Steem- What are you all about?

"A blockchain based social media platform" that rewards users for creating content, now that's interesting! Could this new tool be the new path for the peak of user generated content that has been disrupting many industries like retail and marketing?

The platform feeds its underlying cryptocurrency "STEEM”; Fuelled by the generated content, more STEEM tokens are created, the correct term: mined. Those are distributed in the form of different types of tokens; 'Steem Dollars' and 'Steel Power'. Unlike other crytptocurrencies, where mining can only be done via computers solving complex mathmatecial problems. Moreover, users are not only rewarded tokens for blogging and creating posts, but even for voting and commenting on other posts. 

It is only the start, but it is definitely gaining momentum, with a shocking market cap of almost £380 million (ranked #16), and growth of %1500 in two months. It's gaining absurd following as user base is growing, now with around 170,000 users. STEEM is considered a top cryptocurrency to watch by the crypto community.

Now with all this hype comes controversy of course. With some digging, it is quite clear that there is a general consensus of mistrust and doubt about the blockchain and the platform. In specific, there is a lot of convolution in regards to STEEM’s founder developers: Ned Scott and Dan Larimer, who previously founded Bitshare. Dan Larimer has said to have 4 unsuccessful attempts at cryptocurrency projects and has even been called a "scammer" by some people in the bitcoin space. Larimer has apparently left STEEM in March this year and launched a new cryptocurrency "EOS", in favour of working on a different project out of the social platform area, or so has been said. The core STEEM blockchain has been criticised to be somewhat "centralised", giving the developers and their chosen few friends majority supply and control over the currency and therefore the platform, curating and censoring the content.

Another point raised is that although any user can vote for content, a typical user's vote is worthless unless they acquire a supply of STEEM tokens, meaning that a user's influence corresponds to the amount of STEEM tokens they have in their account. Well to me that makes total sense, it's pretty clear what you have to do, you've got to start somewhere, but you'll get there, like everything else in life.  

The fact remains that a lot of users have been rewarded a good sum of 'tokens'. And have been publicising how much money they have made. for example, Jeff Berwick, who has a top account on steemit @dollarvigilante has said to have made $15,000 for his first ever post introducing himself and his blog/podcast. This account now highly promotes Steemit in every post, a lot of people find that a bit odd to say the least. Genuine, altered, or paid to do so, I am intrigued and hence trying it out for myself! I will then give a better, more informed update of my experience and thoughts about it. 

At this point I can say that it Could be that the initial core code was faulty, but in my opinion Steemit is definitely not a scam! In the case of the founder's other failed projects, we all know that Success only comes after failure and overcoming the many forks in the road. Now It's been over a year since inception, changes have definitely been made and the platform has been running well and attracting more and more users. I have to say though, UI and UX wise, yes definitely the platform is not at its best, and the App neither looks or works too well (I've experienced a lot of freezes and content disappearing!) but with the amount of users interested and the amount of STEEM tokens these users are generating through the creation of content, the platform can easily be developed further and ultimately become a top player in the Social Media space. Although I am new to the cryptocurrency game, and in no way am an expert, I would highly recommend buying STEEM tokens and holding them long term as this new bubble is expanding, and the returns will be high!! Think of anything .com pre internet bubble burst!! How much money would you have made if only you rode the boom?