I am reading this book and one of the parts right now discusses (and I think most of us would agree and already knew this) but data is like the new gold in the modern world. I believe that what blockchain does in general is preserves the integrity of data. It may not matter so much now (because companies are just raking in the money off these piles and piles of data) but eventually data will need to be refined. Blockchain, in my opinion, makes people think twice about being crappy or misleading. At least I do because I know that what I am putting on here is gonna stay on here. So in that way I feel there is actual value to steemit, kind of like platinum to gold. The gold is the data but the more valuable metal is platinum because its qualities are more refined... or something like that haha! I also like the fact that you can buy into steemit with cryptos. It's nice to have a crypto that can interact with other cryptos. To me, that is what offers the most freedom in terms of de-centralizing the money supply. And I guess maybe the third thing is something I saw today: a contract. One steemer agreed to loan another steemer some SBD. The contract was stated in a post and all users verified in the comment section. Boom, SBD gets "loaned." That's pretty damn powerful. Contracts.... THAT is why I came to steemit. Thanks for your post and thoughts.