As much as I love the original concept that STEEM brought to life, I feel like I'm the only one that questions current trend of all the steemit clones and the entire tokenization that is currently going on with the Steem-Engine. I'm having a real hard time putting an actual value on it all.
"Why is it worth that much and where does the Money come From?"
Many people struggle at first to understand what gives Bitcoin its value, once you understand and 'get over it' there is the second layer which are the altcoins. Steemit which 'pays its users" in particular is often a hard one to grasp. I honestly still see it as somewhat of a Ponzi structure that would collapse if no new people would come in buying Steem to earn more steem. The many Dapps on the platform along with the 'zero fees' instant transactions give it a real use case and so would the SBD function if it was not broken as shown during both the bull and bear market.
Steemit Clones
There are plenty of them out there already like Golos and Whaleshares and recently Sprtshub & pocketnet (@btb affiliate link), ... with many Steemit users cross-post their content to maximize the post2mine rewards they are getting. Add something as Snax.one and everything quickly gets overly complicated.
The only platform I cross-post on is Scorum. The Major reason for this is because they offer an actual product (Betscorum) that can potentially give a real use case and value to the SCR token. (If only Devs would realize this) If they gave it some support and manage to make it into something that can be used by bettors there is an actual reason to buy their token which should increase the price based on Supply and Demand. Despite everything, I still see Scorum as one of the only viable Steemit clones right now and it's not because of the blogging aspect.
Steem-Engine Tokens
This is where it creates an all different layer and I'm having a real hard time buying into it honestly. I love the idea that it's possible to create a separate layout where only certain posts get shown and even the idea of having tokens like the PALcoin I can entertain. The major issue I have though is that there seems to be nothing backing up these tokens aside from people believing they are worth something and buying them to earn more of them. From my Understanding, the value of PAL is backed up by the fact that they can be swapped for Steemit Upvotes (Similar to Actifit). However, its marketcap of over 2 Million Dollars only represents ~50$ in daily Steemit Upvote value.
By now there are hundreds of different tokens already on Steem-engine and it feels impossible to keep up and know what's real or not. sportstalk.social recently also was created for Sports-Related blogging on Steemit.
Tags On Steemit
Content discovery has been an issue for a long time already and this trend of alternate interfaces requiring a tag makes it even more impossible. Most users can use any kind of upvote they can get pretty much leaving them no choice but to give up proper tags for those. With only 5 tags available and so many alternate interfaces, it will get really hard.
Virtual Miners
This seems to be the newest trend and goes even a step further. Buying a coin that mines a coin. So basically you have...
Dollars -> Bitcoin -> STEEM -> PALcoin -> PALminer -> PALcoin -> STEEM -> Bitcoin -> Dollars -> Things you can buy.
There are always layers added like that movie inception / "coinception". Am I the only one that feels like this is all turning into something of a Fugazi. It is already quite the challenge to understand how Steem works but this all creates another layer of complicated.
SBC Coin?
I always liked the idea of having communities on Steemit. Currently, it's quite the challenge though because it's everyone on their own trying to maximize what they get out of it. When first starting the SBC it seemed impossible to have members upvote and support each other. If somehow it was possible to have an interface only SBC members can use and a native token that is directly linked to the Steem price somehow making it so only SBC members can be upvoted with that SP could open up some real possibilities of creating a real community. I'm not sure if that is currently possible with steem-engine though.
Sustainability
Right now everyone seems to be glad they are getting all kinds of tokens that can currently be sold for real money. It all feels like being a bit lost in denial though and I ask myself if it's all sustainable the answer from how I understand things is unfortunately not at all. Steem itself already has huge issue value wise and has dropped all the way to place 73 in Coinmarketcap. I can not imagine all these clones and sub-coin having a real future right now unless they are backed up by something or have an actual real use case like on Scorum.
I would love to hear what others think about all these developments...
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