Steem is at the forefront of monetisation of blockchains and creati...

It's been an amazing holiday season so far for me and even though I probably need the whole of Quarter 1 of 2019 to recover it's been worth it.

It has allowed me to take a little bit of a more zoomed out approach when it comes to Steem and that's pretty healthy actually.

STEEM price went below 25 cents so I bought a little bit more this morning and powered some of it up as well.

I was also happy to read that project @actifit started to onboard users though paid subscription in a cool way by giving away some extra perks if you sign up through them.

I'm starting to like paid on boarding more and more. I know in this day and age everything needs to be free but it's a one time expense giving you access to a whole world of apps and opportunity and 10 bucks is not over the top.

Also it's my finding that people that pay for something are automatically also a little bit more invested with their time and attention in the thing they paid for.

And the option for free accounts is always still there but you just have to wait a little longer if you don't want/can't pay.

And to put that into perspective. Yes I know generating an adress for Bitcoin or Dash is free and instant. But that's all it is until you fill it with PAID FOR crypto and then what? You can't do anything with it really besides looking at it or sending it to another adress for a FEE.

Hurray.

Revenue besides speculation

I think the realisation that revenue besides speculation of the STEEM price going up is something not only we will face as a blockchain other blockchains will have to face this as well at some point. I'm hoping 2019 is that year.

I know other blockchains are much better at telling a good story of future promises than us but they all have to prove a use case and revenue/business model at some point. Otherwise it's just speculation.

With Steem I consider us at the for-front of this realisation with our current WORKING apps and real people using them. We don't have much future promises imho. Just real people putting in work. (And hopefully a rejuvenated down to earth Steem inc. providing the tools starting with MIRA.)

I don't see anything wrong with apps trying to figure out how to get users to pay for their applications. Either with FIAT/other crypto or STEEM that their users earned on this blockchain or simply finding other ways to generate revenue (advertising).

I know this is met with resistance but in the end of the day the only way STEEM is going to go up besides speculation is finding ways to make people want to buy STEEM to use it.

True value for the STEEM price will come from applications that can draw in money from outside the Steem blockchain into the Steem blockchain.

It's also these applications I would like to delegate my STEEMPOWER to because it's those applications that will also be able to offer a much bigger ROI than anything on the blockchain today.

For me, 2019 is going to be my third year on the blockchain and probably will be the most interesting year with all that's going on with Steem.

This blockchain has gone through several phases from its inception (starting with just steemit.com and blogging) to what it is now and it sure is maturing rapidly.

If STEEM can keep the lead in real use cases and monetisation of the blockchain through the ways of REAL WORKING applications it's going to be a great year for Steem holders.

I can't wait to see!