Many of you will have seen the news in your feed today that Steem has passed bitcoin in the number of transactions over a 24 hour period. This is fantastic news for the community and another notch in our belt towards mass adoption of the currency.
Whenever we are explaining Steem to our family and friends one of the most common questions we receive is where the money comes from.
It is imperative that we have a simple answer to provide for those that we love in order to see the mass adoption that we all desire. Now that we have passed bitcoin, it is a golden time to have an answer so that our use case is more readily accepted.
Keeping it simple
There is a saying in Christendom that would be helpful for our discussion. The saying goes, "If it is foggy in the pulpit it's cloudy in the pew." Put another way, keep it simple stupid - the classic K.I.S.S. acronym.
So what is a one sentence response we can give people when they ask where the money in Steemit comes from?
Answer: Money is created in Steemit when people vote on valuable content from their peers.
Explaining the reward pool, inflation rate, and any other of the finer details is akin to showing how the Federal Reserve works. The question is not a how, what, or why question, it is a where question. Thus, the answer we give is founded on what products and services are exchanging hands in Steemit.
The product we create is our blog piece. That product is then rewarded accordingly by the community based on its quality, and the trust we have in the individual for creating quality pieces in the past.
Defining Money
Most of us have watched enough bitcoin documentaries or followed the gold and silver markets to understand that money is a medium of exchange and a store of value.
Those two characteristics are a strong point for the Steemit community and the currency we are bootstrapping. In order for any medium of exchange to have value (gems, goat dung, cattle, bitcoin, dollars), it must preserve the trust of the people using it.
It is a hard sell to convince our loved ones that any crypto is a store of value until they understand the farce that is the fiat monetary system employed by every government around the world. When we remind them of what happened in 2008 and they see how all those dollars are backed by nothing, their trust in those dollars will begin to erode.
We continue to use Steem or any other crypto because we trust the technology behind it - the blockchain. In order to explain that to Pap or Grandma, it will take some time. The first step to that is giving them a clear visual of what the Steemit economy looks like. Yes, it is much bigger than blogging for dollars but the rest of that comes after step 1.
Thank you for visiting.