My Steemit Psychology: The Freedom to Give & Magical Imaginary Money
Today I purchased a mobile app for 2.99 USD. I took some time to consider this purchase, and after weighing the cons and pros for a few months (!), I eventually clicked the button to buy the app and rewarded the developer for the product I got. Shortly after, I read and upvoted a Steemit post at 100%, giving the author close to 13 SBD in payout without spending more than a second considering it.
Why is that?
Giving without giving away
I am not great at math, but even I can see the difference: I invested a lot more time considering the reward to the app developer than I did my upvote, even though the reward to the Steemit post author is significantly bigger. The reason for this behavior is quite obvious, but also interesting.
Unlike a business transaction, in which I give money to another in exchange for some form of value, on Steemit I can allocate a reward to a content creator without paying a cent from my pocket. And that's awesome in many ways.
Steemit presents a very unique content monetization mechanics that is different from ones we are familiar with as content consumers. Instead of donation buttons on blogs, annoying ads or a mass of affiliate links to keep the publication running? On Steemit authors and publications can thrive by doing what they do best: creating and marketing content, giving the community the opportunity to reward them with money that, at first glance, seems to be coming out of thin air.
It's simply easier to be generous with rewards when it doesn't cost you but rather PAY you (with curation rewards). And if it somehow does "cost" (you exchange your earning for steem to power it up), it's still easier than paying fiat, at least for me.
Magic coins and financial anxiety
I have a strange relationship with cryptocurrency in the way I perceive it in relation to fiat. It might be an outdated view of finances, but to me cryptocurrency is not money until it turned into something I can pay the bills with. In my mind, Steem Dollars and Bitcoins are nothing but the potential for money. A potential I am quick to forget and a little scared to remember.
The fact I have never invested fiat in cryptocurrencies, and my first encounter with this mad world was through Steemit, makes me perceive Steem and other cryptocurrencies a bit differently that people who've bought their way into it. It's easy for me to send a 50 SBD donation to an initiative I support, or talk to an artist about purchasing something for 90 SBD, and even use some of my earning to launch my own bitshares token for the fun of it. But when I convert these sums to dollars in my head, they become REAL MONEY, thus turning my decision that much harder.
I don't know if other Steemians like me, who've had no previous relationships with cryptocurrencies, treat Steem the way I do. To me, the imaginary magic coins that multiply in my wallet a week after I publish a post are not as easy to hand out at upvotes, but still much easier for me to spend than fiat.
Your take
That's my story, and my Steemit psychology. What's yours?
- Do you have a perceived difference between Steem and fiat? Why?
- Do you have an easier time handing out upvotes, or do you consider their monetary value in terms of pool reward distribution?
- Do you prefer to hold Steem till you need the cash or convert everything to fiat as soon as you can?
Let's discuss!
Like what you've read? Check out some of my previous posts!
- Mistress of Magic: Morgan's First Apprentice - Chapter 3 - The Demonstration [NSFW]
- How to Mint Your Own Bitshares Tokens - A Guide for Mortals
- Die With Me - Curious Mobile App of the Week
P.S. Who has 2000 followers and pink hair? This girl! Thank you all for not getting sick of my ramblings! <3
אילנה אני מאוד מעריך את איכות הפוסטים שלך. הלוואי עלי היכולת. מי ייתן ונמשיך פה להעלות מודעות ולנוע כקהילה אל עתיד טוב. ישראל לצערי נראית רע מאוד וזה לא רק בגלל ביבי. יש פה שליטה בתקשורת. זאת הבעיה המרכזית שסטימיט יכולה לפתור לנו. מקום שבו לא יסגרו אותנו בכלובים מבודדים
I think the key here is the "one step away". Voting power is money, when you use your voting power on someone it quite literally costs you money. But since there is an extra step between that money being yours, and that money only being potential, it is much easier to use it.
The other interesting thing is how it affects the view of liquidity. Many people have an issue with keeping money in their bank account, especially the poor. Got a Christmas bonus? I must immediately spend it in it's entirety on those things I couldn't get for the past year. Even though saving that money for a medical emergency would mean that I would save money in the long term, possibly more money than that Christmas bonus.
If our entire income would be placed immediately into savings account, and we'd actively have to pull money out of the savings account to pay our bills, I believe a lot more people would be saving. And this is something that people that get paid in cryptocurrency already benefit from. It's money in a savings account, which you don't usually spend (aside from some examples you've given) and you have to actively decide you need it liquid in order to spend it. It's a truly wonderful thing, that one step remote of liquid.
Especially when you think that Steemit is a gifteconomy that people can use their wealth (SP) to give out to initiatives that they care about.
When you really like their post its so easy to go 100% and give them an encouraging word and to them it feels so good.
I know we shouldn't validate people on the basis of how much their posts make but is feels so good when people like your content and you see that dollar amount rise.
This is why I have set out to use Steemit as a crowdfunding option for a small school that we adopted who educated children of an indigenous tribe called Aetas in the Philippines.
It is far more easier to click on that upvote because the cost of that upvote coming from a nearly infinite supply backed by your SP which just needs to have its VP revert to 100%
A lot of great Steemians like Taskmaster4450 and Stellabelle talk about the effect of that SP as compounding in a sense that as time goes by your SP will just get stronger and stronger, the rewards you give with a single upvote increases and when you delegate your SP to other people it is still yours and you can take it back anytime especially if you want to power down. But to power down is crazy because of all the innovations Steem has.
I wouldnt be surprised if one day the value of the accounts here become hundreds of million.
I am also awed that it has given a lot of Filipinos like me opportunities. We have so many stories of people able to buy milk and diapers for their babies, send money to siblings, get medical help for their ailing parents and grandparents, pay off loans. Get the financial freedom to stay home and be with their kids.
Steemit is awesome in the way that you get richer by giving out more. Sure some may say you get more by selling the delegation but by actively voting and commenting you create a stronger community. Don't have the time or because there is just so many content out there and you only have two hands and a pair of eyeballs that you can't see all then create delegation warriors like the Stewards of Gondor who is amazing in giving out votes and comments.
Steemit is all about giving.
As a fellow Steemian who hadn't contacted crypto until around when I joined Steemit, I do have a perceived difference between fiat and crypto.
Somewhat similar to yourself in which when I'm choosing to buy something with Real Money, it's a decision which is well-thought out.(at times at least)
Yet with Steem or SBD, I'm even more reticent to spend it, due to looking forward into the future and spying that possibility of it being worth dramatically more than it is now.
I do have an easy time upvoting those whose posts I find enjoyable, yet this may also be because my upvote has such a minimal impact on both them and the reward pool distribution.
It not costing me a thing other than voting power doesn't hurt either!
You could say I value my crypto both more and less than the Fiat in my possession.
I'm able to support myself at the moment with my day-job, thus I think of my Steem as an investment for the future and don't plan on touching it unless desperate, or things are looking grim.
Thank you for your words
That's actually interesting, that you prefer to spend fiat over steem because you have faith in its future value. Never considered it like that. Thank you.
It's difficult to get by this idea that Steem/SBD is little more than another form of "Monopoly Money."
In a sense, that seems like it might be one of the hurdles standing in the way of cryptocurrencies gaining so-called "mass adoption." And, at the very least, this isn't actual money we have here (as you said, it becomes real when you can pay a bill or buy a taco with it), but something more like an investment. Even in the "real" world, you don't get your vanilla latte with stock options.
We made an account here as a possible alternative and in-addition-to Patreon for the exact reason that it's almost impossible to get people to part with their actual cash to help an emerging non-profit organization, but maybe they'd be willing to click a button to donate a few cents of this not-sure-if-it's-real money.
In a sense, perhaps the most worthy thing here is that the structure does seem to offer a bit of a training ground in the practice of giving and paying it forward.
Ha! @poet made me stop calling SBD "Monopoly Money". :)
Yes. That. Absolutely.
Yes, I don't know why. I'm new to the cryptocurrency world and I'm as same as you, I used some SBD that is actual money for making a token on Bitshares.
I actually don't, mainly because of my vote worth almost nothing. I give my upvotes to a lot of people. because, why not? I don't lose anything for doing it, only getting curation reward and rewarding content creators as well.
I always convert the Steem to BTC and ETH, and keeping them in my wallets. and I tend to convert a low percent of it to Fiat.
Oh and btw, This is the sentence of the century -
and now with this post you will make those 3 $ back 20-30fold or something.. What kind of sorcery is this?
Exactly! Magic coins!
Excellent introductory parallel. : )
I also haven't invested anything anything in any cryptocurrency and don't see Steem and Steem Dollars as real money, but only as a potential for money, as you superbly pointed out.
For me, this is even more true because I also don't intend to cash out anything for the first year, I'm reinvesting every SBD earned back to Steemit either through bid bots or through powering up.
As one of the picture you used says, I believe that my non-thinking about all this as a business will ultimately make me earn more. Of course, I (we) might be wrong, but so far so good.
Cheers! : )
I'm much like you. Unless I cash out and convert to fiat which I can use to pay the bills I don't really think about the value of the SBDs. And I certainly don't have any problem giving out upvotes when I like something. It's not like the money comes out of my own wallet (well I suppose it does ultimately if I'm also posting, but I'm not going down that rabbit hole.) In some ways Steemit resembles a game, with SBDs being the points, and SP granting power-ups that make the gaming experience more fun.
Exactly! It's a gamification of rewards for content creation. And that's exactly how I explain Steemit to people: "You write stuff and get votes from other people on the platform, and those points turn into money if you want them to."
That's what I (naively) believed when I joined. And when it works, because of good people creating good content, it works beautifully. However, the gamification rules are weak, and spam authors can easily garner a lot of steem power. Which is a serious problem; even much older systems (such as email / blogs) requried spammers to spend some cost / effort.
Now, one might say that it doesn't matter.. we could just ignore the spam and keep steeming for content and treat rewards just as a side-effect. But then, why would one use STEEM at all? One could simply use an open-source social network such as mastodon along with a system of direct rewards instead of indirect rewards.
All that said, I am still hanging in here for a few more months, hopeful that a solution to spam is found soon.
Very interesting topic and discussion.. On one extreme is what I call "Warcraft gold" - the in-game gold or currency that we spend without thinking. While I usually use it to buy in-game items, I can use it to buy a monthly subscription and save $15 a month. So it's 99% in-game and not real currency.
Steemit currency and Bitcoin are in the middle. I accumulate, and occasionally spend on real world items. It won't pay my electricity bill, but has the potential to pay for clothes and travel in the future.
I think there will be sharp rises and drops in crypto value. I'm less idealistic - I love real world currency, the "system" has been good to me, and who knows where this will all lead.
This stuff reminds me of the BBS era - the beginnings of something bigger. Like the Bob Dylan lyric, "You know something's happening, but you don't know what it is.."
Yes! Exactly! I've managed to avoid LoL and WoW so I can continue having, you know, a life. But I did take interest in Second Life a while back. They had an ingame currency too that my friends were earning quite a bit of by building and designing stuff. I liked that. But yes, Steem is that thing that's happening. A shift in rewards for content creators that I, as a tech journalist, find absolutely exhilarating. I am a techslut. Innovation turns me on. Especially when it shifts our perceptions of things like money and value.
I saw Second Life via friends. WoW is a hobby, but music is my main hobby, so I'm a "light gamer".
I love gadgets too, have a bunch of tablets and music gear at home and in my car. It helps a lot in my career, as I can connect with R&D and Product, which helps me to market their stuff better.
Me too - I was and still am skeptical - but it is too interesting to pass on.
We should totally meet for coffee. :)
Yes, nice to meet another writer! Israeli is such a good place for a tech writer to be. Do you freelance or work at a company?
Freelancing from home at Kfar Saba, the source of magical coffee. Talk to me on Discord / Facebook and we'll schedule some mutual coffee consumption. :)