You are late, the revolution has already begun

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(Edited)

An article got passed across my desk talking about a potential "billion-dollar" fundraising through an ICO for a blockchain-based social media called Revolution Populi, to offer an alternative and a rival to the stranglehold on the internet held by Facebook and Google.

@appics even got a mention in the article.

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(image snipped from the article)

Revolution Populi, is founded by a Yale computer scientist David Gelernter and Rob Rosenthal, a Goldman Sachs and Wall Street veteran (sounds awesome so far) and are planning to:

this year seek to raise billions of dollars to build a blockchain-powered social network that will "give the ownership of data back to the people."

Out of curiosity, do you find it strange that Steem isn't mentioned in the article? A project that already seemingly does all the things that they are looking to do in the future, and it didn't require billions of dollars to get it off the ground. Perhaps this is where the Goldman Sachs skills of Rosenthal come in handy, making money at other people's expense.

The ICOs are questionable to launch in the US and as the article says, even projects that have complied with SEC rules and applications, are still in court battles as there is a great deal of uncertainty and grey area. In case you don't know, Steem had no ICO at all, it had a (very short) mining phase. In general, ICOs end up burning the majority of investors as the pump and dump potential is very high and, they generally leave the lion's share of the supply in very few hands, as is the case with EOS. And even with all of that backing for development, they are struggling to overcome problems like, user adoption. They do have a lot of transactions though.

"In order to take down Facebook we'll need multi-billions of dollars. The ICO will help with that and we envision some private placements as well," _Rosenthal

This seems like a money grab.

Although granted:

"The internet wasn't meant for two or three guys to take up all that data, package it and sell it,... The people who control information control the future of the world." _Gelernter

This "figurehead" seems to get what the current core problem is.
Yet, even the writer sounds very skeptical:

Future Revolution Populi users will, however, need to be convinced Gelernter and co want a digital revolution and not merely a reshuffle that puts them on top. _Bambrough

Again, this seems like a "sell the hype" set up and something that happened a lot toward the end of the 90s and caused the dotcom bubble. Thousands of vaporware projects that took hundreds of billions in total investment and never delivered. The thing with these kinds of projects is that no matter the outcome, they can claim volatility, uncertainty and a dynamic marketplace - anyone but themselves. This is perfect to reel in high risk, high reward investors.

Speaking of investing...

One of the growing trends on Steem is going to be the investment through delegation into applications and communities on Steem. This will be supercharged once SMTs come into the game to be both drivers of value and payment of value for support. As the space grows and the value increases, the variation of investment vehicles will increase and likely increasingly run out into physical world projects also. The benefit of investing through delegation is rather obvious, but just in case, it is risk-free as the delegation can be puled at any time and the principal remains in tact. The risk is in opportunity cost through support decisions as some projects will outperform others and some will fail completely.

But going back to the billion dollar money grab investment opportunity above,

"Ethereum and EOS are blockchain 1.0. We are beneficiaries of their work and we're going to advance it. Blockchain is a solution to a problem. EOS and ethereum are a solution without a problem."_Rosenthal

It is good to note that from essentially nothing, Steem has rewarded its users to the tune of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, or potentially billions depending on when they dumped in 2018. This is a project with no funding to begin with, no billions of dollars to face up to Facebook and Google yet, already has built a solution to the problem. What is missing is of course are users.

The hype they generate will hopefully be good for Steem in the long run, but I will assume for now that what will happen is that they will grow a base and then siphon off value, skimming all they can, while offering nothing of consequence to either investors or users until, death. It is the Goldman Sachs way.

The article itself can't go into much detail for as always, it is speculation and as we know, sentiment drives the market. Buy the dip and sell the hype, but I would be very wary of projects such as this and I have a feeling that this is just the start.

The ICO craze in crypto 2017 was run and driven by tech nerds and enthusiasts - the next ICO bullrun is going to be run by bankers and their networks funneling in client capital and investment funding to pump their projects up higher than Bitconnect ever reached and then, gone - like Kaiser Soze. Did you know that Steem SMTs will have ICO flexibility.

As I mentioned in my last article about many convergences coming together to meet at the point of blockchain, this article is another inflow of development that will add to the case for eventual mass adoption. And, however you look at it, crypto is moving at a much faster pace than it seems from inside and it is going to build momentum and a gravity that will pull more and more into the fold.

Many are going to be burned on the way, but those who hang on are not only in for a wild ride, but for a lot of value on the other side. Just remember that every new industry goes through a forming stage followed by high volatility. After than, it normalizes and standardizes until - users conform to the new conditions.

Mass adoption means that the volatility will be lost and so will much of the opportunity for small investors to grow far beyond their current means. The revolution of blockchain will not be delivered by a billion dollar app, it will be through a million apps created and supported by us, the user and owner.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]

Onboarding



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41 comments
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I agree that the hype will be good for us & this is encouraging to remember:

It is good to note that from essentially nothing, Steem has rewarded its users to the tune of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, or potentially billions depending on when they dumped in 2018. This is a project with no funding to begin with, no billions of dollars to face up to Facebook and Google yet, already has built a solution to the problem.

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These types of "projects" are going to be commonplace over the next couple years and while they will hurt the industry short-term, they will eventually aid in the adoption as they will drive the understanding that ownership and monetary freedom is required from people like them.

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Yup, that’s what I gathered & what I also hope :)

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Hi
I want to thank you and encourage you for all your positions that you do
I would like to ask you to help me also on the blockchain
I'm new

Follow me 🙏
@promo.bot

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Anytime Voice gets discussed Steem gets mentioned and I agree this will create conversation as well.

Great post, thanks for sharing it.

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There is so much room in the entire industry for different approaches - I hope that many of them pan out.

!ENGAGE 30

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Wow, we beat them to it at a tiny fraction of the cost :)

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I doubt that this blockchain will do anything of note. The whitepaper sounds more like a manifesto rather than a technical whitepaper. An excerpt of one of the technical bits:

We propose a novel system of using blockchain to form a “rope” of interrelated
blockchain strands, or “fibers”. The common fiber will be the financial
blockchain ledger. The surrounding fibers or strands will be the individual
personal strands of all users of the platform. Consider the event that Personal
Fiber A engages in a transaction with Person Fiber Z. This engagement forms a
knot in the common financial fiber.

Like what does that even mean? Either they are inept at talking about technical specifications or they don't know what they are talking about. I would probably bet on the second.

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The whitepaper/bluepaper are a marketing sinkhole of idealism, exaggerations, and outright lies.
How much time needs to pass before we forget these this trash piles?

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Did you read any more of it? It is pretty funny :)

!ENGAGE 30

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Wordsalad the hallmark of scammers.

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What this space needs are zealot community members that know how to act with the best interest of the entire network in mind. You can't buy loyalty.

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Loyalty is definitely earned, but it requires the loyal follower to buy-in at some point and really give it a go.

!ENGAGE 30

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The project's vission and mission is already here, steem. Perhaps, this two guys just want to make money then vanished in a thin air. I still remember way back 2017, most ICO are just scam.

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Yep, it seems that way and the whitepaper is a shambles.

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It is indeed a difference between having money or building a social media project. Money alone does not guarantee that users will follow. We already had that with Google Plus. Gone after a while. You can though buy successful startups when the cash flow is good, which was the strategy Facebook followed.

Nowadays I think the only way to get more users on Steem is to bring the price back to at least over 1 USD, which will decrease the inflation and get the attention of users outside. But for that we need investors buying enough Steem at that price level to keep it stable. Could be reason to decrease the inflation of Steem itself or delete the POB and delegate it to SMT tokens. Just a few thoughts.

Great article by the way from you @tarazkp. Enjoyed reading it and it is difficult nowadays to find postings that are worth investing the time to read it.

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Nowadays I think the only way to get more users on Steem is to bring the price back to at least over 1 USD

I agree and while I think it will go up and down significantly, it would be good to continually raise the floor price to the point that it is always going to be over a dollar as I think that is some kind of psychological barrier for many.

Could be reason to decrease the inflation of Steem itself or delete the POB and delegate it to SMT tokens. Just a few thoughts.

I think both of these things are in consideration and SMTs are going to bring in a new dynamic that could in time see the value pushed out to them anyway.

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곰돌이가 @jayplayco님의 소중한 댓글에 시세변동을 감안하여 $0.015을 보팅해서 $0.027을 지켜드리고 가요. 곰돌이가 지금까지 총 7301번 $93.192을 보팅해서 $98.359을 구했습니다. @gomdory 곰도뤼~

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This reminds me of a magazine article I read about a year ago on a flight. There was this “revolutionary crypto blockchain”, I can’t quite remember the name (probably failed already). It was apparently the FIRST and only blockchain to tokenise social media. I almost spat out my coffee at the guy sitting next to me :)

The hype they generate will hopefully be good for Steem in the long run, but I will assume for now that what will happen is that they will grow a base and then siphon off value, skimming all they can, while offering nothing of consequence to either investors or users until, death. It is the Goldman Sachs way.

..and then someone will write an article lumping Steem in with this thing and calling “them all” scams.

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..and then someone will write an article lumping Steem in with this thing and calling “them all” scams.

Haven't they already? :D

I think the solution for it is to continually go from strength to strength getting more and more public with each round. At the moment, no one seems to know we are here - something I find incredibly weird.

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what gets me is the motto they have on their image..."natural resource"!!!!
this seems like a nice marketing strategic slogan they think they're coining :))
take what back?!!!!
people have been dumping their info on the web for so long...for no reason...and they think these people are gonna take it back?! just like that!
which reminds me of a certain scheme ... back at the beginning of the 20th century... Ponzi was it? now it's digital.
nice post...tnx 4 sharing

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people have been dumping their info on the web for so long...for no reason...and they think these people are gonna take it back?! just like that!

A paradigm shift is needed in the world and those who benefit from the status quo will do all they can to hold on.

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This seems like a money grab.

A most probable conclusion...

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There are immense advantages of announcing something from a high Position, we trust them.

This investors are announcing something as new and revolutionary, without any technical knowledge, nor awareness of the current options. However, they can do that because the rest of the people are as shortsighted as them. They manage trust from their position.

Trust is important. Think how often have you dumped an incomplete product from a startup, but accepted an even more lacking version from a big player like Google, Apple, Samsung, in the hope it'll get fixed?

With steem we have the same fight. It needs to be amazing, before it can compete against the fluffy proposals from big and well funded players. That is on us to shape, and to decide how we are making this platform evolve and get better.

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Great to see your post on trending page. This is a new information to me.

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it happens occasionally and I am guessing it is better than what used to be there.

well, I hope.

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(Edited)

Considering the volatile behavior of many people, it is a complicated scale to distribute the weight.

Well, we will keep trying to improve the path because money alone does not guarantee engagement, but it is certainly a very interesting attraction.

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Well, we will keep trying to improve the path because money alone does not guarantee engagement, but it is certainly a very interesting attraction.

It is a good motivator, but very poor at changing behavior. Work ethic is still required.

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