SMTs: The Long Tail Creating Tremendous Value

Some are starting to see the potential of the "new" money that is being created.

A decade ago, there was an article that came out called "The Long Tail" that discussed the reach of the Internet. In it, the author made the point as technical barriers were removed, the reach in the music industry was much greater than just the Top 40 hits. Even the Top 1000 or Top 5000 have value. Also, given enough reach, the size of the market outside the top hits would exceed it. Hence, what was previously viewed as having no value suddenly is a very valuable market.

https://www.wired.com/2004/10/tail/

Many are often wondering what is going to be the "internet" money. Which coin will be the big winner? Will it be Bitcoin? Ethereum? EOS? Also, when looking at all the coins, there are so many that failure is going to be historic. We will end up seeing one or two with the rest collapsing and costing people money.

This is not going to be the case. Yes, there will be coins that end up failing and become worthless. They will end up going away. However, make no mistake, we are just at the beginning of token creations.

There are not going to be thousands of coins but, rather, millions. Think about it for a second, there are billions of people in the world with no money in their hands. They, for the most part, cannot participate in any true commerce outside local barter. That is a large chunk of people that will suddenly have economic value.

When we create a new currency, we create value. This is a point often overlooked since we try to compare regularly to the USD or EURO. That is not how currencies ultimately work. Few people in the world are actively involved in inter-currency valuations. It is only when they travel across borders that they care. Outside of that, a currency is just what the operate with.

We might see a currency that is for flower arrangers living in Sao Paulo who are over 5 foot 11 inches tall. Certainly, this is a rather select market meaning that currency will not have a ton of value globally. However, to those people, the value of the currency is enormous. There are many things they can do with that currency as it pertains to their interaction with each other and their customers.

What ends up happening is that currency is not simply the lubricating force of value, it also creates it. A situation took place which exemplifies this point.

In 2013, they created a digital currency that was targeted at Israeli mothers. It was basically Monopoly money—conjured from scratch. The Hearts couldn’t be used to pay taxes or buy onions or shop on Amazon, but Galia says that when the moms were given this new currency, they invented creative ways to use it. “So let’s say I’ve got clothes that don’t fit the kid anymore. I’m selling them for Hearts,” she says. “Or I really love to make super fancy birthday cakes. Who’s got a birthday party coming up? I’ll make the cake. Or I can watch your kids. Or I can dog-sit while you’re away.”

https://breakermag.com/inside-the-israeli-blockchain-company-that-wants-to-sort-of-reinvent-the-marketplace/

People get creative with how they utilize the currency. We see this happening on Steem. People got rewarded for creating content in STEEM and SBD. These currencies could then be used to acquire assets known as @steemmonsters trading cards. Or, we see @dlux-io putting together an ICO where it accepts STEEM as payment. This is just the beginning of collaborative ideas.

Looking at the long tail graphic from above, how many communities around the world fall outside "the music sold at Wal-Mart"? How many people in different areas of the world want to collaborate financially yet cannot? There are hundreds of millions of communities of all kinds that are basically locked out of this collaboration because they are not in the smallest percentage that has the "top money".

Just consider the idea of security tokens. This is a great example of how just a few elite were allowed to participate. High end commercial real estate can be very profitable. It is also very expensive to get into the market. Few of us have the resources to invest in this realm since partnership agreements usually run into the millions. With tokenization, these assets are available to anyone. People from all over the world can collaborate via their investment, people who normally would not be involved.

The reason I quoted the Hearts example from the article is because that is essentially what SMTs are going to do. There is one major difference. The Heart token that was created did not have the ability to pay for anything outside the ecosystem created. This will not be the case with SMTs. You will be able to pay your taxes with whatever SMT you acquire. Of course, it most likely will not be direct but with swaps, you will be able to get there. A SMT --> STEEM --> BTC might end up doing the trick.

At this time we have no idea how massive this will be. Looking back upon the music, book, and video industries, we see in hindsight how things grew. It was not a major increase in sales of Britney Spears music that did it. Instead, we see the sales of acts like the Selector and millions others like it that made the difference.

This is the new economic model that is forming. Just like the Internet created an entirely new field of sales due to the reach, we are going to see the same thing with money. Who knows why idea is going to break out of a country like Laos which, at present, is destined to die because of a lack of resources. We might see a revolutionary breakthrough come, not from a couple like Apple, but a bunch of high school students in 18 countries across the world.

Suddenly, the long tail of the other 97% is financially incentivized.

We never saw that before.

Exciting times.

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