A tribute to @Lexiconical
A survey of the blog history of one of the great minds, and writers of Steem. He may be best known for an incredible series, he wrote, about our top-ranking Steem Witnesses. That work in and of itself was monumental and should live long in the history of the Steem Community. We are going to explore, together, some of the topics and themes he has chosen to write about and get to know better:
Who is Lexiconical?
On June 2, 2017 
"As the overall market cap of the crypto-currency market explodes, so too does interest in the whole sector. With Bitcoin losing its market cap dominance, interest in alt coins is increasing." - First Day on Steemit
Citing a buzz on Youtube, as well as some other social media, Lexiconical arrives on Steem, about a month before me, excited about the possibilities of a social media without the massive amount of censorship seen elsewhere online, and in the world at large.
Shortly afterward, he shares some of his experiences in Futures Trading that serve as a cautionary tale:
"Unfortunately, your human psychology is very apt to look at the movement of prices and quickly calculate how much you could have made. That's why investor psychology tends to be reactive, buy after prices ramps, sell after price drops. The term FOMO is unfortunately very apt in this case. Combine this with the natural ego to think that you have an edge, and the ability of any market to remain highly irrational much longer than you can remain solvent (either directly, or psychologically), and you have a recipe for a casino - 95% walk out losers." - Lessons Learned in Futures Trading
These days, it seems that everyone is dreaming of Lamborghinis and oceanfront property, but we might be better off hodling our investments rather than trying to play the markets.
A number of his early posts are short-form content like you might see on other social media. However, it’s not too hard to find articles, he wrote, which continue to provide value, today.
An example is the article “Steem, Bitcoin & Cryptos vs. Gold - The Battle That Shouldn't Exist” which describes a rivalry between the crypto-currency and precious metals markets, that I didn’t know existed. He shares that while crypto is an investment which is more likely to multiply in value, gold is a proven store of value, and both are part of a balanced portfolio. Here is a tip I found helpful from that article.
"The best rule I've come across when it comes to investing is "Buy as much as you know." Most people aren't investors, so they should not be making asset picks, but rather saving in reliable stores of value. However, if you are an expert in a particular asset or area (like Steem), you may be able to go more hog-wild with a high expected value."
If you are still struggling to understand the crypto market, another helpful article from his early days on steem is "Segwit is a Trojan Horse." The theme of this article is that segwit places your bitcoin transactions under centralized control, which is against the original values which birthed Bitcoin. The result is that Bitcoin Cash, which forked to avoid SegWit, is the real bitcoin. All of this can be quite disorienting to anyone who is new to the market. As cryptocurrency breaches the mainstream, profit-chasing is taking priority over core-values.
Moving Forward
There is a lot of great stuff on
Jumping ahead, we find ourselves about halfway through Lexiconicals journey in Steem, so far, and getting into some of the juicy stuff. Incidentally, this is also around the time that I started following his work.
How to Win Followers and Influence People on Steemit
Next up is a series loosely based on "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie, but for Steemians. There are a lot of great tips in this series, and if you are a new user, trying to figure out the best ways to get ahead in Steem, you'll want to check them out.
- Part 1 - What NOT to do
- Part 2 - What to do when you're just Getting Started
- Part 3 - Quality Comment Creation for Maximimum Follower Gain
I believe that the biggest takeaway from that series is to spend a lot of time commenting on people's posts. Comments, Comments, Comments. The longer I'm here, the more evidence I see that Comments are a major key to succeeding on Steemit. Another great point he made is about limiting your resteems. If you don't have a big audience, yet, then your resteems aren't doing much good. They can also make it harder to find your content.
Meet the Witnesses
Now we've come to an incredible work which I am quite grateful for. 5 Months ago,
You can check steemian.info/witnesses for a current list of witnesses, with more information on it than the other sites I know of for that purpose. It's been great to read these over while preparing this article. You may want to read them all, or simply look at the current witness rankings and check here at the witnesses most interesting to you. Names which have been crossed out have disabled witness servers that you should not vote for.
In my preparation of this list, I've been reading over these reports again. In 6 months on Steem, I've seen that witness list change quite a bit. As this community grows, newer, more engaged witnesses are rising through the ranks, and many who used to be at the top, seem to have gone on to other pursuits.
Witnesses are what make Steem work, so it's crucial to choose your witness votes wisely. Even though it takes Whale votes to get all the way to the top positions, there are witnesses currently in the top 50 who've gotten there without a whale vote. All of our votes add up, and as your account grows, here, your vote gets stronger!
You can read more about witnesses here, in a review
To be continued....
Now you have a glimpse into some of the technical reasons I love
Resources
- First Day On Steemit - Useful Discoveries For Other Former Outsiders
- Lessons Learned From Futures Trading The 2000's and 2010's - Bias Towards Holding Your Steem
- Steem, Bitcoin & Cryptos vs. Gold - The Battle That Shouldn't Exist
- Segwit is a Trojan Horse. Bitcoin Scaling debate explained.
- How to Win Followers - Part 1 - What NOT to do
- How to Win Followers - Part 2 - What to do when you're just Getting Started
- How to Win Followers - Part 3 - Quality Comment Creation for Maximimum Follower Gain
- steemian.info/witnesses
- What are witnesses? why vote for them?