We all know about our big cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Many of us even know of many other altcoins, from Dogecoin to DigiByte. What makes steem stand out from the rest of these currencies? Well that's what I'm going to discuss right here.
Why does steem stand out from the rest?
Excluding steem, and without using google, think of a cryptocurrency that has a real world use. It's a very hard thing to answer. Yes, there may be a few but a few in a sea of hundreds of cryptocurrencies really isn't very many. You have your other coins, like the four I mentioned before (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin and Digibyte) but what do they do other than act as a storage of value? Or a way to trade to gain more crypto? They do little to nothing.
This is where steem stands out. It actually has a use, and not only does it have a use, it's had a use for as long as it's been around. There aren't many other currencies you can say that about. By the simple fact that you can upvote with steem power, the currency has a use, and gives an incentive to users to accumulate as much steem as possible. Now you could say that any proof of stake coin, or a coin with a masternode gives the incentive to accumulate. But these PoS coins are like playing the lottery, one person is going to get a payout every block, who says that's going to be you? With steem you can upvote yourself immediately. If you have just 30 steem, you can give your post a cent. This may not sound like a lot but this is a guaranteed reward, a guarantee you don't have with PoS, and this is without even mentioning that fact that you're not the only person who can upvote your post. Steemit gives the potential for anyone who enjoys your post to allocate steem power to it.
What place does steemit have in today's world?
Steemit is the platform that is built on top of the steem blockchain and is what gives steem its purpose. However, even though steemit is definitely the most popular, it is not the only social media platform that runs on the blockchain. We have busy.org - which acts as more of a Facebook view for steemit, zappl - the twitter clone, and arguably one of the most impressive alternatives is Dtube - the YouTube clone. Dtube particularly shows the full potential of steem. In a time when YouTube ad revenue is scarce, Dtube offers an alternative, removing all advertisements and putting the control of how much a creator makes to the consumers. Imagine the future possibilities, we could see a soundcloud clone, where users upvote music that they like. Steem could definitely change the way social media is used, and this could be sooner rather than later considering the rise of popularity in social media and the decline of trust. With the recent data security concerns with Facebook, and the alleged censorship happening on Twitter and Facebook, it wouldn't surprise me to see more people turning to steemit and the other sites running on the blockchain.
Why do I think steem is undervalued?
Let's take a look at Bitcoin. At the current time of writing, Bitcoin's total market capitalisation is $157 billion. Not bad for a coin that only acts as a digital currency. Now how about steem? At the current time it is just shy of $1 billion and considering steem is a cryptocurrency with an actual use, this seems very low. If steem were to shoot up to $100 each right now, the market cap would be $25 billion. Considering the current price of Bitcoin, this doesn't seem too outlandish to consider.
This is why I have faith in steem. There new projects involving the cryptocurrency happening all the time, we have all these clones as substitutes for different social medias. As more people find out the potential, the price is going to rise. I definitely think that steem has the potential to reach $100. This time last year, steem was only worth about 30 cent, now it is worth 12 times more. Considering the points I have made here, could it do that again? Where will steem be this time next year?
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