Bitcoin Social Network
Steemit’s ‘trending’ forum
“It’s internet points, like you have on Reddit, but now those points have real market value, ” says Scott. “People are earning money for doing the things they were doing for free before. People spend all this time creating free content for social media companies, and now they can be rewarded.”
That sounds pretty good. And indeed, multiple Steemit users say they have cashed out more than $10, 000 from posting on Steemit. The site pays you 24 hours after a post; 75% of the steem power goes to the writer, 25% to the curators—that is, those who upvoted the post, in different amounts according to their influence. Steemit made its first cumulative payout on July 4, amounting to $1.3 million USD. Steemit says it has seen more than 700 new signups every day for the past week.
earned 660 upvotes, or $8, 930 in steem power. Chakos previously used a Squarespace blog for her posts, but now posts solely on Steemit. “For others, it all might seem farfetched at first, ” she says, “but in my experience, once you explain ceryptocurrency to people, they get exited about it. I think Steemit is going to blow Facebook out of the water.”" data-reactid="30">Heidi Chakos, a travel blogger, says she paid off her credit card bill this month entirely with money she made on Steemit. The Indiana resident is currently traveling around the world in two-week spurts, and she posts about her adventures; one recent post about Tahiti earned 660 upvotes, or $8, 930 in steem power. Chakos previously used a Squarespace blog for her posts, but now posts solely on Steemit. “For others, it all might seem farfetched at first, ” she says, “but in my experience, once you explain ceryptocurrency to people, they get exited about it. I think Steemit is going to blow Facebook out of the water.”
My post quickly amassed 61 votes, which translates to $75.04 in steem power. The system cashed that out to me in half steem power, half steem, so I have 37.5 steem dollars in my wallet, which translates to $120. Not bad." data-reactid="31">At this point, that’s likely a stretch. But as a test, I posted on Steemit. It was nothing special: I wrote that I’m a Yahoo Finance writer and I was exploring Steemit to write a news story about it. My post quickly amassed 61 votes, which translates to $75.04 in steem power. The system cashed that out to me in half steem power, half steem, so I have 37.5 steem dollars in my wallet, which translates to $120. Not bad.
If all of that sounds rather complicated, Scott insists that users don’t need to worry about how the system works to use it and make money. It is an argument many have made about the bitcoin blockchain, comparing it to the HTTP technology that powers web pages, or the SMTP protocol that makes e-mail work. “You don’t need a high level of understanding to sign up, ” he says. “Digital currency is moving into a stage similar to the automobile: it gets you from point A to point B. People post, they get money, and their lives are better. They don’t need to know the way it works or worry too much about the specifics in order to post, enjoy it, and get rewarded.”
The problem is that withdrawing money isn’t such an easy process to learn for a bitcoin layperson: First you must convert your steem dollars to bitcoin, then, if you want fiat currency, convert your bitcoin to US dollars.
Chakos says that wasn’t so hard. She used the exchange web site Bittrex to convert steem dollars to bitcoin, then sent that bitcoin from Bittrex to her Coinbase account, then transferred bitcoin from Coinbase to US dollars in her bank account. “It took like 30 minutes, ” she says.
the usual fears about Ponzi schemes or pump-and-dumps that come with cryptocurrency engines." data-reactid="39">In addition to the learning curve, Steem suffered a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack earlier this month, resulting in the theft of $85, 000 worth of steem. It was, on a much smaller scale, not unlike a hack of the DAO network last month, which runs on the Ethereum blockchain; that theft amounted to $50 million worth of the cryptocurrency ether. Along with security concerns are the usual fears about Ponzi schemes or pump-and-dumps that come with cryptocurrency engines.
Steemit has high hopes it will become so ubiquitous it can serve as the de facto content-creation system, even on other platforms as a plug-in, through a steem widget for WordPress (coming soon) and other blogs. “And then bloggers don’t have to change their habits or leave their blog, ” he says.
