The crypto-learning curve is steep, and I have gained lots of knowledge by hanging out on Steemit. Before spending time here, lots of crypto talk seemed like jargon that only people who "understood computers" could understand. Now I see that crypto currency is simply electronic money.
Here is a list of some of the knowledge I've picked up.
Steemit is not the same as Steem
Steemit is an application on the steem blockchain. Steem is a currency. Steemit is simply a tiny little part of the whole Steem project.
An Exchange and a Wallet are different
Having a wallet at an exchange is like filling a personal wallet up with cash and then giving it to someone else to hold for you. For some people this makes sense, as banks hold our fiat for us, but exchanges are not like banks, they are more like check cashing places, or the tiny little huts all over Tijuana that exchange dollars for pesos.
Exchanges are not banks and you can have your own wallet that is not a part of an exchange. All of us here on steemit have a steem wallet. Similar ones are available for every coin you would like to hold.
Gold is cool but silver is gold
Silver is undervalued and more rare than its market value lets on. Lots of people who hold crypto like to buy and hold silver. Whenever someone asks me what I can by with my crypto I like to respond: "Silver... and dollars."
Silver is not an investment that gains value, it is an investment that retains value.
Free money exists
Yes Manna really does give you a quarter every week. Yes swift really is trying to figure out a similar Universal Basic Income Program (although yesterday they asked me for a government issued ID which made me think... no thanks).
There are also airdrops, blogging sites, and research pages that pay you to use their site. Everything I have found so far pays pretty much pays half pennies and nickels, but they are there, and have the potential of growing.
You can invest with a little bit of money
You can invest with $5 USD, $10USD and with even just your time.
A traditional bank will charge me money to hold my money unless I give them a certain amount of money when they say, yet we all pretend it is still my money.
Here (Bitcoin), I can drop $5.90 USD into a wallet in 2014 and watch it grow to over $200 USD by 2018.
You will still deal with fees to turn your fiat into crypto, but once your fiat is in a wallet, there are no fees that chip away at your investment.
One Billionaire Can Affect The Market
Sometimes coins go up, and sometimes coins go down. One billionaire playing with the market can make the whole system go up and down and all around. They can buy a whole lot of coins and make them worth more, than turn around and sell them. Everybody else that has low buying/selling value is affected by their movement.
White Pages are where you can learn all about a coin
Are you looking to invest some fiat or some of your well earned SBD into a different coin? How can you know if a coin is good or not? Blog posts and dtube videos are a good place to start researching, but those will usually just give you somebody else's opinion. In order to form your own opinion, you must read the white pages of the project.
There you will learn how many coins will ever be developed, what the useful qualities of the coin are, how the coin will work, and everything you need to know so you can make an informed decision before investing your money.
If you don't find the information you need in the white pages, it means that they project isn't fully formed. The project may still be a "good" project, but an incomplete white pages means there is a lot more work to be done.
Dust exists on Steemit
If your comments and posts don't earn at least $0.021 then the income disappears and turns to dust. The threshold varies slightly depending on various factors, but if your comment or upvote aren't worth a certain amount, the profits simply disappear.
Decentralized
This simply means that the information is kept in many places and not just in one centralized location. I don't know why this boggled me so much. Probably because I couldn't imagine huge companies having all of their information at just one center. What if that center has an emergency of some sort and gets taken out? What happens to all the info?
Centralized places depend on back ups and other systems of protection. Decentralized means that you can't destroy it at the center because the information exists in many different places.
A MarketCap is the most value a coin can hold
The Market Cap of Steem right now (May 6 Sun 9:41 PM Pacific Time) is: $903,772,962. That means that the most money our collective Steem project right now is worth: $903,772,962.
If you are trying to earn billions this year on Steemit, then the market cap must go up. When the value of steem goes up, the market cap goes up as well.
Crypto is Small
The market cap of steem being $903,772,962 is not really a lot of money considering that the US alone gave $390.05 billion dollars to Charity in 2016 according to Charity Navigator
Crypto has a lot of growth potential. We are in this game early. This is also why some say that the whole project could still get scrapped - there really is not that much wealth in crypto if you compare it to the wealth available everywhere else.
HODL
Hold on for dear life. And also, it does not matter what your coin is worth today, it matter what your coin is worth when you are ready to cash it out.
Its nice to look at my steem wallet and see me creeping towards thousandaire status, but I also realize that the value of it can change drastically within days.
What is a blockchain
Information is stored together in blocks, kind of like a rubics cube. The block is put together in such a way that if you try to change one bit of information on it, the whole puzzle gets thrown off. Once a block is put together, it is attached to the blocks that came before it.
This means that once a block is set, changing information becomes a nearly impossible task. Blockchain technology is simply the way information is stored.
Alt coins are NOT like small companies
But this is still a really good analogy anyway. Each coin has its own system and set of rules. By being a holder of the coin, you are a supporter, user, and part of the coin.
Passwords Are Important
As high tech as the systems are, they still need wallet addresses and passwords to make them work. We can't use our fingerprints or iris scans to access our money just yet - we still have to rely on passwords.
Don't lose them!
I have learned so much while reading blogs on steemit that it makes the income I earned on Steemit that much more valuable to me. I have been a part of a steep learning curve and would love to share my knowledge. If you have a question about what I wrote, or have a question you have been chewing on but haven't quite figured out the answer, let me know in the comments perhaps we can learn together.
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog today ❤️