Will we open our hearts for @TeamSteem or Guillaume Cardinal because I love him and he's helped me out so much on Steem?
He's got the same vision for the world as I do and we have collaborated on Steem since I first joined. He's here today to talk with us about cryptocurrencies and help us see how he's doing Steem full-time.
This post has the complete video call from our interview along with the first half of the transcription which will not all fit into one post. The second post has the complete audio along with the second part of the transcription!
@TeamSteem Interview.
Guillaume, thank you for joining us again after my mic was muted last time when we did the interview.
TeamSteem:
Yes, thanks Jerry.
We just did a 20-minute interview, but Jerry somehow forgot to start his mic.
I just want to say that I'm very excited to be here. I'm very pleased to be here. I enjoy Steem and it has been a very important part of my life since I discovered it, and I hope everyone will just take a look at Steemit.com.
If you have never joined Steemit, just try it.
That's what I want to tell people first.
Jerry Banfield:
What is it about Steem that you think is doing something amazing for the world?
TeamSteem:
Well, it's revolutionary in so many aspects.
On Steem the user can vote for the rules. They are the ones who are voting for Witnesses and they are changing the rules, and also you get paid on Steem.
First of all, if you've never heard about Steem, you get paid for the content you're creating, and so in that sense, it's very revolutionary as it's pushing everyone to do their best and to be kinder to one another.
It's also giving back the value of the network to the user, not just to the shareholders like we're seeing on Facebook and YouTube. All of the value of the network is redistributed to the shareholders and if we think of a company like Facebook, this is millions of dollars, even in the billions of dollars that are gathered into the hands of the shareholders, and the users are not rewarded with this value, it's just taking it away from the users, and in that sense, Steem is very revolutionary.
Jerry Banfield:
Yes.
If you've never seen Steem, I'll show you a quick look.
What we have on Steem is that when we post things we actually have the opportunity to earn money directly from the posts and the common question is, "Where does the money come from?"
The money comes from the value that the blockchain and specifically the people voting on the post believe that the post has contributed to the blockchain.
Most of the new Steem that's created goes to blog posts published on Steem with the idea being, when we pay people to make valuable contributions, we then won't need advertisers to put ads all over our websites, and we will naturally attract more and more users and more and more attention.
In fact, we've innovated a new business model here instead of like Facebook accepting ad revenue, which users make tons of valuable contributions on Facebook, get no money for it. Facebook keeps all the value that users create, and then advertisers come on and try to get users to spend money with them.
In other words, using Facebook for most of us is a total loss, on Steem, the exact opposite.
TeamSteem:
Yes, exactly.
I hope everyone just tries it, that's my take on it. There's no reason not to try it and there's no reason to continue going on Facebook right now because you're getting paid on Steem.
I mean, if even it's only a couple of cents at first, those cents are going to be worth dollars sooner or later.
Jerry Banfield:
How did you find Steem?
You've been on Steem since May 2016.
How did you get into it?
TeamSteem:
I found it through Coinmarketcap.com, which is a website that lists thousands of cryptocurrencies. I used to go there every day just looking at the usual cryptocurrencies and the newer ones that were being added.
I just saw Steem pop really high up in the market cap, so I was really intrigued and I saw that Dan Larimer was into this and I knew him from Bitshares. I was really excited about DPOS, which is the technology behind Steem and why Steem is so efficient compared to Bitcoin.
From there on I began to be active on Steem pretty much every day since June 2016 and I never looked back. Steem gave me a lot and that's why I'm trying to invite as many people as possible to join Steem.
Jerry Banfield:
Now, what you mentioned is a quick thing as a Witness. The Delegated Proof of Stake means that the people that hold Steem actually get to choose who does what we usually call the mining as we would say in Bitcoin or Ethereum.
On Steem all that's handled by Witnesses who witness the creation of the new blocks. There are no fees on transactions and each transaction block is processed in three seconds, and @teamsteem is the number 30 Witness right now meaning his servers are actually creating, witnessing the blocks on the Blockchain based on upvotes by the stakeholders.
In that sense, I would like to ask, what do you think has been your biggest challenge on Steem since you've been here for about a year and a half?
TeamSteem:
Well, finding enough time to do what I want to do.
But the biggest challenge, I don't know.
Just trying to keep a sense of what I'm trying to achieve and not get distracted by details and the thing I'm trying to achieve is just a better world, and trying to get people interested in cryptocurrencies, I would say, and currency in general, because most people are chasing money and whenever you ask them what money is and who creates money, they have no clue.
They never ever even stop to think about, what is money?
What is it that I'm running after all of these years?
Everyone seems to not have enough and living paycheck to paycheck while the amount of money that is in the world in existence today goes up year by year.
Where does money come from?
Who creates it?
It's a very vile system where money is created out of nothing through fractional reserve banking, quantitative easing that most people have no idea about, and we can try to explain to them what it is, but most people are caught up in their life and won't listen, or won't have the ability, or feel like they won't have the ability, to learn about it.
But if they can see the advantage of cryptocurrencies where they keep their money in and after a year, they have a lot more money because their money is a better form of money, now they get it, now they're interested.
If they put in 100 dollars and one year later it's worth $1,000, now they get it. Now you don't even have to explain to them what is blockchain because they're hooked. That's why I feel like the blockchain is so revolutionary because it's so much more efficient, it makes so much more sense than national currency.
Jerry Banfield:
There are some of the posts I've loved that you made with incredible detail.
How do you say your name again?
TeamSteem:
Guillaume.
Jerry Banfield:
Guillaume.
Some of your best posts I like are listed on this post, "Guillaume Cardinal."
He has a whole series of the posts he's done, and many of my favorite ones are the ones that go into detail about how currencies are created and who profits.
Basically, it's in the government's interest to print the money and control it. You can see with the posts that Guillaume's strategy is basically to do very high-quality posts, to write posts in incredible detail, and then to have the best chance to earn big rewards on fewer posts.
With creating your content on Steem, how do you go about your process in writing some of these massive posts with tons of research?
How long does it take? What do you use?
TeamSteem:
It usually takes me more than 10 hours to write a post. I just sit down and I try to write a hook, I don't necessarily think about the title first, but I just try to write something that will put people up, and I have a main subject that I want to explain, whether it is national currencies or Bitcoin.
I have a post on Bitcoin that explains Bitcoin from A to Z, and I recommend it to everyone. They should just look at my latest post on Steem.
Another post that I'm most proud of is a called, "Thank you, Dan Larimer. You're a great mentor." Dan Larimer is the guy who created Steem and I just listed a lot of his writing, and I think that's one of my best posts really.
As for the process, I just try to write for hours on end as much as I can, and at some point where it seems like it doesn't make much sense, at some point at the very end things just seem to click, and I'm proud of what I put out.
If anyone is interested, just look at my latest post. That's why I try to resume and link back to my older posts, and just try to package everything I do in my latest post, what I stand for, where you can find more about me and stuff like that.
Jerry Banfield:
Did you start out creating posts like that or have you worked up to those?
TeamSteem:
No, I pretty much straight up when I began creating my posts.
The first posts I created, I just posted a YouTube link or a post to an article and they didn't make any money, but after a very short amount of time, I just began learning about Steem as much as I could and I just began posting about Steem.
I posted things like. How to use Steem, or what are the rules about Steem, and then I just began talking about the subjects that I wanted to talk about, whether it be health or currencies and governments, and centralization versus decentralization.
Jerry Banfield:
What I like about your approach is that, if I could summarize it, it's an all-in approach. You just throw everything you've got into making one outstanding post.
I applaud you for the courage to do that because I know it's a big risk when you throw everything into a post, you spend ten hours on it, you could potentially not get any upvotes or you could even get downvotes, or there could even be upvotes with not much of a passionate response, and my idea is the same too. Go all in, throw your whole heart in and it hurts sometimes.
Have you had some posts that you're really excited about that just totally bombed and you were really disappointed with?
TeamSteem:
Not so much.
Posting on Steem is very special for everyone who has had some success, and even for those who've never had as much success, we're always wondering where it's going to go, but for me, it has been pretty much good.
People know me and know that I never post something I don't believe in, and they know what to expect, and so far I think I didn't deceive many people with my posts.
Jerry Banfield:
I remember from one of your posts that you’re doing Steem full time now.
Would you tell us about the transition you made from before you were doing Steem and now?
What your life's like doing Steem full-time?
TeamSteem:
Well, I was working a day job and I can't talk about it.
I was working at a slaughterhouse and the irony is that I'm vegan.
Jerry Banfield:
Oh, my God!
TeamSteem:
The thing is I just felt much better when I left this job, which was wholly inappropriate for me. I don't want to get into that stuff, that's the past.
I moved forward to the future and my life changed. It was day and night and I just want to help. I just want to give back because I've been given so much with Steem and that's what I'm trying to do on Steem. I'm just trying to give back as much as I've been given.
Jerry Banfield:
That makes it sound like it was pretty easy to take the leap of faith out of like, "Look, I'm done with this job. I'll just take whatever I get out of Steem and I'm going to do this full time."
Vegans in a slaughterhouse!
Well, we are grateful that as a blockchain, we've got enough to get you out of there.
That's what we hope to accomplish with Steem too, which is to get a lot more of us out of the slaughterhouse figuratively or actually, and into sharing our stories and our truth, and at least getting enough money to supplement if not replace a job's income.
I do Steem full time as well, which leads me to being interested, what is your schedule like?
What's your job description, so to speak, in terms of post writing, commenting, Discord?
What do you do on Steem?
TeamSteem:
I don't have a schedule. I just get up whenever I get up and a lot of my time is geared toward curation. I spend a lot of time towards curation and on the Minnow Support Project where I'm trying to do radio there more and more.
There's so much to do. There's so much. I would love to write more. I want to try to begin writing every day. That's one thing I want to do because I know I can bring a lot through my writing, but I'm not doing it enough.
I feel like I might be doing too much curation, so in that sense I read a lot and it sure helps to have an idea of what to write about, but now I have enough, I want to write.
There's stuff I want to write about like cryptocurrencies, there's so much to be said about them that hasn't been said, and as to the Witness, usually, when the Witness is running okay, you don't have to do much.
The server is running as it should and as it should, it shouldn't go down. Back in the days, the Steem program used to stop for no reason. It would just freeze and it would just miss blocks, or just would crash, and you would have to get it back up. It was very stressful if you were missing blocks and you just wanted to get it back up, but it doesn't happen anymore, so that's a good thing.
You just set it up and if your computer or server is powerful enough, then it will just run and that's a great accomplishment, it means that it is a stable software, that's pretty good.
Jerry Banfield:
To paraphrase what you said, you spend most of your time on Steem reading, and then upvoting posts, which the term curation was new to me coming in from just Facebook.
You spend most of your time reading, which then gives you a lot, that helps you write. You can see what's going on with Steem. You can see where the gaps are. You can see what's being said and you can essentially write what's not being said.
TeamSteem:
Yes, exactly.
I follow the biggest investors on Steem. I follow all of them and I look at what they're publishing, what are people interested in. Steem is about propagating the best information, the most powerful information and information is power.
No matter how much money there is in the world, if you don't have the power or the knowledge to sow the field, you won't harvest anything. No matter how much gold you have in your bank account, if no one is sowing the field there's nothing there.
We need this knowledge, we need to advance Steem and this is through our relation, this is through the exchange of information. Everyone wants our attention. On Facebook, they want your attention. On YouTube, they want your attention, and it's important to know who has the most valuable information.
Right now those who have the most valuable information, I feel are those who know a lot about cryptocurrencies, because cryptocurrencies are the best financial investment since their inception.
They have been the best financial investment and I think they're going to continue being the best financial investment, and you cannot compete working on a day-to-day job against it.
You'll do a lot more money through investment than working at your day-to-day job, that's something that people need to keep in mind.
Jerry Banfield:
With you doing curation, I've got two questions related to that.
First, I value your opinion on voting bots, which seems to have a big effect on curation, and then second, how does someone go about getting your attention where you've got enough power to put a huge upvote?
Your one vote by itself could do a whole lot.
How do people end up getting your attention when say they have no following to start with?
TeamSteem:
My vote right now is in the top 50 or 54 biggest vote, last time I looked at it, and some of the people above me don't vote. Some other votes are bid bots. I have a very powerful vote and I take this very seriously. As you said, my full vote right now might be worth $100.
I have the power to change what your post is making and I can send your post to my friends. I have influential people on Steem that I know of, and so the best way to get my attention would be making a comment on one of my posts, where you let me know that you read my post, that's important.
If you just make a random comment, it doesn't have the same power behind it. If you read my post, you comment on it and you make a link to your post, just don't link your post, but make a link to it saying, "Hey, I think that would interest you because there is a similarity with your post," or whatever.
That would be the best way, and the worst way would be trying to PM me on Discord and on the chat. I would rather have people comment on my post and letting me know that they read my post, that they give me some importance and get value from my writing, than trying to get value from my vote.
There's a lot of value in my writing and I feel this is how to get a hold of me.
As far as the voting bots, I think that we cannot avoid them as they are going to be there. They have been there since the very beginning of Steem and so we got to live with them, we got to try to do the best we can with the bots that are there.
Jerry Banfield:
Yes, like mine.
I initially didn't like the voting bots, and then I realized that I didn't have the time for curation and that I might as well run a voting bot. It's a big responsibility to have a powerful vote and to try to make that vote go where it counts the most.
We're very grateful for your service.
That is a big job essentially to have a vote that's worth so much. @teamsteem can give out on his account today, if each vote is a hundred Steem Dollars, if we put it in US dollars that's $150 to $200 in actual US dollar rewards.
You can put out about $2,000 a day in rewards with your vote alone and that's a big responsibility.
TeamSteem:
Yes, it is.
Regarding the bidding bots, I would tell everyone to use them and look at SteemBotTracker.com where you will see a way to track all of the bid bots, and this way you can use the bid bot very efficiently, and if you're not doing it, other people will do it.
I'm encouraging everyone to use the bit bots right now.
This is a good way to give more visibility to your post and this is something that most people should be aware of.
The website is SteemBotTracker.com.
Jerry Banfield:
Thank you.
It helps us to know as authors that we have a tool that we can guarantee some more rewards and get a little more visibility on our posts, and as a top curator on Steem, you're saying that it helps you to see some more posts.
It helps you to know if an author's paid for a bid bot on their posts that they're invested, they're paying to promote their own stuff and that author is probably serious about contributing to Steem.
TeamSteem:
Yes, that's another point.
People who curate need to understand that if you're bidding on a bid bot that doesn't mean you made money with it.
You might have put 100 dollars for a vote and just got back $90. You just gave visibility to your post, but didn't make any money and that's something curators need to take into account.
Jerry Banfield:
What has been your biggest challenge since you've used Steem over the year and a half?
What drove you crazy and made you want to quit at some point?
TeamSteem:
Well, the biggest challenge is trying to stop steeming because I am steeming a lot. At some point when I quit my job, I stopped running. Well, I injured myself, I was running every day, and then I pretty much quit running for a couple of months, and so now I'm back running.
I resumed meditating now and Steem is so addictive. It's addictive because you're making a change in the life of people and it's changing yourself too. It's really something that everyone needs to try.
Jerry Banfield:
Yes, that's the same biggest challenge I've had with Steem.
I am an alcoholic and I've also qualified to be a "Gamblers Anonymous." I've had a lot of addictions like video games, and Steem has felt like an addiction lots of times because it's so exciting. There's so much to do and there's money involved in it, the opportunity for an ego is just massive.
If we think that Facebook is addictive, Steem is for me like 10 times more addictive than Facebook, especially if you're actually getting enough to do it full time like we are.
I get really annoyed some days. I want to stop thinking about Steem like I've been doing it for five hours and I want to spend time with my family or go for a walk with the dogs. I've had enough and I don't want to keep thinking about what I need to post.
It's sometimes exhausting.
TeamSteem:
Yes, I get it.
I think we need to try to leverage it and just try to use it for good.
Obviously, we won't stop thinking about being healthy and Steem is the same. We won't stop thinking about having a good relationship and that's what Steem is all about, having great relationships and having a good community where you can get good information, and where you can push good information on people.
It's all about using it in a positive way.
Jerry Banfield:
What's the most positive or best information you've got on Steem in terms of a specific post you remember that just made a huge impact on you?
TeamSteem:
I enjoyed a post about Kevin Wong.
It's a very old post back in the days where he talked about the way that we treat criminals, where we should treat criminals and the judicial system or carceral system as a way to rehabilitate people and not as a way to punish people, because that doesn't make any sense.
I know that the elite or the power monger, or the war monger, is just trying to punish people and just trying to say that these people are evil or whatever, but if they have a mental problem, if criminals have a mental problem, we need to help them. If we cannot rehabilitate them, we still need to feel compassion towards those people and put them out of society, but not try to punish them afterwards even more.
If they're a danger to themselves and to society, then fine, just take them out, but we don't need to add to their plight there, that doesn't make any sense. That was a great post by Kevin Warren back then.
Jerry Banfield:
That's what I love about Steem. There are so many things like that on so many different subjects on Steem.
I had my education in criminal justice. I worked in law enforcement, corrections, and I went into it trying to understand what was wrong with other people to figure out what was wrong with me, and I've come to realize that the criminals are just the same as me, just with a little bit different life circumstances.
These are people just like me, but for the grace of God or some kind of creator, or magic in the universe, I'd be in some prison cell instead of doing this interview right now, and that's helped me to see there's nothing wrong with any of us.
That's why I'm so excited about Steem. I feel like that's something we can communicate. A place we can share our truth and our story, and help us see that there's nothing wrong with any of us.
TeamSteem:
That's very true.
It's all about the environment we were brought up. A lot of things in our young years as toddlers has a huge impact on the way we will do in life, further in life. We should be compassionate to one another. We all go through some rough time and it doesn't help to bash one another.
Final words
Thank you for reading this blog post, which is the first part of the interview and was originally filmed as the video below. Continue reading part 2 at https://steemit.com/dsound/@jerrybanfield/20180223t145630794z-vegan-freed-from-the-slaughterhouse-with-steem-author-rewards
If you found this post helpful on Steem, would you please upvote it and follow me because you will then be able to see more posts like this in your home feed?
Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk on the transcript from @deniskj
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