A colleague at lunch today was asking about Blockchain things and I was explaining a few potential use cases. What was interesting was while I talked about tokenisation, it suddenly dawned on him how much of the world is or could be tokenised already. We then went on to the value of money and a lack of real backing it and several other things.
In my opinion, it is these types of conversations that turn the tide, as while two months ago he saw me as insane, he is now open enough to not only recognise benefits, he is starting to connect the discussion with aspects of his own world.
He now has his foot in the door.
One thing that he was quite interested in was where the value came from for crypto currencies and that is of course the same with any currency, the willingness to take it as payment for goods or services. This creates a demand but the goods and services don't need to be the same in a traditional sense and on Steem, a post will do.
Contributors on Steem demand steem and deliver in the hope for it - whether they get it or not is up to those who have access to Steem through their stake. People play games in return for points or rankings, they take likes on Facebook as payment for their photos and updates. The difference on Steem is that those tokens can be traded further than that, they have utility to purchase stiff or purchase stake.
Powering up is a demand on Stake, selling for fiat is a demand on fiat - both are a demand on Steem. The decision is between which is worth more in the moment depending on needs or, which will be worth later if one can think and act further than the moment.
Demand on Steem is set to skyrocket in my opinion, and likely it will on most crypto projects in the time to come. The difference is that Steem being a POS coin will be one of the few that offers benefits beyond the saleability of it, as it can earn while holding as well as give access to other features through resource credits.
For example, delegation to something like 
We are fast approaching a turning point in Steem where streams of infrastructure, developer tech, community growth, price shift, mainstream adoption and increase in understanding and belief comes together to compound and enhance the entire ecosystem.
The strength in decentralisation isn't the compartmentalization of information and resources, it is distributed points working together to approach and solve issues from multiple perspectives.
Steem is currently 3 years old, valued at 175 million dollars and is collectively owned by its users. In the last 3 years it has distributed some 50 million dollars of value to those users and for many, they never bought a penny's worth. That is at 50 cents, when it goes to 1 dollar it doubles to 70 million, 2 dollars 140 million, 10 dollars 700 million. In the next year at current prices, it will deliver another 13 million worth to users.
If you don't find that incredible, you aren't paying attention. People should be glad for the 100,000,000 Steem not powered up, and the 50 million steem that doesn't vote as it means, the active stake and earners here now can have access to more of the pool.
The thing that makes someone spend 50€ on a console game is the same thing that will eventually power the values of the Blockchain en masse, the attention economy. How many alt accounts were created for DrugWars? Unless someone has enough RCs for a discounted account or can get a free one from somewhere, that is 3 Steem. What happens if demand increases 10-fold, 100-fold? If an application believes they can make 20 Steem worth of value from an average customer, what will they pay for an account when there is an account shortage? What would someone pay to play Farmville where their tokens earned can be traded for real world goods?
The thing I find interesting with Steem is there are so many gamified pathways that keep fractaling off into more opportunities to use Steem, stake and time. As the ecosystem and entire industry matures, there will be more and more places to put feet in doors and leverage for entertainment, business and practical life process. Zero fee transfers is going to be a major driver of interest too.
While I spoke to my colleague and gave him some points of interest tailored for him, he started nodding along and connecting dots, finishing sentences and recognizing that there is a huge amount of possibility that he has to at least explore further.
This is the hook - raising curiosity. When people discover it for themselves, they create their own why.
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]