s say Bob creates content (whether that’s a podcast, a film, a picture or whatever, you choose), Bob can then post this content to the LBRY platform, kind of similar to YouTube. However, alongside the content, Bob also places an asking price of, let’s say, 1 LBC. If Alice then logs onto the LBRY platform and wishes to view Bob's content she must pay Bob the 1 LBC to unlock and view the content.
This means there is no middlemen, no advertisers and no censorship. The content sharing process is completely decentralised, and importantly, the content creator stays in control. Content is viewed on the terms they feel comfortable with. If you want more information on this the LBRY website has a really great video explaining the concept in 100 seconds:
So straight off the bat the idea sounds cool. Pretty similar to Steemit, something we know works well. That’s already a tick in the box. I then started doing some more digging and research into the project and it just gets better and better!
The LBRY website looks pretty slick, which is important for a project aiming to compete against the likes of YouTube, Netflix, and Spotify. Additionally, the team behind the project appears pretty switched on and motivated. Importantly, I studied Business & Management at university and it sometimes scares me when crypto-based projects run themselves as projects rather than businesses, LBRY is completely different from the norm in this aspect. Go on the ‘About The Team’ section of the website and you’re hit with pictures of a ‘CEO’, a ‘CTO’, and a strong, experienced advisory team; now these may just be words, but at least they know to be using the right words! Someone on the inside obviously knows a thing or two about business.
They aren’t shy on social media either! Plenty of stuff posted across plenty of different platforms. This is important in both a generic and a LBRY-specific way. Starting with the generic reason why this is a positive, it simply assures us as investors that LBRY isn’t a scam; that the people on the website are truly dedicated to the project and care enough about the investors to keep them informed, so that’s good!
Moving on to the more LBRY-specific reason why an active social media presence is important, well this is largely because of the market they are trying to capture. Almost all content creators these days, no matter what their content is, are on social media constantly promoting and looking for new connections. If LBRY remain active, content creators will eventually stumble upon the project and get excited!
I personally have a lot of creative friends who are struggling to get their content seen and purchased. I’m talking filmmakers, photographers, artists, songwriters, musicians, you name it; these people have a really hard time, any potential of success is getting squeezed out by the middlemen in the industries. Look at it this way, if you spend weeks pouring your heart and soul into a song, only to go and post it on YouTube and have some large corporation take all the revenue from people watching it, how are you going to feel? Isn’t it exactly feelings like this that brought many of us to Steemit…?
Interested yet?
My research didn’t stop here. Although it could have done. I’m already sold on the project, but I still like to go that extra bit deeper and really be sure that any investment decision I make is a wise one. So I checked the official LBRY roadmap, which looks promising. The Open Beta is out, although it’s currently on an invite-only basis, sign up here for early access. Then it looks like they are going to spend the rest of 2017 really making sure the platform runs smoothly through improving the searching, tagging and categories function. From a business point of view this is a brilliant approach, they know exactly who their key customers are and what they want and are working hard to deliver these before moving on. I hate to cast a negative light on a coin in my portfolio but Belacam (of Belacoin) has a very interesting project but decided to try and grow and release too quickly. Safe to say it hasn’t really worked for them yet.
Ultimately, LBRY is still in a pretty early phase, it could all go wrong from this point. However, I don’t see that happening. The value proposition is clear and excellent. The team seem to be taking a logical, business-minded approach that will hopefully guarantee success. I started researching this article just to gain a greater insight on what the freebie I was getting actually was, now I’m going to go away and buy some of these for myself!
LBC is currently priced at around $0.63 according to coinmarketcap.com, and has seen some pretty phenomenal growth already this year. You could have picked some LBC up at the start of April 2017 for only $0.05!
Using my CryptFolio Matrix I’m classifying this investment move as a solid Whale Shark; a long-term investment with HUGE ROI potential. If Steemit is currently valued at around $2 and we are all expecting $5 fairly soon, I don’t see any reason why LBC won’t be seeing similar growth.
Follow the link below to get your referral link and start earning those free LBC!
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This is part of a super regular segment I'll be doing, to make sure you don't miss out click through to my profile and follow me! Let me know in the comments below if you do, I'd appreciate it! Also, got any comments, questions or suggestions fire those at me too!
Disclaimer: For legal reasons, this is not intended as advice, I'm happy playing with fire with my own money, I do not by any means suggest you do the same moves I do. I will, however, be posting them, and the reasons here, and if you choose to follow me, then sweet!