A Skeptical view on Tokenization
"Why is it worth that much and where does the Money come From?"
Many people struggle at first to understand what gives Bitcoin its value, once you understand and 'get over it' there is the second layer which are the altcoins. Steemit which 'pays its users" in particular is often a hard one to grasp. I honestly still see it as somewhat of a Ponzi structure that would collapse if no new people would come in buying Steem to earn more steem. The many Dapps on the platform along with the 'zero fees' instant transactions give it a real use case and so would the SBD function if it was not broken as shown during both the bull and bear market.
Steemit Clones
There are plenty of them out there already like Golos and Whaleshares and recently Sprtshub & pocketnet (@btb affiliate link), ... with many Steemit users cross-post their content to maximize the post2mine rewards they are getting. Also add something as Snax and everything quickly gets overly complicated.
Steem-Engine Tokens
This is where it creates an all different layer and I'm having a real hard time buying into it honestly. I love the idea that it's possible to create a separate layout where only certain posts get shown and even the idea of having tokens like the PALcoin I can entertain. The major issue I have though is that there seems to be nothing backing up these tokens aside from people believing they are worth something and buying them to earn more of them. From my Understanding the value of PAL is backed up by the fact that they can be swapped for Steemit Upvotes (Similar to Actifit). However, its marketcap of over 2 Million Dollars only represents ~50$ in daily Steemit Upvote value.
By now there are hundreds of different tokens already on Steem-engine and it feels impossible to keep up and know what's real or not. sportstalk.social recently also was created for Sports-Related blogging on Steemit.
Tags On Steemit
Content discovery has been an issue for a long time already and this trend of alternate interfaces requiring a tag makes it even more impossible. Most users can use any kind of upvote they can get pretty much leaving them no choice but to give up proper tags for those. With only 5 tags available and so many alternate interfaces, it will get really hard. (
Virtual Miners
This seems to be the newest trend and goes even a step further. Buying a coin that mines a coin. If feels like there So basically you have...
Dollars -> Bitcoin -> STEEM -> PALcoin -> PALminer -> PALcoin -> STEEM -> Bitcoin -> Dollars -> Things you can buy.
SBC Coin ?
I always liked the idea of having communities on Steemit. Currently, it's quite the challenge though because it's everyone on their own trying to maximize what they get out of it. When first starting the SBC it seemed impossible to have members upvote and support each other. If somehow it was possible to have an interface only SBC members can use and a native token that is directly linked to the Steem price somehow making it so only SBC members can be upvoted with that SP could open up some real possibilities of creating a real community. I'm not sure if that is currently possible with steem-engine though.
Sustainability
Right now everyone seems to be glad they are getting all kinds of tokens that can currently be sold for real money. It all feels like being a bit lost in denial though and I ask myself if it's all sustainable the answer from how I understand things is unfortunately not at all. Steem itself already has huge issue value wise and has dropped all the way to place 73 in coinmarketcap. I can not imagine all these clones and sub-coin having a real future right now unless they are backed up by something or have an actual real use case like on Scorum.
Dear @costanza
I just had a pleasure to read your publication. It's not very "fresh" post and I wonder if you're still even checking comments ...
That's very true. Simply because demand is coming from wrong source.
Imagine that Steemit would actually allow regular users to pay for those ads with STEEM and those tokens would be burned (same way currently paying for "promoting" does).
It would attract people, brands and businesses to actually buy STEEM and use it for their advertising purposes.
Unfortunatelly Steemit Inc. decided to follow different strategy. They accept payments in FIAT for those ads. Which really exclude their entire community not only from created revenue, but also from opportunities of advertising our our content using STEEM. And that sucks.
PALnet made a good stepand promoted posts are being displayed in "trending page". So it does create some demand for PAL tokens. That's already solid step.Cheers,
Piotr
The good thing about adds is that it will decrease the selling pressure from Steem inc. It would be nice to have a way to advertise paying with Steem or have a system where you allow advertisements in your feed where you get part of the fee a bit similar to what BAT is doing.
I still have a hard time seeing the PAL token go anywhere honestly. Most pal community members before the coin just joined in order to get the minnowsupport upvotes that really helped a lot of people get started. Now it's just another way to get more $$ and I don't really buy many actually care about the community aspect that much. It's also just too big. If communities are going to work I believe it will be smaller ones 20-100 people inside. Once it gets too big it gets more easy to abuse without being noticed.
My question is always- why do we need for every project an own token?
Imagine you have fiat EURO .but each company would have its own EURO based currency? just why?
Exactly, for most projects, this is the most difficult question to answer. Most of the time it's a way to raise funds being stuck afterward having to find mechanics to give them so-called value.
There are many projects where it does make sense though. Tokens can be seen similar to stocks of a company.
I totally get the skepticism. I feel the same too but isn't that the same thing will the shitcoins and ICO's that we have in the market already? Like you said, finding a coin that has actual value and a product backing its value i.e Steem Monsters and DEC is what you should be aiming for.
I believe that now any Tribe being deployed will require to hold ENG which in itself will limit those people creating random coins from doing so. Expect less Steemit clones in the future.
That's the thing, it's a shitcoin within a shitcoin within a shitcoin taking things to a completely new level.
The problem also with current games on Steem is that they would probably lose 95% of their playerbase if there were no rewards. For most that I know it's just a fun way to earn more steem.
True. As with all games nobody would play if there wasn't some type of reward. The release of Endorphins when you get a battle royale or a chicken dinner, I dare say, even when a bet comes in at the last second like mine did a couple of hours ago is one of the best feelings in the world. It is a reward.
Btw someone should have contacted you for a free Steem Monsters Starter pack on Discord. Did you get it?
I got the promo code yes, I've started testing it yesterday. My first impression was not that overwhelming. It's somewhat similar to other steem games, the endorphins are coming form the potential rewards and not really from the game itself. Visuals are rather average (especially compared to hearthstone). I do fear I'm stuck playing each day now to get the free card reward :)
I really would like to see a game on steem people would play regardless of the rewards. I you are into these things you should check out clash of streamers, that entire game is just designed to push reward buttons like crazy.
You aren't alome. As a Steem maximalist I don't buy these weird tokens.
They ain't fooling this skeptic, nonono.
I have started staking PAL I get from post rewards, but I sold my airdrop. Too soon? Well in hindsight, I underestimated the discontent in Steem.
I'm wondering when SMT comes we will have two systems.
Also market cap of PAL is getting tempting enough for one of the devs to do an oopsie.
The ecosystem is getting more and more complicated. And people feel like they are missing out if they lose something.
I was not sure what to do so I staked most of them but also sold a bit. I think I'll just use the earned PAL to get upvotes from now on unless there I can see some fundamental value in them.
One thing is for sure, SMT's will make things even more complicated and EIP will cut down on the earnings making the step for new users even bigger.
You are right to be skeptical.
Markets all over the world and throughout time have had "price discovery" determined only by what people are willing to pay. I'm sure there are tokens and projects with a genuine value-add to offer, but sadly too much rubbish to sort through to find them.
Some kind of token rating webpage might be a good idea, it's getting more difficult to keep up with everything. I still have to try that prospectors game by the way :)
Sounds like a good idea, though it would be plenty of work.
Prospectors is going well. I'll probably push an update out in the next few days as it's launched on mainnet and goes free-to-play on June 29.
I get you there, what is the added value? Is there any value in these tokens? Well they need to be staked, and to be staked, they need to be bought, so there is value in them. But the mining really blows my mind, I think that is just ridiculous. As long as people use the condensers and upvote and create content there is value. But will there be collapses of these communities? For sure!
I don't think the fact that they need to be staked gives them any value. That on its own just makes it into a Ponzi, Stake tokens to earn more tokens.
Hi @costanza!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your UA account score is currently 4.202 which ranks you at #2840 across all Steem accounts.
Your rank has dropped 27 places in the last three days (old rank 2813).
In our last Algorithmic Curation Round, consisting of 173 contributions, your post is ranked at #40.
Evaluation of your UA score:
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server
It's a trend and it's fashionable to have a coin on your own :) Countries, communities, tribes, ... whatever. You need to have your coin to distinguish yourself, to be independent.
Go for Euro and you lost your independence. You are assimilated.
Sounds strangely familiar to fiat money :)
These days, the worth lies in believing that something has value. Or in making PR, media schemes, fake news, ... whatever again, that something could have value.
Eh, time will tell. After inflation of tokens there comes the consolidation. Only those will real content and community behind them will survive.
Ps: who needs SMTs? Good devs at Steemit inc. could start developing something else. Like a decent frontend, for example :)
Ps2: #wewantmoretags #fiveisnotenough :)))