Don’t Buy Crypto, Earn Crypto

Andreas Antonopolous is often referred to as the godfather of Bitcoin. He refers to himself as akin to the guy/gal at the front of a Walmart who welcomes you to the store and offers some friendly advice to help you go where you need to go.

I was listening to this talk he gave where he was answering a few questions from the audience. Something that sticks out to many of us in crypto is the part when he says to not buy Bitcoin.

As one of the thought leaders in the crypto space and proponents of Bitcoin/crypto adoption, why would he tell people not to buy Bitcoin? Is there something wrong with buying Bitcoin? If nobody bought BTC, then wouldn’t we have a price crisis?

This is something that all of us on Steem can easily relate to, in my opinion. When I try to onboard people who have no experience with crypto into the Steem ecosystem, I offer them free money.

Free money in the form of setting them up with a Steem account and then offering them upvotes when they do certain things, like make their first post about something. Now that I run SteemLeo, I have a lot more tools at my disposal and can even offer LEO bounties and STEEM bounties to people I bring on board. It’s less about making $10 or whatever I decide to give them and more about gamifying the process.

A lot of people want a fun way to make something that they care about — more money. They also have a piqued interest in crypto because they’re constantly hearing the word Bitcoin in the news these days. So when people inevitably call me up or I meet with the min person and they ask me how they can buy some crypto, I offer this as an alternative.

In this way, I’m bringing them in to the crypto economy without actually having them buy any crypto in the first place. In order to buy crypto, you need to go through the traditional banking system. This system is rife with corruption, absurd fees, tracking and a slew of other downsides. Simply put, buying Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency is a pain in the ass and costly in a myriad of ways.

Andreas asked an important question in this talk after saying that you shouldn’t buy Bitcoin… he asked:

“Do you buy Euros?”

For most people, the answer is clearly no. You don’t buy Euros or Dollars to live your daily life. You may buy them when you go on vacation to another country, but we’re talking about the currency you use in the here and now as you go about your daily business.

You don’t buy your local fiat currency. You earn it. You trade your skills, knowledge, time or what have you for the currency that you use to eventually exchange for food, shelter and other goods and services that enable your lifestyle.

Following this logic, we all look at BTC and other cryptocurrencies as digital money. Digital gold is often a reference point to BTC because it is not feasible to use it for small, daily purchases. Bitcoin is our long-term store of value and other cryptocurrencies that offer fast transactions and low-to-no fees are the ones we ought to use for our daily spending habits.

Earning crypto for what you do may not be the easiest thing in the world today. I can guarantee, however, that it is 100x easier to earn crypto for your skills, knowledge and labor today than it was 4 years ago. More people know about crypto now and a lot more people use it than did 4 years ago.

There are also incredible innovations, such as the Steem blockchain. Which offers us a diversified, online community of people who are all tied by one core trait: an interest in cryptocurrencies.

By using Steem, people from all walks of life and geographical means can interconnect and transact with one another. Upvotes are a kind of “tip” that you give to someone.. but there’s a whole lot more going on here. There are developers who are connecting with project leaders. There are designers who are connecting with businesses. There are freelancers who are finding work on all kinds of projects.

As @exyle often says: this is a “massive social-economic ecosystem”. A true blockchain of opportunity pandering to all matters of skill, location, age and social status.

Rather than go through the traditional banking system to constantly buy crypto, join Steem and earn it. As I said, the rewards pool is the tip of the iceberg. The real opportunity that Steem presents is the ecosystem of DApp projects, communities and businesses that empower each and every one of us to monetize our passion and earn cryptocurrency as a result. Free, fast and scalable transactions lie at the core of STEEM and allow anyone, anywhere to exchange value for value.