I loved bitcoin; so much. I still do.
Its more a reverent gratitude than the all-consuming obsession it was, but the love is definitely there.
I loved it because it was the most useful form of money ever devised.
Instant, permissionless and elegant.
I believed it was going to take over the world, because I was comparing it to the established alternatives and found them all wanting.
I also imagined that considering bitcoin's massive first mover advantage and its ability to destroy any new contender with a 51% attack, any future coin trying to get a foothold would only survive by staying small enough to avoid the Eye of Sauron.
Time went by, and I learned about Steem and DPOS.
Since mining on DPOS is by invitation only, bitcoin miners can't just wreck it with a sudden tidal wave of hashpower.
The efficiency gain of removing POW from the wider crypto concept also left us some promising distribution possibilities which Steem was using to great effect.
I concluded that Steem was more useful than bitcoin, by a wide margin.
Utility is a funny concept.
If you live on a farm, a horse is useful until you save up and buy a tractor. The tractor undermines the utility of the horse because utility is relative.
By this time, bitcoin's only real advantage was its long reputation as a secure store of value.
A safe harbour from the volatility and scams in the open crypto ocean.
If your value is found not in your relative usefulness but in your value, then you have only one job; staying valuable.
If BTC and STEEM both drop 10%, bitcoin has dropped harder. People don't use this chain because its a safe store of value, they use it because its so incredibly useful, and a price drop doesn't make it less so.
Steemmonsters gameplay doesn't get 10% worse when the price drops. Steempeak doesn't lose 10% of its features.
Actifit doesn't reject every tenth step.
By the time you read this, more than half of the 1.2 million early (alpha and beta) Steemmonsters packs will have been snapped up.
You can only put money into bitcoin, but you can put money and time into Steem; and you can only withdraw the money, which leaves all the time everyone's spent and will continue to spend, still firmly invested.
The incredible coding work of devs like @smooth, @asgarth and @yabapmatt, design work of @nateaguila, music by @isaria et al; its done and won't be undone.
This puts a hard and rising floor under the usefulness and therefore value of Steem irrespective of its price; but I don't just want to talk about the size of the pie, lets talk about my slice.
The relationships I've developed and the reputation I've established don't decline by 10%.
My previous posts and comments don't lose every tenth word. I spent less than $50 on a stuffed cockatoo (including some aftermarket modifications); which has been around the world and made a heap of friends.
@rustle hasn't lost 10% of his popularity or his ability to pull people together for a meetup.
The friends I've made here are asking me how to buy in.
A month from now I'll know twice as many dolphins as I did a month ago, people who know my name, like me and want to see me succeed.
It's never been easier to win the attention and affection of people with a bright future than it is right here, right now.
How many people do I know on bitcoin? Silly question, right?
The entire crypto world is in crisis. This is a massive, prolonged dump; and real people are suffering real consequences and most of them are alone, because bitcoin isn't a community, its just a money.
I believe bitcoin is over.
It'll still be bought and sold, and maybe the hype train can get it back above it's ATH at some point, but its dominance will soon be a thing of the past.
It stopped doing the one thing it's meant to do, which is to hold its value.
Where to from here?
Nobody buys shares in 'Car'.
Honda, Mazda, BMW, they each have their own product and their own share price. We're going to see fewer red and green walls on CMC, and more jostling for position in the top 50, the top 20 and the top 5, as each coin is bought and sold on its own merits, ironically perhaps this is exactly the level of decentralisation Satoshi was hoping to achieve.
People buy and sell across their entire portfolio because history tells them that coins move up and down together; but in the long term the real money is made by people who invest based on knowledge, rather than sentiment.
We're in the middle of a massive wealth transfer event; where the genuine value is moving from those who don't understand what's being built here, to those who do. Which category are you in?
