I've been interested in cryptocurrencies on-and-off since Wired started publishing stories about it in the early 2010s. I wasn't aware of Satoshi's white paper or the culture of meeting up in the physical world to exchange cash or gold for bits and bytes. After the market matured I had a little "fun" with bitcoin, but after getting burned by MtGox I lost interest for a while.
About a year later, a colleague mentioned that NeuCoin was doing a coin offering, and I read their white paper and thought it had an interesting premise. You do some kind of physical "work" in the real world (listen to music or play a game) to earn the coins, and then use them to tip musicians or artists or anyone else. More importantly, transaction times were quick and fees were low. The other big selling point was that it used Proof-of-Stake minting instead of Proof-of-Work mining to reward users for keeping the network secure. That's when I realized why I wanted a piece of NeuCoin and had lost interest in Bitcoin. . . I couldn't really DO anything with it. With BTC, you buy it and then wait to see what happens to the price. There isn't much else an individual can do to affect the price or utility of it. If I want to mint NEU, I run an app on this machine, sitting on a desk in my home office, powered by the solar array on my roof:
To mine BTC, you now need something more like this, most likely powered by prehistoric rocks:
And even then it's not particularly lucrative or. . . fun! Once you have the bitcoin, it doesn't make you any more likely to get more bitcoin. There's no accumulation of earning power, there's no compounding interest, there's a just a mark in a ledger that allows you to exchange it for something else. Don't get me wrong, BTC is absolutely necessary now, but mostly as the gateway into the more interesting cryptocurrencies that have tangible applications. And to state the obvious, STEEM is FUN! Even if I don't earn another STEEM cent, I've already learned how to write markdown, host images, and take marginally better pictures. I'm enjoying the process, regardless of the outcome.
Am I wrong? I would guess the #steemit community is more interested in STEEM than BTC at this point, but I'm curious as to whether or not people still find bitcoin-specific projects interesting enough to pursue, please let me know if there's anyone out there with a fun side-hustle in any other cryptocurrencies!
Interesting assessment.
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Thanks, it just kinda hit me that I got more enjoyment out of one week on steemit than several years of observing/trading crypto, wanted to share the insight.
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It's amazing what a week can do for your opinion about something. :) Mine was changed in the last 2 days for good, getting paid for quality content is amazing. :D
Keep it Clean!
My Blog Posts, Neatly Categorized!
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Definitely! I've espoused the virtue to doing the work for the joy of the work itself, but I love that dopamine hit of seeing the STEEM rewards!
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Nice article.
Mining for Bitcoin is strictly off the table for regular people unless you have Tens of Thousands of $$$. If you want to make immediate money with it and you don't have big bucks speculation is the only way and I can think of a lot better ways to put my hard earned money to work.
The great thing about Steem is that you can leverage time into money. Of course this isn't guaranteed but there is zero risk unless your free time is more valuable than the amount of Steem you hope to gain. Of course if you are having fun and you happen to make a couple of bucks at the same time, Steem is perfect.
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Agreed, there is definitely better ROI to be had elsewhere in crypto and life!
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i think both Steem and Bitcoin is interesting, i really want to mine bitcoin but i does not have bitcoin minning hardware. Steem does not need hardware we can get some steem from steemit by posting original content and also curating content
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I think at this point, especially with the halving, it's cheaper to purchase bitcoin outright on an exchange than attempt to mine it. I feel like I'm better off working on writing skills and living a blog-interesting life than spending time building a solar-powered BTC server farm.
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