I decided to read the Whitepaper purposely to extract the most relevant information for me, and you, and curate it into a Reader's Digest fashion.
Basically, here's what we need to know, without any of the technical information:
Steemit has long-term benefits - (see pg 9) – It's a good idea to turn our Steem into Steem Power. They call this, “Powering Up”. Steem Power gives us more earning power. User @Clains says, “most of my earnings have come from capital appreciation.” Steem Power also gives us greater voting influence. This means someone who votes with 100,000 Steem Power in their wallet will have more influence to drive the price up of any blog post versus someone with 100 Steem Power.
Steemit will naturally become more competitive – (see pg 16) - As more people participate, we will have to create higher quality or quantity of our blogs, comments, and upvotes to earn the same payout.
Rate Limited Voting – (see pg 19) – In short, each vote matters and if you try to spam your votes across every blog post, it will have less impact than if you only voted once or a few times a day.
Payout Distribution - (see pg 20) – This quote deserves to be shared, “One of the primary goals of Steem's reward system is to produce the best discussions on the internet. Each and every year 10% of the market capitalization of Steem is distributed to users submitting, voting on, and discussing content. At the size of Bitcoin this could be as much as 1.75 million dollars per day being given to top contributors.”
Freedom of Speech - (see pg 42) – This is one of the main selling points of the using the Steemit platform, the inability to censor users. This means every subject is open to discussion within the Steemit community; politics, money, marijuana, science, religion, sex, etc.. This is a great point in the Whitepaper and I know is of the up most importance, “Freedom of speech is the foundation of all other liberties and any infringement upon freedom of speech undermines the only peaceful means of reaching consensus: discussion”. And as you recall, one of Steem's primary goal is to produce the best discussions on the internet.
Value is in the Links - (see pg 41) – Like Google, Steemit uses algorithms to provide the best content available when you use Steemit's search engine or browse the news feed. Every time you interact with a blog post or comment, it creates a link (a connection) between you and the content. This link is interconnected with other users links and the more links a piece of content has, the more valuable it becomes. Bottom line, Steem will reward us for being the first to find, comment, and upvote new content. Another interesting note is that blog posts get indexed on other search engines like Google and Yahoo, which creates more exposure for the platform and our content.
Conclusion
Steem combines the best of both worlds of Digital Currency and Social Media, which makes it a prime opportunity for content creators and internet readers to benefit socially and financially like never before. We get rewarded by our individual contributions; blogging, commenting, and upvoting. As of today, the price of Steem is $3.50. On a basic level, Steem appears to be 10X better than Bitcoin in itself and Bitcoin today is at $650. Personally, I love the financial opportunity within Steemit, so I'm rooting for Steem to reach $650 and higher! Wouldn't it be nice if Steem was worth $1,000,000 dollars? And remember, the more Steem you hold, the better; more earning power and voting influence.
You know what to do! Upvote and comment to start a discussion!