Delighted to see several vlogs and posts over the past week which talk about Steem as the blockchain of opportunity where people, businesses and organisations can build and shape great communities and invest in creating future wealth.
Content is important - anyone who has run a website will know how tyrannical all those empty web pages are, demanding to be filled - and anyone who has visited a new website will know how unalluring pages of fake Latin can be. We need content creators to bring people in ... but a better understanding about investment opportunities is good to see.
The potential value of the blockchain is huge. Just to look at one small and very costly part of local authorities: financial transactions. Steem has the capacity to manage any size payment very fast and for free. Compare this to the debacle where three London authorities out-sourced their financial transaction processing to one of the big four high street banks for an eye-wateringly large sum of money: come payday, no one received their salary in their account, and charities, about 6,000 of them, providing vital services, didn't receive their first quarter's grant payment.
Should have gone to Steem.
SPInvest reaches its first milestone
Source
SPInvest reminds me of the Christmas Club my mum used to run when we were young. Every Friday, about tea-time, everyone would pop round to her house and hand in their weekly savings amount - maybe two or three pounds - out of their wage packet (these were the days when you were paid weekly, in cash, in a little brown paper wage packet). Investments were duly recorded in the Big Book of Reckoning and deposited on Saturday morning in the Building Society account opened for the purpose.
A few weeks before Christmas, we would get the big pay-out plus a share of any interest that had accumulated. We also had a holiday club which worked the same way. Sometimes, the interest was part of the payout and, sometimes, everyone decided to put it towards a night out together. The social part - seeing everyone on a Friday night, shared nights out - were as important as managing tight budgets and getting through the year.
I've always liked Credit Unions - a savings and loans bank for people that banks don't want to know about. Credit Unions were often a response to loan sharks (the "Provi" is probably the best known one) and extortionate rates of interest (1000% and up APR, if you don't mind) charged to very poor people with strong arm tactics to match, and nowadays, payday loans. Credit Unions provided low cost loans for things like the electricity bill and new shoes for the children when they went back to school in the Autumn.
In the old days, you had to be a regular saver at a Credit Union for 13 weeks before you were eligible to apply for a loan. This could be for as little as £1 a week, and there was a savings to loan ratio. Nowadays, there is greater flexibility, with each loan application dealt with on its own merit and the applicant's capacity to make repayments.
However, when you repaid your loan - again, usually weekly - a proportion of it went into your savings (I'm not sure how much it is nowadays but it used to be 13%). This meant that, at the end of the loan period you had also built your savings and, perhaps more importantly, built a regular habit of saving, putting aside a little money each week. Credit Unions are also social and, although there is provision for bank transfers, you can still pay in and receive cash in person.
Source SPInvest is offering a similar opportunity for saving regularly - read more in this post.
The idea behind SPInvest is that all Steem investments by investors is powered up and leased for at least 20% APR; the income derived from leasing Steem Power is reinvested in more leases or in off-chain investments, for example, other crypto-currencies like Bitcoin and precious metals. At regular intervals, the total holdings are re-evaluated and the token - SPI - is re-valued. Investors can either sell back their tokens to SPInvest or trade them through Steem-Engine.
Source SPInvest Growth Plan.
Last weekend, four weeks after launch, SPInvest reached its first target of selling 10,000 SPI tokens and celebrated by having a 200 SPI giveaway for investors, run through a lottery, with about 84% of the 70 investors receiving something in the draw. The fund also made its first off-chain purchase, a small fraction of Bitcoin, converted some tokens from the Byte Ball (now Obyte) air-drop and earned income through posting. The token was also re-valued from 1 Steem (the original selling price) to a new 1.1 Steem purchase price. That's 10% increase in four weeks.
Source Weekly SPInvest Holdings Report published 2 August 2019.
Source SPInvest Weekly Earnings Report published 1 August 2019.
I like 
- no formal governance or agreement.
- "not your keys, not your coins".
And as 
My ... tokens are just digital pieces of fluff, and may never be worth anything. Be very cautious in purchasing any tokens, including mine ... don't invest more than you can afford to lose.
This is true for the whole of the Steem-Engine token creation venture. However, there are many other opinions (here's one) about the potential for Steem-Engine tokens.
For me, I'm keeping a close eye on things -
Perhaps SPInvest is a contemporary version of Credit Unions. For a small investment each week, the price of a flat white, it is possible for anyone to build an investment portfolio.
SPI Raffle
There's a raffle for 40 SPI tokens at 1 Steem per entry and unlimited entries. Closes in 2 days. Worth a punt?
STOP PRESS
SPInvest has just issued a draft Partnership Agreement for comment.