Welcome To Steem!

in #joy7 years ago (edited)

Where money talks and kindness rules! Steem is a revolutionary technology uniting people through a currency of the same name. The Steem we receive are proof of positive influence, quanta of kindness, proof of having generated joy.

This makes Steem a currency that is in perfect alignment with human's most profound desire to experience joy.

My Latest Series

The current post is part of a series of post listed below but can also be read on it's own.

Good Money Drives Out Bad Money

Steem is part of those revolutionary decentralized technologies called cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are at the forefront of power redistribution away from shadowy groups like governments, back to where this power belongs, which is in the hands of the individuals.

Cryptocurrencies are currently initiating the greatest power redistribution in history because good money drives out bad money and that's what we are currently observing. Any redistribution of power away from un-accountable centralized form of governance is of the upmost benefit to everyone and humanity as a whole.

I've already talked about why cryptocurrencies are a much better type of money than national currencies [#2] [#3], how they work [#4] and how to invest [#10].

In this post I'll go into more details about some aspects of Steem, cryptocurrencies and my worldviews which I haven't talked about yet, as well as really exciting reasons about why and how cryptocurrencies are driving out national currencies.

Most Whales Give Way More Than They Take

I'm completely addicted to Steem and I use it to help as many people as possible and leveraging Steem to help create the world I long for.

One full upvote from me is worth around 45$ and thus I give a total of at least 450$ daily to Steemians. Monetarily speaking I give more than what I receive, roughly twice as much in the last weeks, taking into account my post, curation and witness rewards.

Most whales if not all whales give more than what they take from the reward pool, curation, post and witness rewards. This is by designed and done to build the Steem community. There's almost noway around this, meaning there's always some Steem being handed down from whales, orcas and dolphins, to less wealthy Steemians. Now that's awesome!

One more thing I want to mention about Steem, Steem shouldn't be seen in an ultimate competition against all other cryptocurrencies but all cryptocurrencies should be look at as a set of technologies that in combinations are helping us to bring about a better and fairer world. It's really awesome to be able to reward people on Steem but in the end, I feel like we need to strive for even more, we need to strive to create a more compassionate and fair society.

We need to help people realize human technologies have given us the ability to produce more than ever before and that those many scarcities we're witnessing have for the most part been artificially created.

The Reason Why Steem Was Created

The Steem rewards and the very reason Steem was created was to bring people together in a voluntary manner to disempower government. The word's below are the words of @dantheman the ex-CTO of Steemit and main architect of Steem.

"Going forward I hope to leverage the work here with Steem to build markets, insurance, mutual-aid societies, and justice systems that empower our community to disempower government. I believe that properly organized social pressures can be far more powerful than any standing army or government bureaucrat. Through blockchain technology we can organize ourselves and hopefully achieve our liberty."

"Only by working together can we maximize the life, liberty, and property for all. Resorting to violence is a shortcut that can only destroy life, liberty and property. I am honored that so many of you are here and helping me realize this dream." [Source]

Empowering People Is Priceless

Steem is working, it's getting us closer to one another because it's mutually empowering us, disempowering governments. Each of our actions are helping us to understand the most pressing needs of our community and put us in a position to give those needs the best possible response, making our community ever more empowered and resilient.

Most of my power on Steem, Steem Power, comes from Steem that have been delegated to me for the sole purpose of helping people and helping grow the Steem community. Having been delegated so much power and tipping so many people for the work they are doing or simply directly helping so many people has been life changing for me and anyone engaged on Steem.

Obviously people on the receiving end are also benefiting but in the end I feel like it's the whole coming together and the community that it's giving birth to that is the most powerful part.

We can't know exactly where cryptocurrencies and Steem applications will take us in the future but for now they are clearly taking away from government giving back to the people. Steem plays a special part as it's bounding people like no other social network and cryptocurrency can.

Steem is empowering people to unite their voice with one click, something no other current technology allows. We are getting rewarded to come together and make our voices heard because our voices have value and because a more engaged community means a more cohesive community and a more cohesive community means a stronger and more resilient community. Together we're stronger.

Our Truth Is Our Most Valuable Asset


By allowing us to unite our forces yet remaining sovereign, Steem and crypctocurrencies are helping us free ourselves from government's tyranny. Steem is rewarding people to state and live their truth and our truth is what makes life worth living.

Steem is already better than all other publishing platforms and social network, it's simply that most people haven't heard about it yet or haven't joined because their friends aren't here yet.

If we find that Steem isn't fairly rewarding us when speaking our truth, I suggest we re-evaluate our truth and if after doing so we still consider ourselves to be right, then I would advice against going against our truth and instead use our truth to change people's mind and heart.

Working Toward A More Voluntaryist Society

Steemians are coming together in voluntary manner to help bring about a more voluntaryist society.

Here's my friend @kafkanarchy84 explaining what a voluntaryist society is and why working to bring it about is our most logical option and the one everyone should work toward.

"No voluntaryist, prominent one at least, assume there will ever be or can ever be a complete elimination of violence. Voluntaryism assert that in order to minimize violent conflicts and the potential therefore, the state must be one of the thing eliminated as it objectively depends upon, said violence for its very foundational lively hood and existence. It follows logically that if violence and lost of life are to be minimized that the state then must also be eliminated, indeed the utopian philosophy is the one that maintain that violence is necessary and just the right amount of violence, done by the right people, in the right position of power can produce an absence of violence, i.e. peace and that is an absurd position and that is the position held by statism.` [Steem] [Youtube]

Current Governments Are Being Made Irrelevant

I once thought States couldn't be abolish but cryptocurrencies have made me reevaluate my position because governance, laws and the application of laws are becoming more decentralized every day. Cryptocurrencies are uniting people through those tokens that have value and which can't be created out of nothing by centralized authorities. Cryptocurrencies are making people come together on a voluntary basis on an unprecedented scale.

Things are getting much different then what we are use to. We're beginning to see cracks in the current system from where new paradigms and much brighter horizons are emerging.

States are currently losing most of their power through wealth shifting away from national currencies to cryptocurrencies. These are huge sums of wealth.

"Cryptocurrencies' market cap or the total value of all cryptocurrencies is $127B and currently rank them as the 53th largest company (by market cap) in the world and the 52th biggest economy (M3) in the world right between Algeria and Pakistan. At the current rate, cryptocurrencies will become the company with the biggest market cap in less than a year and the biggest economy in less than 3 years." [Source]

On The Possibility Governments Created Cryptocurrencies

Some people have brought up in the comment section of some of my posts that cryptocurrencies could have been created by governments to which I agreed. Not only do I agree governments could have created cryptocurrencies but I think it's a very likely possibility though it doesn't make it a certainty far from it.

NSA documents talking about creating cryptocurrencies have been around at least since 1996. One of this document is hosted on MIT's website with the permission of the NSA. [Source]

Reasons For Governments To Create Cryptocurrencies

The reasons for shadow governments to create cryptocurrencies are of two types, some governments or rebel factions of governments could be trying to redistribute power back to people and away from governments or the opposite, governments could be trying to use cryptocurencies to gather more power to themselves.

I've already wrote about why shadow governments or rebel factions of them could seek to do away with the predatory system we're under. Obviously no one is safe under the current system not even those at the highest echelons. The other thing is that wars are made of objectives that are determined before the war even begin and then moves and calculations are done in other to achieve the desired goals. The most logical and skillful warlord should seek to put an end to the necessity of war no matter how slim the odds of such an outcome seem.

"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win." - Sun Tzu - The Art Of War

Hyperbitcoinization


Whether or not some governments created cryptocurrencies and no matter what their end motives would be, cryptocurrencies will continue to rise. This is so because good money drives our bad money. The price of cryptocurrencies will continue to rise because they are a better type of money than national currencies. If they haven't created them, so far governments have deemed it a better option to let cryptocurrencies grow rather than try to ban them.

Whethere there's a ban or not, cryptocurrencies are a better type of money than national currencies and we should all work to embrace them as they benefit us all individually and as a group.

Here's 4 excerpts from an article on hyperbitcoinization by Pierre Rochard of the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute plus a quote from Satoshi himself. This article with its cited articles are a must read. (Satoshi is the anonymous creator of Bitcoin the first cryptocurrency.)

Thank you to @lukestokes and @sean-king for making me aware of this article through a Steemit post.

" Bitcoin will not be eagerly adopted by the mainstream, it will be forced upon them. Forced, as in "compelled by economic reality". People will be forced to pay with bitcoins, not because of 'the technology', but because no one will accept their worthless fiat for payments. Contrary to popular belief, good money drives out bad. This "driving out" has started as a small fiat bleed. It will rapidly escalate into Class IV hemorrhaging due to speculative attacks on weak fiat currencies. The end result will be hyperbitcoinization, i.e. "your money is no good here". "

...

"Bitcoins are not just good money, they are the best money [5]. The Bitcoin network has the best monetary policy [6] and the best brand [7]. We should therefore expect that bitcoins will drive out bad, weak currencies [8]. By what process will bitcoins become the dominant currency? Which fiat currencies will be the first to disappear? These are the interesting questions of the day, as the necessary premises for these questions are already established truths9."

...

" It might make sense just to get some in case it catches on. If enough people think the same way, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Once it gets bootstrapped, there are so many applications if you could effortlessly pay a few cents to a website as easily as dropping coins in a vending machine." - Satoshi Nakamoto, 1/17/2009

...

"Everyone admonishes people to not borrow in order to buy bitcoins. The reality is that money is fungible: if you buy bitcoins instead of paying down your mortgage's principal, you are a leveraged bitcoin investor. Almost everyone is a leveraged bitcoin investor, because it makes economic sense (within reason). The cost of borrowing (annualized interest rates ranging from 0% to 25%) is lower than the expected return of owning bitcoins."

"How leveraged someone's balance sheet is depends on the ratio between assets and liabilities. The appeal of leveraging up increases if people believe that fiat-denominated liabilities are going to decrease in real terms, i.e. if they expect inflation to be greater than the interest rate they pay. At that point it becomes a no-brainer to borrow the weak local currency using whatever collateral a bank will accept, invest in a strong foreign currency, and pay back the loan later with realized gains. In this process, banks create more weak currency, amplifying the problem."

...

" A speculative attack that seems isolated to one or a few weak currencies, but causes the purchasing power of bitcoins to go up dramatically, will rapidly turn into a contagion. For example, the Swiss will see the price of bitcoins go up ten fold, and then a hundred fold. At the margin they will buy bitcoins simply because they want to speculate on their value, not due to an inherent problem with the Swiss Franc. The reflexivity here entails that the reduction in demand for Swiss Francs would actually cause higher than expected inflation and thus an inherent problem with the Swiss Franc. The feedback loop between fiat inflation and bitcoin deflation will throw the world into full hyperbitcoinization, explained by Daniel here. "

Conclusion

"Bitcoin will become mainstream. The Bitcoin skeptics don't understand this due to their biases and lack of financial knowledge. First, they are in as strong an echo chamber as Bitcoiners. [10] They rabidly search for evidence that confirms their view of Bitcoin. Second, they misunderstand how strong currencies like bitcoin overtake weak currencies like the dollar: it is through speculative attacks and currency crises caused by investors, not through the careful evaluation of tech journalists and 'mainstream consumers'. To honor these soon to be extinct skeptics, the Nakamoto Institute has launched A Tribute to Bold Assertions."

People's Fair Share Of Earth's Abundance

I want to thank everyone who helped me here on Steem. I also want to thank every Steemians as well as everyone enjoying Steem as simple readers. As I said, I think Steem currently is the best social network and publishing platform and I look forward to make it even better.

I'm here to share the most useful information possible in the most easily accessible way. A lot of the problem of our society comes from deceptive information spread as truth by deceptive actors. Steem and cryptocurrencies are disempowering those deceptive actors and empowering all in a fair manner. Let's use those new empowering technologies wisely to create a better present.

I'm not looking to selfishly acquire more to myself leaving everyone else poorer, on the contrary, I'm looking to empower everyone to have a fair share of Earth's abundance.

I'm looking to help people realize human technologies have given us the ability to produce more than ever before and that those many scarcities we're witnessing have for the most part been artificially created.

I'm looking to help to come together in a voluntary manner to create a better society. I use Steem as the best platform to help me on this journey.

I'm seeing this better society emerge and I'm seeing the impact all of us are having.

Living Our Truth


For me this might be only the beginning of this journey which could bring me to professional video production or ghostwriting for some rapper or any media that could best bring those truth to the masses. These are only two avenues I'm already seriously considering, whatever it takes, I'm open to it and I'll go for it.

The current series of posts is already part of a much more ambitious project which consist of much more than the publication of those posts. It's work in progress so I won't share more about it right now.

Those truths I've spoke all through out this series unite us all.

My Witness

I've been a witness for more than a year now and this week, I've enter the top 50 witness, jumping from #53 to #44 after I received the vote of @clayop and @fabien amongst many others. @clayop is currently the second biggest vote for witness. Only @freedom's vote proxied to @pumpkin is more powerful. I want to thank @clayop and everyone which are approving my witness.

Everyone has 30 witness votes which can be change at any moment and don't take any voting power. They are like voting for a post but those witness votes are like 24/7 votes which keeps on giving. Those votes are very important votes for obvious reasons.

Steem Media Tokens

Why Create Smart Media Tokens?

@ned CEO of Steemit just announced the most exciting developments of the Steem platform yet.

How Smart Media Tokens Work: An Animated Explanation

[Source]

Funny Video Of The Week

Approving My Witness!

Witness #44

Would you consider voting for my witness to help us Steeming the world we all long for? https://steemit.com/~witnesses

Thank you for reading and for commenting! I read all comments!

Steem's Growth Is Rocketing!

Good To Know

I use Markdown Pad (free version) to create my posts and I recommend it to everyone.

How to align pictures.

The Chats!

Steem Made Clear

Other Useful Posts

Shared On

Sort:  

Relentlessly killing it as always, @teamsteem! I haven't finished reading this just yet (about halfway through), but will finish it up tonight! I'm currently having a cook out with a good chunk of the @agoric.systems team: @robrigo, @lovejoy, @kotturinn, @spurious-claims, and a few other good people! So I gotta attempt to be social haha.

But back to the reason Steem was created (as well as Dan's other projects) brings me back to Consensus 2017 when I was talking to Dan and I asked him something along the lines of "So, if you could sum up what your goal is with all of this and why work so damn hard to unleash all of this insanely progressive tech!? What drives you, what's your motivation?"

Well, he gave me a one word answer that was what I feel was concise, appropriate, and insanely admirable. His answer was "emancipation." Straight up humbling to hear. The dude is an absolute legend . . .

In the future, once all of this takes hold and is adopted by the masses, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if he wins a Nobel Peace Prize. The implications of all of this on society are practically immeasurable.

This is such a cool story! Thank you so much for sharing it. I had to look that word up to make sure I understood it better. He and his work really made me a better person.

Emancipation:

the fact or process of being set free from legal, social, or political restrictions; liberation.

The best answer ever

Beautiful. Freedom is the archetypal masculine aim.

Keep me in your group and keep me working regularly
https://steemit.com/@mdrobin

Excuse me, @teamsteem wrote: "a place where kindness rules". I was homeless and at steemfest and nobody offered me to borrow money or help me to make a business. I was sleeping outside in November without proper sleeping bag and teamsteem talks about kindness. This is just not true. I made a little poem about teamsteem who also didn't reply when I asked him about his last "steemit is so kind" statement where he cited a Rinpoche about how important joy is. it's tasteless! Here the poem for you because nobody upvotes my posts because criticism isn't welcome that's why I have to post it here:
"I wrote 23 posts today
Does this mean that the Illuminati can see me?
Help me so that I don't have to Power Down?
Community, a word like "friends" on facebook
Not productive = die!
Sunshine all the time not even Lemons opened the eyes
Sorry for your loss! It's a shame!
But fighting the disease they don't
The disease named greed and ignorance
Preaching the Buddha on trending
They know what others expect from them to think they are nice
Sick fucks and their lies"

Edit: I told more than 15000 people on the street about bitshares and steemit and nobody BORROWED or gave me 300 or 500 euro so that I can rent a room. You are so full of shit everybody it's .. I don't know words for that other than than I am speechless about your lies!

Edit2: I got into jail because a policeman reported me tomthe police (he was in normal clothes with his wife. I was wearing a fat poster with a bitcoin symbol and DPOS written on it. The judge made me pay 100 euros because I told the wife of the cop that she is disgusting how she talks to me because she was fucking disgustingly talking to me. From 10K people 2 of the worst people called the cops and when I didn't have100 euro (i didn't know i was sentenced and only found out a year later when i was controlled bu the police) I went to jail straight from the street! They wanted me 20 days but some new friends paid for me after a week. Then I ran away because of reasons I cannot talk about and at steemfest onceuponatime and everyone else didn't give me a penny! Kind? I am laughing mu ass off! BTS and STEEM is the most coldhearted greedy place I have ever seen. Keep writing history with shoving teamsteem the money up his ass but I also habe a word to say. Now I got a bit loud but I think that I have a reason or don't I?

You're either drug addled, mentally ill, or both. Seek help. I mean no offense, just being real and showing concern.

It sounds like you expect people to just shower you with money and take care of you. Why? Are you alright? You might want to consider seeing a doctor, you're coming across a bit unhinged.

That you can judge from far away that I am either this or that is not very nice of you. It is disrespectful. Not kind, too. I do not expect people to shower me with money. Not at all. I have high respect of people who reach others a helping hand especially when they have hundreds of thousands of dollars. In my case, I explained it quite well I think, it would have been very kind to help me but nobody did. To call the steemit community kind is therefore wrong. I think that it should be a normality to help others according to ones own capabilities and not watch them suffer. That is why I am setting this straight. Do you understand?

You're calling an entire community unkind. That is wrong.

You're also calling other people who didn't seek you out and practically be your guardian by giving you shelter, water, food, and money unkind. When people went to Steemfest they went prepared, not expecting other people to house and feed them. Maybe you should've arranged something with someone prior to going? Maybe you shouldn't have called a cop's wife disgusting (even if she is extremely disgusting), that's just mean spirited.

I usually don't reply to stuff like this, but I'm honestly getting a sense that you may not be well. Seriously man, if you're "on something," or having some kind of issues, seek professional help, that's what it is there for, to help.

Best of luck.

I agree with you...

There are exceptions. For example @technovedanta who borrowed me 100 STEEM. Or @chaaylin who sent me money to the atm for STEEM. Or @dan, who once sent me 25 $. Or a few others who donated together 90$ when I had similar problems. I mean the majority. You know some people who have extreme experience with torture, abuse and so on can go a hundred years to the shrink and they will always have issues. I am one of these people. To tell me to go to the therapy (which i did many times btw) is so disrespectful and shows that you have no experience. I guess that you are a nice guy and just don't have the knowledge because you are a team with robrigo if I am not mistaken and he is a nice guy. Why do you have to tell me all these things which are good for me? Why can't you not just accept that I have a point? When I followed dan I was lokkimg for an alternative to government. You have no idea how but i got treated by the government which is the place where I have ro go when I don't have money to pay a private therapist. You want me to go there again? Can you not just be a bit open and try tounderstand that you might lack the knowledge and that I have something imlortant to contribute instead of calling me an addict or mentally ill? To judge me (policeman's wife without knowing what happened there is not good sir. You just said that I was mean spirited, this is really - I don't know how to say it in english - .. not wise. It is not up to you to do that. It's overbearing from you. Do you know anything about me? You can from time to time read my posts: 38PTSWarrior on bitsharestalk and here shla-rafia. Many people say that I am one of the nicest people they ever met. Intelligent and kind. I ask you why you say the opposite? I am workimg for a better tomorrow. To decentralize and abandon the government which harmed me so much. I am thinking for everyone and gave everything and then you think that for a man like blocktrades, pharesim, onceuponatime, steemrollin and so forth it would be a big deal to BORROW me 500 so that i can rent a boat in amsterdam to market steemit? Paint it? I asked a few people at steemfest, also the openledger guy who obviously isn't poor. Ned didn't help me. Now is that kind? It is the opposite! It is ignorant, selfish, coldhearted and teamsteam is a liar when he says that this is a very kind community! You can make him a rich man and write history on the trending page. But to silence me you can't. Why do you think I am doing this here? Because
i am a troll? I am not! I am a person with strength and weakness like everyone. To work in a team is the solution. What one man can't do the other can. But nobody reached me a hand.

Good luck, man. Try to take care of yourself . . .

That is all you have to say?

Haha I said the same thing right before he left Steemit, both him and Ned.

main architect of Steem.

I read anarchist not architect

Steem's emancipation is something like Step 4 Emancipation from here http://annavonreitz.com/stepbystep.pdf, a manual for freedom.

This is very good blog

I agree with that...

I've only ever voted for one witness and that was today for @teamsteem.

The reasoning for my vote has been greatly influenced by this one statement, not only in this article but as a recurring theme;

Steemians are coming together in voluntary manner to help bring about a more voluntaryist society.

This principle is what drives me each day. I'm so encouraged to find someone on Steemit, and be able to support them, who shares the values I hold so dear found in voluntaryism.

Will you consider helping me launch a project I've been working on? It's called the Libertarian Interview Series. With your help, I could reach a vast number of people. I want to share your story, and the stories and inspiration behind many more Steemers who also believe in peaceful and voluntary interactions.

https://steemit.com/anarchy/@richhersey/the-libertarian-interview-series-is-making-progress-plus-a-new-logo

Thank you for your support! I really appreciate it. I'm glad to know we share this deep understanding and appreciation of voluntaryism.

I thank you for invitation to this interview. I'll consider it.

Also thank you for your interesting posts, I enjoyed reading them.

Great plan. Would do wonders to get the word out.

interviewing some liberty rockstars is a great idea!

Steemit Team can not be stopped great job.. Steemit & Smart Media Token = WWW dominating

this is beautiful @teamsteem Good money will recreate the world. It's like human connected AI or a Biblical lifeline to counter the End of Days mythology that is designed to depress us - and not to give us hope.

The only trouble with Steemit is that it is so addictive. Probably because we've all been starved for so long of meaningful interaction on other platforms. There's my life before Steemit which was about ten days ago and my life now, and those Ten days seem like ten years. One day of Steemit time, a fascinating place where you are watching the world come back together stitch by stitch, is an altogether different unit of time.

I literally want to get up every morning and log in before I even have a coffee, and I don't care about my previous life/work plans any more because on the first day of Steemit that paradigm shift completely turned my previous world upside down.

@ned and @dan were geniuses for working out this infrastructure and inter connectivity so well. I think a lot of it goes beyond just the coding. I read the SMT whitepaper yesterday a few times and what struck me about the whole thing is how deep the level of understanding of human psychology goes. Creating this system took next level insight.

Bitcoin is wasteful of electricity and is fuelled primarily by greed and Steemit is fuelled by the collected human experience. So Bitcoin's "gold standard" is electricity, and Steemit's "gold standard" is a commodity infinitely more valuable than any metal or mineral that has ever been mined.

We should necessarily say Bitcoin mining is wasteful. If Bitcoin can help us disempower government as it is helping to achieve then this energy is well spend until other type of cryptocurrencies can reach a market cap as big as Bitcoin while being more efficient.

You're comment is awesome by the way.

Also I guess you meant @ned and @dan

Thank you! and I did mean @dan (oops) although in a Quantum parallel universe somewhere there might well be an @ted involved so I'd like to credit him too. Thank you for pointing it out, I'll change it!

Also you're awesome, I see you being helpful and supportive to so many people!

I guess Bitcoin is good if it has been the stepping stone to getting everything else started, just at some point the energy equation will outweigh that (hopefully before Bitcoin is burning more fuel than Denmark).

I did have a crazy thought yesterday when the SMT announcement was made after I watched @jerrybanfield's YouTube film at the part where he was explaining about how the New York Times might create an NYT Coin and use it in their comments, and that was that wouldn't it be funny if Bitcoin or Ethereum themselves could register a Steem SMT so there could be a Bitcoin or Ethereum SMT based on Steem!

Anything is possible right? in this topsy turvy crazy world that's changing every day.

"One day of Steemit time, a fascinating place where you are watching the world come back together stitch by stitch, is an altogether different unit of time"

For this one sentence, I will follow you. Good luck here, @angusg!

Thanks for pointing me to another great steemitian to be followed

Thank you assayer! I just followed you too.

I've been struggling to understand mining...this helps me a lot! Thanks.

I feel you on life before and after steemit. I've been spending lots of time on facebook and ever since I found steemit, i've been spending less and less time on facebook and more and more time on steemit. :)
I think that because users are rewarded for their posts here, they are more insightful and worth reading.

I agree with your comment about Bitcoin but Bitcoin has other flaws too. Bitcoin value can be manipulated just like the recent split to another version of Bitcoin by changing the algorithm of it.

Bitcoin started out great but it has reached its peak and is going downhill now.

Bitcoin can easily be controlled by the government too because since the US government prints infinite amount of money, it can also print money to monopolize Bitcoin to buy a bunch and force a crash when they unload the large amount in a short period of time creating a panic attack!

Again: so inspiring comment, @angusg!

But I think End of Days mythology is today so depressing and shallow mostly because it's very old and sick from so many long centuries of so-called Delay of the Parusia. Early believers were different. Also, it doesn't matter so much if it is first century (Christian Basileia society) or XXI century (Steemit blockchain society).

Wow this was a very comprehensive post @teamsteem... I especially liked the parts about how most whales give more than they receive, I feel like most people assume the opposite and more people should realize how truly altruistic Steemit can be! I also enjoyed reading the quotes from Dan and Satoshi, it’s crazy how much we have already decentralized power away from governments, like you pointed out in your post... Only a matter of time until we see signs saying “We Accept BTC & Steemit Upvotes” LOL very exciting times indeed...
Since you are an intellectual guy who (obviously) has a very active heart, I wanted to share with you this post about my friends newborn daughter, who was born with a defective heart and is in need of lots of surgery. They made a GoFundMe for her and I want to show the world that Steemit can be even better than GoFundMe for getting people to come together to inspire change and empower people. I made the post yesterday and we have already gotten almost 100 Steemians to give almost $15 in upvotes. It would help save a life, to get this post more attention and upvotes and it would be much appreciated by many (: I’m just a guy trying to help get his friends kid out of the hospital so they can bring her home and she can start living the life a baby is supposed to live! So here’s the link if you feel you have Voting Power to spare: https://steemit.com/help/@amvanaken/this-baby-needs-your-help-all-steem-dollars-from-this-post-go-to-super-nova
Keep on spreading the Joy here on Steemit, you have my witness vote! ❤️💯✅

Thanks for pointing my eyes the right way. Just discovered that my witness voting list is not covering @teamsteem. Mistake eliminated. :)

Great article, I was hugely enjoying reading it and then all of a sudden... Wow! Thanks for including the link to my animation @teamsteem!! So appreciated!

Thank you for this nice comment. I really enjoyed watching your enlightening animation. I almost put those 2 video and the top but have gone with putting them at the end which I think made more sense.

How would 1 go about becoming a witness and what credentials would be needed

I would recommend reading the 2 posts from my sections Steem Made clear first and then see from there. That is the bear minimum. Then one should read on how to set up a witness and there's a lot of good post about this on Steem.

As for the credentials, every bit of knowledge about computer science, cryptography, cryptocurrencies and being highly invested and passionate about Steem will help.

One of the greatest post I read on steemit, great job.

It is exciting to see this voluntary world starting to come together, and I'm especially proud to be part of this liberation that Steemit is instigating. As for crypto being created by shadow government actors, the way that you put it is an interesting idea, that the wisest will do what they can to avoid war, and to avoid war, we need to make the fiat currencies obsolete. Very simple, and what's best about it is that it's actually happening now, in a kind of organic way- cryptocurrency in designed to be a way to turn us all into our own bankers. I'm having to learn all of this banking business here on Steemit, and it's scary sometimes, but I like being in control of my own earnings without using a bank.
Thanks for the informative and inspirational post, I appreciate the way that you presented it, making it easy to understand what's going on here in Steem world.

It is overwhelming but it's so worth it. I'm glad to be part of this with you my friend!

we are the ones, it is US, that is both a blessing and a curse and a war all in itself...yet we soldier on
we want better
some do not want us to have it
so we will make it ours anyways