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Took a look at the "trending" articles on this network. Most of them are about cryptocurrencies, followed by phishing-scam warnings, and finally a smattering of

Took a look at the "trending" articles on this network. Most of them are about cryptocurrencies, followed by phishing-scam warnings, and finally a smattering of other content. This seems like a network built around the hype of cryptocurrencies that is hyping itself into value. I'm experiencing a lot of anxiety lately that I'm missing the cryptocurrency boat, but at the same time the more I research the possibilities I'm finding far less opportunity to invest and much more opportunity to get taken.

nv-vn 9y ago
True. There's a massive shortage of interesting content on Steemit in my opinion. I wish there were some way to convince people on HN to start blogging on Steemit because as a blogging platform it has a lot of potential (plus there's some money in it... I made ~$50 on my first article if I recall correctly).
- tetraca 9y ago
  There's definitely some good/decent authors there, but they don't make that much money. Probably $10/article on an average day. Most people are at the mercy of a "whale" or some concerted author circle to actually make any substantive amount on an article that isn't some travel blog/ebegging garbage.
rev_null 9y ago
I think it's real value will take off when amateur pornographers figure out that they can make money on the site.
- Kiro 9y ago
  It has already happened and those earn quite a lot but they are of course flagged as NSFW.
aaron-lebo 9y ago
There's no substance. It's multilevel marketing. This is the top post: https://steemit.com/steem/@ned/explainer-value-flows-on-steem-with-smts-video https://steemit.com/steem/@ned/explainer-value-flows-on-stee... It's a great way to build a large audience of money hungry people, probably not a great way to build a community with any kind of value. Nice hair.
- darawk 9y ago
  I think that's a bit unfair. The idea that a niche social community would be primarily interested in the things that are unique about their own social community is not exactly a condemnation. Conceptually, a social network that pays people for generating highly-upvoted content is an interesting one, I think. It may turn out to be a disaster, but there's something there IMO. What it'll take to really find out is some degree of mainstream usage. Right now it's all crypto nerds using it and trying to P&D cryptos, but it isn't fair to take that as evidence that the idea is flawed. That's just the nature of the community at the moment.
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    They're interested in their network getting big so they can make money. There's not much nuance to it. You can spin it another way but read the thread. It's a soulless money grab, and it's disappointing because they actually have decent software. Once you've built a core community that is first and foremost interested in ICOs and cryptocurrencies, how do you get out of that?
    - RangerScience 9y ago
      Clone, rebrand and remarket it, using the battle-tested tech of the first community?
    - cryptoctopus 9y ago
      Anybody who has STEEM benefits from increasing the network effect, not just him silly. Bitcoin and Ethereum has the exact same incentive to do so. The idea is to create thousands of micro community who have their own ideas of where their communities wants to go. They can use their own tokens with their own economics if they happen to not agree with: 1. The inflation rate 2. The curation reward curve 3. The initial distribution
hellofunk 9y ago
> I'm experiencing a lot of anxiety lately that I'm missing the cryptocurrency boat Don't let that be a source of anxiety for you, there is no point to that. There are plenty of other things to worry about in life than finding the perfect investments. And crypotcurrency remains a risky bet regardless of any recent activity in that market. I know plenty of very smart people who are very knowledgable about bitcoin but who refuse to buy into it. There's nothing wrong with that.
- mfoy_ 9y ago
  Seconded. FOMO is silly. Thousands of opportunities are passing everyone by every day, it's just part of life. Very few people tread the golden path, so to speak. So just live your life and try to have some fun long the way. :)
  - ideonexus 9y ago
    I really appreciate both of these comments. Thank you both.
homero 9y ago
That anxiety is fueling ico scams I just buy Bitcoin and sit on it
- noisypl 9y ago
  Best thing is, you can post/comment on Steemit, and buy more BTC from earned STEEM :)
placeybordeaux 9y ago
Just don't buy any of the newer cryptocurrencies. There's much less risk involved in the older cryptocurrencies. That being said bitcoin seems intent on tearing it's self apart at the moment. If you want to choose a cryptocurrency as a hedge I'd go for litecoin, it's fairly old and under active development. It's far past the point where it's riding on a couple pump and dumps and unlike bitcoin isn't talking about 2-3 chain splits in one year. It's very hard to tell which of the new cryptocurrencies are legit, and even if you identify ones that look good, that's no guarantee the price will actually go up.
- Kiro 9y ago
  That's funny because one of the biggest name in the Litecoin community is also one of the biggest names on Steem.
- nosuchthing 9y ago
  Why should anyone buy the older cryptocurrencies for a pricer higher than the early adopters? Surely cryptocoin software is more than a pump and dump system right? Hodl until you can pass off to the later bag holders? What happens when the old networks are obsolete? In economics, the Gini coefficient is the standard measure of how inequitable a society is. This is tricky to determine for Bitcoin, as it's not quiet a "society" in the Gini sense, one person may have multiple addresses and many addresses have been used only once or a few times. (The commonly-cited figure of 0.88 is based on one small exchange in 2011.) However, a Citigroup analysis from early 2014 notes: "47 individuals hold about 30 percent, another 900 a further 20 percent, the next 10,000 about 25% and another million about 20%"; and distribution "looks much like the distribution of wealth in North Korea and makes China's and even the US' wealth distribution look like that of a workers' paradise Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir found in a 2012 study that only 22% of then-existing Bitcoins were in circulation at all, there were a total of 75 active users or businesses with any kind of volume, one (unidentified) user owned a quarter of all Bitcoins in existence, and one large owner was trying to hide their pile by moving it around in thousands of smaller transactions. (Shamir is one of the most renowned cryptographers in the world and the "S" in "RSA encryption")" [1] via https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidgerard https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidgerard
sneak 9y ago
The trending page is not an accurate representation of the depth of the articles on the platform; we’re working on a number of features to allow people to better tailor their reading to their preferences (beyond a simple “follow”). If you’re logged out, the trending page is across the whole of the network; that’s of course going to skew toward cryptocurrencies at the moment because, well, Steem itself is also a blockchain and cryptocurrency. That’s like complaining that HN is about “internet stuff”. Duh. :)
spookthesunset 9y ago
> I'm experiencing a lot of anxiety lately that I'm missing the cryptocurrency boat That is just the hype getting to you. Anything that sells itself with as much hype as bitcoin does with the implicit (sometimes explicit) message that you better BUY NOW or you'll miss the boat... it means it is probably too good to be true. The deeper you dig into bitcoin, the less attractive it actually is. Everything from the super shady set of characters that are at the top of its pyramid who hold the majority of its coins to all the promises it makes that are blatant mistruths (it isn't free, it isn't instant, it isn't trustless, it isn't decentralized....). Bitcoin is not a good investment.
andrarchy 9y ago
First off, thanks for checking us out! My first question is: what do you have to lose? Unlike every other crypo-related project out there, steemit.com (and any other site built on the Steem blockchain like Busy.org, Dtube.video, Dsound.audio, etc.) is totally free to join and you can start "mining" Steem just by adding content to them. Personally, if you have FOMO Steemit.com is the lowest cost option for alleviating your symptoms! You're right that we're still a small and niche social network and that may be reflected in the trending page, HOWEVER, that definitely creates opportunity for people to bring something different to the table. Our MOST successful blogger is actually a travel blogger named @sweetsssj. You can see her stuff here: https://steemit.com/@sweetsssj https://steemit.com/@sweetsssj. If you are right that the content isn't valuable, then that means their is a gap in the market that you can fill! Believe me, I know a lot of our community members and we jump any time anyone with a unique valuable proposition comes to the platform and genuinely engages with the community. A year ago people levied the same criticisms as I am seeing here. Since then we have grown by orders of magnitude and so has the value of our coin. Personally, I don't really know how to respond to people struggling with FOMO. I certainly empathize, but I made a vow not to make decisions based on fear, but instead focus on the vision of the future I want to actualize (one where those who add value to a network receive a proportionate amount of stake in it) and, of course, self interest. I believed in the vision held by those who founded Steemit which is why I started contributing to it (and earned a great deal of Steem in the process) and why I eventually jumped at the opportunity to join the team. I hope to see you around our amazing community. We sincerely believe people come for the rewards, but stay for the community. And there are exciting changes coming soon too! Community Liaison, Steemit
erikpukinskis 9y ago
If you are having trouble sorting out where to put your attention in the cryptocurrency space, here's how I would focus: Most people are treating these things like startups, where the code is the primary asset. That's wrong. The code matters, but the primary asset behind a cryptocurrency is a balanced set of incentives which create an environment that encourages some predictable behavior. Balancing those incentives is work, and not every project is doing it. Seek out communities where there is focused, ends-oriented discussion about incentives, grounded in recent crypto techniques. If you find one that is also rallied around a cryptosoftware that does something you care about, and has a "healthy" work culture, whatever that means to you, that's your pot of gold. Not only do you stand a good shot making money investing in that communitity, but you can find a career there, and possibily even make a name for yourself. Good luck.
somethingabout 9y ago
In any 'investment' someone wins and someone loses.
noisypl 9y ago
You just need to find people, which you like, and start follow them, then all interesting things are in your feed. Why so many crypto news are on trending. It is simple. Most of users came from this area, but right now Steemit is the only blockchain project which actually be used by every-day people.

nv-vn 9y ago

True. There's a massive shortage of interesting content on Steemit in my opinion. I wish there were some way to convince people on HN to start blogging on Steemit because as a blogging platform it has a lot of potential (plus there's some money in it... I made ~$50 on my first article if I recall correctly).

tetraca 9y ago
There's definitely some good/decent authors there, but they don't make that much money. Probably $10/article on an average day. Most people are at the mercy of a "whale" or some concerted author circle to actually make any substantive amount on an article that isn't some travel blog/ebegging garbage.

rev_null 9y ago

I think it's real value will take off when amateur pornographers figure out that they can make money on the site.

Kiro 9y ago
It has already happened and those earn quite a lot but they are of course flagged as NSFW.

aaron-lebo 9y ago

There's no substance. It's multilevel marketing. This is the top post: https://steemit.com/steem/@ned/explainer-value-flows-on-steem-with-smts-video https://steemit.com/steem/@ned/explainer-value-flows-on-stee... It's a great way to build a large audience of money hungry people, probably not a great way to build a community with any kind of value. Nice hair.

darawk 9y ago
I think that's a bit unfair. The idea that a niche social community would be primarily interested in the things that are unique about their own social community is not exactly a condemnation. Conceptually, a social network that pays people for generating highly-upvoted content is an interesting one, I think. It may turn out to be a disaster, but there's something there IMO. What it'll take to really find out is some degree of mainstream usage. Right now it's all crypto nerds using it and trying to P&D cryptos, but it isn't fair to take that as evidence that the idea is flawed. That's just the nature of the community at the moment.
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  They're interested in their network getting big so they can make money. There's not much nuance to it. You can spin it another way but read the thread. It's a soulless money grab, and it's disappointing because they actually have decent software. Once you've built a core community that is first and foremost interested in ICOs and cryptocurrencies, how do you get out of that?
  - RangerScience 9y ago
    Clone, rebrand and remarket it, using the battle-tested tech of the first community?
  - cryptoctopus 9y ago
    Anybody who has STEEM benefits from increasing the network effect, not just him silly. Bitcoin and Ethereum has the exact same incentive to do so. The idea is to create thousands of micro community who have their own ideas of where their communities wants to go. They can use their own tokens with their own economics if they happen to not agree with: 1. The inflation rate 2. The curation reward curve 3. The initial distribution

hellofunk 9y ago

> I'm experiencing a lot of anxiety lately that I'm missing the cryptocurrency boat Don't let that be a source of anxiety for you, there is no point to that. There are plenty of other things to worry about in life than finding the perfect investments. And crypotcurrency remains a risky bet regardless of any recent activity in that market. I know plenty of very smart people who are very knowledgable about bitcoin but who refuse to buy into it. There's nothing wrong with that.

mfoy_ 9y ago
Seconded. FOMO is silly. Thousands of opportunities are passing everyone by every day, it's just part of life. Very few people tread the golden path, so to speak. So just live your life and try to have some fun long the way. :)
- ideonexus 9y ago
  I really appreciate both of these comments. Thank you both.

homero 9y ago

That anxiety is fueling ico scams I just buy Bitcoin and sit on it

noisypl 9y ago
Best thing is, you can post/comment on Steemit, and buy more BTC from earned STEEM :)

placeybordeaux 9y ago

Just don't buy any of the newer cryptocurrencies. There's much less risk involved in the older cryptocurrencies. That being said bitcoin seems intent on tearing it's self apart at the moment. If you want to choose a cryptocurrency as a hedge I'd go for litecoin, it's fairly old and under active development. It's far past the point where it's riding on a couple pump and dumps and unlike bitcoin isn't talking about 2-3 chain splits in one year. It's very hard to tell which of the new cryptocurrencies are legit, and even if you identify ones that look good, that's no guarantee the price will actually go up.

Kiro 9y ago
That's funny because one of the biggest name in the Litecoin community is also one of the biggest names on Steem.
nosuchthing 9y ago
Why should anyone buy the older cryptocurrencies for a pricer higher than the early adopters? Surely cryptocoin software is more than a pump and dump system right? Hodl until you can pass off to the later bag holders? What happens when the old networks are obsolete? In economics, the Gini coefficient is the standard measure of how inequitable a society is. This is tricky to determine for Bitcoin, as it's not quiet a "society" in the Gini sense, one person may have multiple addresses and many addresses have been used only once or a few times. (The commonly-cited figure of 0.88 is based on one small exchange in 2011.) However, a Citigroup analysis from early 2014 notes: "47 individuals hold about 30 percent, another 900 a further 20 percent, the next 10,000 about 25% and another million about 20%"; and distribution "looks much like the distribution of wealth in North Korea and makes China's and even the US' wealth distribution look like that of a workers' paradise Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir found in a 2012 study that only 22% of then-existing Bitcoins were in circulation at all, there were a total of 75 active users or businesses with any kind of volume, one (unidentified) user owned a quarter of all Bitcoins in existence, and one large owner was trying to hide their pile by moving it around in thousands of smaller transactions. (Shamir is one of the most renowned cryptographers in the world and the "S" in "RSA encryption")" [1] via https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidgerard https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidgerard

sneak 9y ago

The trending page is not an accurate representation of the depth of the articles on the platform; we’re working on a number of features to allow people to better tailor their reading to their preferences (beyond a simple “follow”). If you’re logged out, the trending page is across the whole of the network; that’s of course going to skew toward cryptocurrencies at the moment because, well, Steem itself is also a blockchain and cryptocurrency. That’s like complaining that HN is about “internet stuff”. Duh. :)

spookthesunset 9y ago

> I'm experiencing a lot of anxiety lately that I'm missing the cryptocurrency boat That is just the hype getting to you. Anything that sells itself with as much hype as bitcoin does with the implicit (sometimes explicit) message that you better BUY NOW or you'll miss the boat... it means it is probably too good to be true. The deeper you dig into bitcoin, the less attractive it actually is. Everything from the super shady set of characters that are at the top of its pyramid who hold the majority of its coins to all the promises it makes that are blatant mistruths (it isn't free, it isn't instant, it isn't trustless, it isn't decentralized....). Bitcoin is not a good investment.

andrarchy 9y ago

First off, thanks for checking us out! My first question is: what do you have to lose? Unlike every other crypo-related project out there, steemit.com (and any other site built on the Steem blockchain like Busy.org, Dtube.video, Dsound.audio, etc.) is totally free to join and you can start "mining" Steem just by adding content to them. Personally, if you have FOMO Steemit.com is the lowest cost option for alleviating your symptoms! You're right that we're still a small and niche social network and that may be reflected in the trending page, HOWEVER, that definitely creates opportunity for people to bring something different to the table. Our MOST successful blogger is actually a travel blogger named @sweetsssj. You can see her stuff here: https://steemit.com/@sweetsssj https://steemit.com/@sweetsssj. If you are right that the content isn't valuable, then that means their is a gap in the market that you can fill! Believe me, I know a lot of our community members and we jump any time anyone with a unique valuable proposition comes to the platform and genuinely engages with the community. A year ago people levied the same criticisms as I am seeing here. Since then we have grown by orders of magnitude and so has the value of our coin. Personally, I don't really know how to respond to people struggling with FOMO. I certainly empathize, but I made a vow not to make decisions based on fear, but instead focus on the vision of the future I want to actualize (one where those who add value to a network receive a proportionate amount of stake in it) and, of course, self interest. I believed in the vision held by those who founded Steemit which is why I started contributing to it (and earned a great deal of Steem in the process) and why I eventually jumped at the opportunity to join the team. I hope to see you around our amazing community. We sincerely believe people come for the rewards, but stay for the community. And there are exciting changes coming soon too! Community Liaison, Steemit

erikpukinskis 9y ago

If you are having trouble sorting out where to put your attention in the cryptocurrency space, here's how I would focus: Most people are treating these things like startups, where the code is the primary asset. That's wrong. The code matters, but the primary asset behind a cryptocurrency is a balanced set of incentives which create an environment that encourages some predictable behavior. Balancing those incentives is work, and not every project is doing it. Seek out communities where there is focused, ends-oriented discussion about incentives, grounded in recent crypto techniques. If you find one that is also rallied around a cryptosoftware that does something you care about, and has a "healthy" work culture, whatever that means to you, that's your pot of gold. Not only do you stand a good shot making money investing in that communitity, but you can find a career there, and possibily even make a name for yourself. Good luck.

somethingabout 9y ago

In any 'investment' someone wins and someone loses.

noisypl 9y ago

You just need to find people, which you like, and start follow them, then all interesting things are in your feed. Why so many crypto news are on trending. It is simple. Most of users came from this area, but right now Steemit is the only blockchain project which actually be used by every-day people.