RE: "They're Not Companies!" - But What Does That Mean for Sustainability?
What you discussed here is why a lot of folks think cryptos are scam. Like a group of business guys and techies can just come together, write a whitepaper and pitch their project as a solution to a "real world problem", clone a coin and create buzz for an ICO, take people (investors') money with zero guaranty of roi (no government regulation).
A lot of coins/projects have come and disappeared, people technically forget their money, a lot of people accept crypto investment as speculative, a gamble they can lose and move to the next hopefully viable one.
I think we need to start considering these projects as "companies" and considering their long term sustainability, the utility of the project and most importantly, it's ability to be self sustaining (by generating revenue), otherwise new scammers will always come, rake money in with their ICO, run their project for a while, and disappear.
With all that said, we should also consider that what you just discussed is the "ideal state" which we expect cryptocurrencies to grow into, but looking at the trend, a lot of people dont care, there are a lot of coins like dogecoin that simply exist as "coins", no project backing at all and they still exist and technically have value, this is why traditional investors are wary of cryptos as an investment.
I don't think that this is something that can just be done. The issue is that these projects do not operate as companies. They do not sell products or generate revenue. However, the Dogecoin is a good example, maybe they will just sustain themselves in the open market. The issue arises if updates and changes need to be made in which people do not want to spend their time at something if they aren't getting paid for it.
i think dogecoin and the likes are running on sentiments of their support community, these guys keeps developing and updating but I dont know how long they will keep that up? I guess most of them will die off in the long run but those with working services will eventually be the only ones left.
I am currently writing a contest entry for such platform, it has been in existence for 2 years with about 500k users, they need the ICO money to scale and also make information provided by their travel site more trustworthy. Such coins are not subjected to investors emotions or market fluctuation (in my opinion) but on the growth of the business behind it. They are less likely to disappear.
Steemit, to me is also a good example although they would find a way to monetize the site (i mean get money from third parties, not us).
I agree that most companies will die over the long run. Regarding Steemit - it will be interesting to see how it evolves over time. It could end up being like facebook - starts out as a free service with no advertising, but then eventually they added adverts to the site to generate revenue. I believe steemit is working on smart media tokens (though I haven't followed that progression). If this ends up being the case,it will change things and possibly add to its sustainability.
it will be great to see how all that plays out. I do not know about the smart media token but if they end up putting ads, they will pay holders dividends (hopefully).
Yeah i guess we will see. It is interesting