The Financial Newspaper “De Tijd” or in full “De Financieel Economische Tijd” (Translated “The Financial Economic Times” has recently published a very good article about Steemit. The newspaper is highly regarded in my country and has over 120.000 readers on a daily basis!.

In what follows, I translated everything from Dutch to English for you, and I included all the infographics as well. They posted another article regarding the hack, I might translate it for you guys later on. All copyright goes, evidently, to Reuters: De Tijd.

Original Dutch (Belgian) article: http://www.tijd.be/tech_media/technologie/Vliegende_start_voor_nieuwe_sociale_mediamunt_Steem.9788203-3126.art

Flying start for the new ‘social-media-diamond’ Steem

The new digital coin Steem, which authors on social media get paid, is being discovered by the masses. The marketcap of the coin increased tenfold in just a couple of days.

Steem is one of the so many digital cryptocurrencies that are created with the so called Blockchain-technique, with Bitcoin being the most famous one. In fact, almost anyone can create such a cryptocurrency, however the importance and the value of it is determined by the community that is built around it.

The rising star at the moment is called Steem. Based on the currency pair STEEM/BTC and the countervalue in dollars, de cryptocurrency Steem has a tremendous marketcap of 240 million dollars, states an overview on a specialized website called www.coinmarketcap.com. The coin has only been around for three months, but in recent days it’s value has skyrocketed. Since Friday it’s marketcap has increased tenfold.

The currency pair (in Bitcoin) and the marketcapitalization (in dollar) of the new virtual coin Steem. Copyright Coinmarketcap.com

Regarding all the aforementioned, Steem has become the third most valuable virtual currency in the whole world after Bitcoin (10,5 billion dollars) and Ethereum (863 million dollar). The last one is a two year old virtual coin that has specifically been designed for payments of ‘smart contracts’ – one could think of an automatic payment of an energy bill based on the meter numbers.

Social Media

Steem too was designed for a very specific purpose: rewarding authors, curators and commentators of interesting content on social media. Behind the coin lingers the webplatform Steemit.com, a type of social news site that reminds of the more famous Reddit.com. However, there is a very important difference: the authors on Steemit get paid based on the number of ‘likes’ their posts receive from other users.

500

Steemit’s userbase is growing by 500 new users a day! People that signal interesting stories or post a lot of commentary get rewarded according to fixed allocation keys. Steemit also gives yearly payments that distribute 10 percent of the marketvalue to the most active users. The first time it occurred was on July 4th, where a pot of 1,3 million dollar was distributed.

The unique rewarding model of Steemit may very well be an important innovation in the world of (social) media. Today, most of the profits in the sector are coming from advertisement that are place around content, of wich distribution platforms like Facebook and Youtube put the most money in their pockets. In the Steemit-model the authors and the fans get rewarded directly for good content, without having to work with payment walls or subscriptions.

Steemit could also attract undesired content, like plagiarism or porno.

How promising Steemit might be, the New York start-up has yet much to prove. At the moment, the platform is surfing on a growing core of enthusiastic technicians but the larger crowd will probably be harder to convince. The ground principles of the system are actually very complex and hard to explain. For example, the payment happens in two monetary variants (Steem Power and Steem Dollar), each having a different set of rules regarding interchangeability. The many rules and agreements are displayed in a whitepaper which can be checked online.

The trade in the young virtual coin is in a very illiquid stage which can cause large price swings and lead to speculation and market manipulation.

If Steemit will also deliver better content than other social media, remains an open question at the moment. Most of the additions at the moment are articles on Steemit itself. The forecast that you can make real money on the platform could also attract undesired content, like plagiarism, illegally copied video’s an pornographic or violent material.

The promovideo of Steemit, which was launched in april in a Bèta-type version.
July 13th 2016 09:33
copyright Reuters, De Tijd

Thanks for reading my translation, I might translate some other Dutch articles our newspapers are writing about Steemit. This all contributes to spreading awareness of our beloved Steemit!!

Greets, Lawrence from Belgium