Two of my friends are now Steem Power holders

Recently, I've been explaining force feeding my friends a lot about Steem. For two years I didn't really do that for 1) I didn't really have a cohesive understanding myself about this stuff, and 2) Steem wasn't really quite there so that I would've felt confident to bring others here. But recently, I'm having hard times to shut up about Steem, because there's been a major shift in the economy as a result of Hard Fork 21/22 that has allowed the community to put stop to the abuse that has been rampant for the past 1.5 years at least.

Extractors were able to play their games for a long time, but what they might've done, is shooting themselves in the leg, because the actions of a single user aren't closed from the rest, since the reward pool is common between all users. If extractors get Steem for no value added, then why should Steem have any value either? Certain users get barely anything for their efforts, yet others get a lot just for spam.

However, the game has changed with the arrival of free downvotes, because quality content has again become a valid strategy to earn Steem. When we give value only to quality content, we create scarcity for Steem, because as we all know, quality content is scarce on the Internet. You could say, that the value of Steem starts to go up, when we actually start holding it to a higher degree, and use Steem to give it to those who deserve it. Now, it's not the whole story, since in the future it'll work as a utility token to power Smart Media Tokens, but regardless, when individuals have had to work for their Steem, they hold it to a higher degree, because we tend to hold money we have worked hard more valuable than the same amount we get for free, unlike the easy comes, easy goes mentality of an extractor. Those who value their Steem, will also make the chain more robust for long-term.

We are now back on track with making proof-of-brain a legit concept as it was meant to be from the beginning, we just ended up on a bit of a sidetrack, for couple of years. But shit happens. Steem is still a toddler that is learning to walk, but it is learning from its own mistakes as we are seeing with the recent economic changes that are making the ecosystem healthier.

I think we are on a pivotal point, where the consequences of the old economy are going to daunt us for a while, but when the damage gets undone, little by little, I'm expecting the price to follow. This is why I've been talking so much about Steem to my friends, because they can catch a ticket to a potential rocketship before the majority even realizes that it is being built. I feel it is my duty to at least make them aware of this thing that is going on here. I don't wanna be that guy who didn't even try to talk about this when I had the knowledge and vision, I'd like my friends to be able to benefit from the possibility, too. Of course, "there's possibility that it all goes to dust", but if I thought of it as a very likely scenario, I wouldn't be very enthusiastic about Steem at all. I have my own money backing my words. But of course, only that money should be invested that one is ready to lose.

It is all quite complicated for my friends, and I can't blame them since it is basically my condensed 2-year-experience that I'm feeding them, so it takes a while to digest, but my friends are smart ones, and they have had to admit that it is very interesting indeed; decentralized currency, Web 3.0, monetization of personal data, the upcoming feature to create custom tokens (SMTs) on the Steem blockchain, and so on.

@exyle recently posted his Powerup Statistics according to which the stake locked in as Steem Power has increased from 200.3 million to 201.5 million since August 31st. In other words: more Steem is getting powered up than powered down, which is aligned with my observations with people powering up left and right – I am one of those people. Also, the liquid Steem that was added to the market during 31st of August and 14th of September was only 100k instead of the 1.1 million that it was in the two week period before the latest one. If the current trend holds, I'm expecting that the following two weeks we could see a reversal and see the liquid STEEM decreasing from the market, which means that we could get some positive price change after a long time.

It is not only my word, but statistics that are also backing my sentiment, or at least they are not contradicting what I think is taking place. The Hard Fork has been live only for few weeks after all, but the signs are promising.

Long ramble short, I did manage to lure couple of friends to Steem since they literally get a free account from me. What I also told them was about the possibility to use Steem Power to make them more Steem – while being beneficial for the platform – even if they didn't have the time or will to be actively curating content themselves. Yes, I told them how they can delegate to @curangel and outsource curation to us, manual curators (me being one of them) that look for under rewarded content, while receiving dividends for their delegated Steem Power but also supporting the concept of proof-of-brain to create value for Steem.

In fact, I noticed that my friend, @mihkhel, just delegated 340 Steem Power to @curangel. And another friend I made an account just today: @doctorofdoctors. What I also did, was to sell them some of my own liquid Steem for the market price so that they don't have to go through the hoops and loops of acquiring it through exchanges themselves. They are not much of content producers – yet at least – so don't expect intro posts from them. Though in the off chance they do one, you'll see my resteem of it. In any case, I think I've achieved a small victory with my efforts, I'm pretty happy :)