How about a little introduction and first take on Steemit?
First off, I'm late to the party! I only found out about Steem a couple days ago thanks to the massive success on CoinMarketCap.com. For that I say congratulations to everyone involved!
Steemit appears to have the benefits of Medium with a voting system similar to Reddit. However, it improves upon both those models!
A couple of the most powerful aspects of the blockchain is the decentralization and immutability.
As found in Medium's terms of service:
We can remove any content you post for any reason.
You can delete any of your posts, or your account, anytime. Processing the deletion may take a little time, but we’ll do it as quickly as possible. We may keep backup copies of your deleted post or account on our servers for up to 14 days after you delete it.
With decentralization, nobody is going to remove your posts! But with immutability (and this is possibly more important) not even YOU can delete your posts. Nothing irks me more than finding valuable content on the web then trying to go back to it later only to find it has vanished. It's a problem that services like IPFS is trying to solve using the blockchain as well.
Back To A Little Introduction
I've been fascinated with bitcoin and the concept of the blockchain for years however I have never owned any bitcoin and I even consider myself a technology geek.
I guess the barrier to entry has been higher than the perceived benefit...or I'm mentally still kicking myself for not getting in when two pizzas could get you 10,000 BTC.
Regardless, the only cryptocurrency I currently hold is some Decred. Well, until two days ago when I joined Steem!
However, I'm also finally jumping in with bitcoin mining pools and an cryptocurrency arbitrage network. Might as well not half-ass this ordeal and hedge my bets. :)
Outside of the blockchain, I'm self employed doing marketing and education. If there's interest I'd love to share more and perhaps do some videos.
Looking forward to getting to know everyone and contributing to this great community!