SteemMag – Steemit’s Weekend Digest (MEGA EDITION) #7: Falling Prices and Superchargers of Steem: Chats with The Lazlo of Steem, Creators of SteemPay, RadioSteem and FirstBlood.io ….. The Man behind SteemDrive Campaign…….and lots more

It's with great pleasure I welcome you to the seventh edition of SteemMag, a weekend digest for Steemians.

Every week, I take a look at some of the most important topics and have a chat with top Steemians who have adept views on such topics.
In case you missed it, here are links to Issue #1 , #2 , #3 , #4 , 5 and #6

This week, I will be taking a look at one of the most important topics this week – The Falling price of Steem. Several posts have been written analyzing the likely causes and how we can change this current state. The most common solution recommended was the need to find more uses of steem.. i.e besides the Steem <> BTC <> USD path. This will create further demand and increase the liquidity of Steem and SBD.

One of the biggest potentials of this happening is the exchange of Steem and SBD with physical and virtual goods.
A number of projects are being undertaken to achieve this. So SteemMag reached out to the superchargers behind this movement and had exciting chats with them.

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In page 1:
SteemMag had a chat with @capitalism, The Lazlo of Steemit ; @roelandp, the Code Machine and the creator of RadioSteem and @steve-walschot, The Creator of SteemPay

In Page 2:
In page 2, we had a chat with @thecryptodrive, the man behind the “Steem-drive billboard campaign. He takes us through some of his memorable moments so far.

We also had reached out to some selected steemians and asked them just one question. I’m sure you would fid their replies interesting and in a case, thought-provoking.

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SUPERCHARGERS OF STEEMIT

A CHAT WITH @capitalism , THE LAZLO OF STEEMIT
@capitalism is the first person to exchange a physical good (coffee) with SBD. And to kick off this special series, we thought it would be fitting to start by meeting the man who set the ball rolling.

SteemMag:
What was going through your mind driving down to the coffee shop?

@capitalism:
On the afternoon I had read a post by @donkeypong, where he wrote about the usage of Steem in the economy and related it to the early days of Bitcoin. He argued, that Steem has to become a currency for buying everyday products. While reading I remembered a recent post from @knozaki2015 about a coffee shop in Potsdam near Berlin that accepts Steem for payment. So I said to myself, that I could become the Lazlo of Steem. While driving from Berlin to the EINSTEIN coffee shop in Potsdam I was thinking: “This will be a big step for Steemit and Steem.”

SteemMag:
How does it feel being the first person to pay for a physical product using SBD?

@capitalism:
Being the person who was the first that has payed with Steemdollars for a physical product had connected me emotionally to Steemit and the Steem project. Now I’m part of it’s history. Maybe one day in the future my face will be printed on one of the Steemdollar notes.

SM:
Do you think SBDs can be used widely in physical stores in the nearest future?

@capitalism:
Steemdollars have the advantage of being a stable digital currency. Unlike to other cryptocurrencies a merchant can calculate much better with them. The real advantage of Steemdollars is in my opinion in the usage for micropayments. Because there are no fees for using it, even the smallest transactions could be made with it very fast. Some say, that most business transactions in the future will not be between humans but between machines. Steemdollars could become the main digital currency for this non-human transactions.

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Thanks @capitalism for squeezing time out of your busy schedule to have a chat with SteemMag.

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A CHAT WITH @roelandp, STEEMIT’S CODE MACHINE

@roelandp is very popular from the tools he releases consistently. Also, to track all the tools created by Steemians, he created SteemTools.com, a website officially recognized by Steemit Founders as the directory for all 3rd party apps running on the blockchain. His latest creation is RadioSteem.

SteemMag:
You are the first person to launch a virtual product in exchange for SBD... How did you conceive the idea of RadioSteem? and how has been the response of Steemians so far?

@roelandp:
Hi infovore, thanks for having me with you for this interview. RadioSteem was born out of the idea of making a 'jukebox' for Steem. I am quite developer oriented and my ideas are mostly limited by my technological knowledge (which is limited, haha :D) and I was having a litte epiphany moment during some bored dishwashing and came up with the idea of having people to transfer some money to pick a track to play on a website. Originally I wanted to build this around a web-based Youtube Embed API Player, but then it wouldn't be in sync, like a jukebox would be. So then I converted it into a Radio broadcast where everyone listens to the same (part) of a song.

About the response: yes, it has been great, especially during the days on the frontpage! Now the listener rate has lowered by quite a bit some although I think another great initiative by @fyrstikken 'SteemSpeak' is embedding / rebroadcasting RadioSteem on their Teamspeak channel. So I am looking into ways to promote RadioSteem and have some help from this promoteam ;) LOL. Some even suggested to have @radiosteem in the menu of the Steemit.com website, I like that idea :)

SM:
Which areas/industries do you see the likely acceptance of steem and SBD in the future?

@roelandp:
Especially with intermediates such as Blocktrades and Blockpay the entry barriers to implementing virtual currencies as payment method are lowered to 'zero hassle-the-hoff'.

So at first bigger e-payment providers could start offering Steem in their Virtual Currency Portfolio and therefore I see webshops leveraging the payment options of their payment provider as the first place where we can see Steem to be implemented as accepted payment method. I run a small (shitty) webshop myself with my gf and we do offer Bitcoin as payment method, and would Steem be provided by our payment provider, I would switch it on immediately.

SM:
What in your opinion are those things that have to be put in place to ensure virtual marketplace and stores accept steem and SBD?

@roelandp:
I only see limits in technology at the moment: Currently it is not (so) easy to checkout through the steem website. Initiatives like SteemPay make it easier to integrate Steempayments into webshops, but I think mostly the checkout on Steemit should be simplified: Enable webshops to prefill the 'transfer' fields: to, amount, memo so it gets as easy as paying with Paypal.

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Keeping coding man. You rock @roelandp. And thanks for taking the time to give the replies and help with formatting. :)

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A chat with @steve-walschot, the creator of SteemPay

SteemMag:
What's Steempay and who are the potential users?

@steve-walschot:
Steempay can be considered as an intermediate for processing transactions on the Steem network. It does not handle the transactions by itself, meaning there is 0 risk to end users funds. The sourcecode driving Steempay is also open sourced, so anyone can run it's own decentralized payment processor.

It can be used for accepting donations anywhere, for example as a button inside a post comment, to accepting merchant payments where the merchant can use the callbacks and unique ID's to process a transaction from start to finish, like any regular closed source payment provider does, acting like you would accept PayPal for example.

SM:
What inspired you to create Steempay and how has been the journey been so far?

@steve-walschot:
Every time a new cryptocurrency rises, I’ve seen malicious webwallets or payment providers popup as well. To prevent this, i wanted to create an opensourced, decentralized application capable on running on even the lowest shared webhosting platform to prevent this from happening. It had only a few requirements, including being transparent, user friendly, 100% risk free, and have a 0 fee businessmodel.

Only on such conditions is a new cryptocurrency able to grow without any scammy stories from some website who stole user funds. The journey has been a rollercoaster. I've met up with some really nice and skilled people on Steemit who helped me with my development. One of them is @cass who spend countless hours creating all the UI work, and funding the startup.

Steempay took many, many hours of development, and having close to no sleep due to combining my contribution here with my regular day job as a security auditor.

SM:
As a security expert, what is your opinion on the current state of Steemit, and what are those steps you've put in place to protect steemians - Steempay's potential users?

@steve-walschot:
Steemit is still in Beta phase. This means, bugs can still occur. There are some known security issues, but like any website, it's up to the users to have a common sense. A good post about user security can be found right here. I do know that the development team is always fast on patching found bugs, so the platform itself seems protected by aware users.

SM:
You made an outcry a few weeks ago on how Steemit under-appreciates developers… Do you still hold that opinion?

@steve-walschot:
I still hold that opinion. There are more aspects about feeling appreciated than only the financial side of things. My suggestion is that the people reading this interview have a look at two of my posts regarding this subject to understand why i'm holding that opinion.
Many people seem to forget that developing 'a thing' is a very time and money consuming activity, compared to someone who is just blogging a story. Interesting stuff to read on why i have this opinion can be found here and here.

SteemMag:
What next for Steempay?

@steve-walschot:
Steempay is only the beginning of a wide platform of payment related tools. In the very near future, more tools will be released, including a standalone mobile wallet for easy payments and transactions. The list of things to release is huge, and my motivation to keep on developing STEEM related tools and utilities is even bigger.

To cover the running costs, server hosting, development time, .... I’ve posted an application on becoming a STEEM witness. It would really help me if everyone reading this article supports me as a Steem witness by reading my application post and follow the instructions to upvote me as a witness.

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Thanks @steve-walschot for taking the time to do this. Looking forward to the next roll-out of new features. All the best!

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Check out page 2 for more interesting chats and revelations.
Page 2