This year I bought my brother 50 STEEM for Christmas and created an account for him ( @trygve ) without him knowing it (yet!). In this post, I want to share why I think this can be the absolute best thing we can do for the value of STEEM this season. I'll also give a short guide for a convenient way you can give a friend or a family member any amount of STEEM together with a steemit account.

Let us make STEEM the best Christmas present of the year!

Last year, it was a popular trend to give someone 1 Bitcoin for Christmas. Indeed, articles about ways to give bitcoin for Christmas was all over most of the popular crypto currency-news websites. CNBC is already at it again this year with an article pumping the idea of giving someone Bitcoin for Christmas. Now as some of you may have noticed, that same gift will be a little bit expensive to repeat this year. Luckily, there are other cryptos to give!

And it's a clever idea, for a few different reasons.

• It can be far more valuable than any other gift
• It can be fun for the person receiving it as they'll watch its changes in value throughout the year
• It can be educating as the person not previously familiar with cryptocurrency can now learn by doing
• It will promote cryptocurrency and blockchain to new people, and the token they are given in particular.

CNBC sharing a story this year on how to give Bitcoin for Christmas

So why would I like to encourage as many Steemians as possible to do the same?

The perfect time to give STEEM

The new year will be an exciting time for STEEM. SMTs will launch in early 2018 and Communities and HF20 should be right around the corner. The ability to buy STEEM with fiat currencies is also expected to be added prior to SMTs to ease the access to new tokens.

Long story short: For anyone who believes this will increase the value of STEEM, why would you not want to give it as a present?

It is a great way of promoting STEEM

Ask yourself: In the few weeks after Christmas, how many people ask you what presents you got? For most, the answer is “a lot of people”. Friends asks, other family members asks, colleagues at work asks, your hairdresser or dentist asks. Everyone asks. Now, if you’ve not been into bitcoin or cryptocurrencies before, and your son, daughter, nephew or santa gives you cryptocurrency for Christmas, how likely are you to share that with your friends just as a “fun” story? Very. So I think giving someone STEEM for Christmas will not only bring more value to the token directly (as STEEM is bought and stored), it will also be a great form of marketing.

Should STEEM also go on to increase on the new year with the launch of SMTs and other features, it will become an even greater talking point for the persons who have been given the STEEM. Will they start talking about how the christmas present they got is suddenly worth twice as much a month or two after Christmas?

Introducing "non-bloggers" to STEEM

A lot of people talk about how the network effect will make STEEM go viral. If I may be honest, I don't see that happening at the moment. Very few people I know on steemit have told anyone about it or tried to on-board new users. In the cases where they have, the outcome has usually been quite poor. When I ask people why the answer is always the same: "My friends would not want to write articles or blogs".

When you give someone STEEM for Christmas, it does not matter whether they go on to blog or become active on steemit. Just tell them to hold on to their account keys like they would for a Bitcoin wallet. @Ned made it clear with his second talk at Steemfest2 that with SMTs, he want the STEEM token to be a store of value, so let your friend or family member hold it as if it was a stock in Facebook. If they grow more curious over time about how they can make more STEEM by being active on the blockchain, or simply want to explore it further, then they can always do that later.

An added network effect

As mentioned, chances are good that they will tell some of their friends and family when asked “what did you get for Christmas?” that they received some crypto-currency, and specifically some STEEM. More so, throughout the year, whenever Bitcoin or crypto currencies comes up as a small-talk topic at their workplace or in their social circles (which is likely seeing how much it dominates the news at the moment), now they can proudly brag about how they own some cryptocurrency themselves! And when asked which token they have, they’ll of course say STEEM! If they are then asked “what the hell is STEEM?” Their answer will probably be along the lines of “oh it’s this social media that pay people in crypto currency. I don’t know much about it but my friend/son/cousin Bob says it will go to the moon”. While they themselves might not have been interested in blogging, perhaps this will get somesome of their friends interested!

Let us make this a thing!

So I would like to submit this idea as a great way to do something small to help boost the value of STEEM and thus make you richer yourself in the process. Think about it: You are going to spend some money on a Christmas present for the person anyway, why not buy some STEEM and thus help increase its value? If the person just wants to hold it, fine, now we’ve locked up some supply, which is only good. Furthermore, if they do want to go on to blog, now they’ve got the perfect story for their introduction post! One I am sure many steemians and curators will love to hear.

How to do it

This morning I decided to give it a go myself and was surprised to have everything done and finished in less than 10 minutes (account @trygve ). The simplest way I could think of to give someone who is not yet on steemit a lump sum of STEEM for Christmas was simply to make them an account using steeminvite.com. The account creation service is made by @pharesim to ease and quicken the effort of inviting new users and getting them an account. This also allows you to set up the account and transfer the desired amount of STEEM to it without ever needing to involve the person you are giving the gift to. Which of course would spoil the surprise!

All it requires is a small amount of liquid STEEM (about 0.2), some STEEM Power if you do not intend to Power Up the gift that you will give them (at least 15 would be recommended), and an email address.

Step 1: Log in to steeminvite.com with your posting key

Step 2: Click “Invite someone now” (make sure to have some liquid steem!)

Steeminvite.com is a convenient site that helps you send an invitation to a friend to join steem, or allow you to create new steem accounts with a few quick steps

I suggest you make the person a new email account (easy!) and then use steeminvite to send an invitation to that email. To send an invitation, you should have at least 0.2 Liquid STEEM in your steemit wallet as well as some spare STEEM Power to delegate. Note that some STEEM Power will be necessary for the account to have the needed bandwidth to make posts and comments. Delegations can of course be removed later from your main account.

Step 3: Enter their email address, ideally one that you have made for them yourself.

Step 4: Go to your email and hit the link provided by steeminvite.

Note: Don’t bother too much with the account name, if the STEEM is held in “Savings”, the person can always move it to a new account that they create by signing up themselves through steemit.com later on. Alternatively, they can keep the STEEM on the account and delegate it to their new account thus adding a new layer of security (this is done by many people on steemit).

Step 5: Double, triple and quadruple save their password and generated keys!

Step 6: Confirm the account creation on steeminvite.com from your own account using your accounts Active Key (this is needed because STEEM is moved from your account to the new one, which currently belong to you anyway).

Last Step: Transfer the desired amount of STEEM to the new account either from your own or from an exchange. Power it up or store it in Savings.

And there you go! Now all you have left to do is find an appropriate Christmas card to go along with the account keys which you can give in paper form in a sealed envelope or on a memory stick. Perhaps you could use a STEEM-themed Wallpaper made by @royalfinest , or see his guide to making your own!

Make sure to take a picture with your surprised friend or family member to post yourself on steemit afterwards. Who knows? Perhaps you’ll end up making a profit on your Christmas present for the first time!

I wish you a Steemy Christmas and hope you'll make this a happy new year for STEEM and for the person you will get onboard!

@fredrikaa