Yesterday, Steemit INC released a white paper about user issued tokens on the Steem blockchain. In layman terms, when the features prototyped in this paper will be implemented, anyone (anyone with a valid Steem account, that is) will be able to issue their own token, on top of the Steemit infrastructure.
This "Smart Media Token" (which you can give any name you want, when you issue it), is way more than just a token, it's an application-enhanced store of value. Again, translating this in layman terms, it means that this token will take advantage of all the Steemit battle-tested features:
- rewards pool (your SMT will have its own separated rewards pool)
- controlled and variable inflation (you decide the time, the value or percentage of inflation)
- vesting tokens (your own version of Steem Power)
- voting (with a few rewards algorithms, including squared and linear rewards)
- curation (again, with the same variations as above)
Bref, you will be able to create your very own Steemit, with all the bells and whistles, without forking the Steem blockchain.
Do We Really Need This?
One of the most interesting "devil advocate" reactions to this announcement was: "why, oh why, do we need another wave of worthless, shitty coins?".
Ok.
Pause for a second.
Now let's rewind 20 years ago. Just bear with me.
It was 1997, and a strange, hard to comprehend technology was creeping on the wave of an even creepier social phenomenon (called Open Source) between software and media giants: the world wide web. This technology was giving anyone with a bit of technical skills (and the ability to learn) the possibility to publish their own personal page on the internet.
"Why, oh why, do we need this?" people asked back then. "Because we can", was the answer.
"But it's doomed, can't you see? What are you going to build? A book store on the internet? Why would you do that, since we already have real life book stores?".
"Well, I'm going to call my book store Amazon and it will kick the fat asses of the real life book stores", an unknown Jeff answered.
"And what are you going to create: a search engine for these shitty web pages? And you're really going to call it Google?"
"Yes, the two Stanford graduates answered. We are really going to call it Google and your life in 20 years will be basically impossible without it".
I think you got the idea.
What world wide web did to information 20 years ago, the blockchain does to currencies now. We're in the middle of a revolution. A revolution that will democratize money the same way web democratized publishing.
And like in every revolution, it's hard to understand what's going on, unless you pull yourself outside the box.
Yes, it's hard to comprehend that in 10 years we will have not only one currency per state, but dozens of thousands of currencies, one per community. Or, even more, we may have a cluster of currencies for the same community. Or we may have an aggregator of currencies that will set the value of what we buy in a very different way, according to rules that we can't even fathom now.
The question "why, oh why do we need another wave of shitty currencies?" is very similar to the question: "why, oh why we do we need another book store on the Internet?".
And the answer is the same: "because we can. And because in 10 years, these shitty coins will kick the fat asses of fiat currencies".
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me 
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