Hello, I'm a new member on Steemit. I've registered here just because I find the idea behind this platform interesting, I've been on the website for literally five minutes, but let me just write a bit about what I think about the platform, the idea behind it and the future of it.
I feel like Steemit is full of potential. Right now it is very new and we are just starting to experience it. It is going to be a very long journey and not everyone is going to stay until the end. Who knows, maybe I'll be one of the people that leaves at one point or another?
The value of STEEM
Nowadays a currency has value for its convenience and how useful it is. Would a dollar be worth anything if nobody accepted it? No!
Would Bitcoin be worth a lot more if everyone accepted it? Yes!
Can STEEM be worth a lot as well? Of course, especially since it's a new concept. Those who get in early will get an advantage.
Will the idea behind STEEMIT work?
It's hard to say. This system depends on people and their content. If we all want the idea and cryptocurrency behind it to flourish, we will need to work hard. Of course, you might be tempted to try to "cheat" the system and somehow abuse it and you might even find a good way of doing it, but this ultimately will lower the value of everything and everyone will get a disadvantage.
And of course there will be people who will try to kill STEEMIT. This is something that we will need to overcome somehow, but I'm sure if people start posting GOOD content that is not only interesting to those on STEEMIT, but also to other users who possibly have never even heard of it, then we will continue to improve the platform and in the end the content will get even better.
Why would the STEEM cryptocurrency ever be worth anything?
The crypto behind steem by itself isn't worth anything. I believe that for any currency to start growing you need to have something back it up, in our case it is knowledge. Everyone is constantly looking for it. You want to know how to prepare your dinner, how to learn to speak a different language, how to look good and etc. The list goes on. We constantly question Google about it.
So right now we are building the value for the platform and the currency. Afterwards the currency (hopefully) isn't going to need to be backed by anything because a lot of people will be using it.
I feel like at this point most of the users registering are mostly interested in earning money, or simply the idea of this and that is probably true, but in the future others will be going to this website to find content.
Of course, in order for the platform to succeed the devs will have to work hard as well. It is important for the website to be able to compete with others and provide something that those websites don't. I can see that steemit doesn't have any ads and that is a plus.
I'm not sure about image and video content though, since so far it seems like this website is very similar to reddit. Although I guess we could just share links and that will benefit everyone.
So if you'd like to bring value to the website, the idea and the cryptocurrency behind it — post valuable content, help promote good content that deserves it (by clicking the upvote button).
Let's see how it goes :) We have a long way to go!