I see a lot of posts saying "Power Up!", so I wanted to put the other side of the argument:
For Steemit to grow, we need a large, liquid market for Steem. No one should worry that selling Steem is a sign of having lost faith in the platform. In fact, producing content, selling Steem and either spending the money or reinvesting in yourself and your content is a sign that the platform is working as intended.
How not to run a content business
Steemit is in the content business - so let's see how a content business can fail. In the UK, where I live, there is a newspaper and website called The Guardian. It has been around since 1821 and has a great reputation. There's just one problem, though. Last year, it lost $264m. Now, The Guardian doesn't charge its readers for its content and, to deal with its losses, it keeps firing journalists. So the content gets worse, and the chance that it will ever be able to charge readers for its contents gets slimmer by the day.
Why am I telling you this? Because it's a terrible to way run a content business. If you believe in the value of what you produce, then you should be able to charge people for your content, and you should be willing to invest in the people who produce it.
Creating a large, liquid market in Steem - and trusting individuals to make good decisions - is how Steemit makes those investments.
Selling
The blockchain records simple messages about complex actions. Last week, I published a story in the #fiction category and it did pretty well. When I got my payout, I exchanged some of the SBD to Steem, and then I hesitated. And what I was thinking is this:
What if someone checks my account history, sees that I've made a transfer to
and thinks that I'm just here for a quick buck?
This is a bad mindset - and I wonder how many other people have similar doubts.
Venture capital for creativity
But, actually, we should be really happy that people are able to withdraw Steem, even if it means short-term volatility in the valuation of Steemit as a platform. Withdrawing Steem means that content producers are being rewarded as intended, and that new users are able to buy in, either as an investment or to gain influence. This is how things are supposed to work.
But, even better, when content producers withdraw Steem, it creates a multiplier effect that allows them to create more content.
This is how that multiplier effect worked for me last week.
- I'm freelance so, when my payment came in, I was able to say 'OK, I won't bid for a day's worth of work and just concentrate on the next part of my story'. Now my pulp fiction story is two parts long (one, two), with a third on the way.
- I wrote up the first in a series of tutorials on graph theory in R that I want to use for a training business. But I also put this up on Steemit, along with the code - so I've gained a business asset, and the network has some good technical content.
And, best of all:
- I paid a designer on Fiverr to create a cover image for my story. So, now, when I finish it up, it will not only be freely available on Steemit, but I'll be able to stick an ebook on Amazon.
Conclusion
So, yes, build your stake in Steemit - it's a great idea and everyone here should want it to work it out in the long term. But, for that to happen, we need to be happy that people sell Steem and spend the proceeds.
Thanks for reading!