The Endgame for LinkedIn Is Coming

After two years, Microsoft still hasn’t delivered on its grand vision for LinkedIn. And it may never do so.

Every time this LinkedIn commercial pops up on YouTube

I am reminded of how low the company has fallen to. High school standard slides, accompanied by stock music purchased from Shutterstock.How did a company like this managed to sell itself for US$27 billion?—?at a 50% premium over its last traded share price!Dumb-ass buyer? Nope, it was Microsoft, under Satya Nadella’s leadership as CEO.

Nadella is credited with turning around Microsoft, after Steve Ballmer’s US$7.9 billion mistake buying Nokia back in September 2013. (The money was pretty much written off by Microsoft in July 2015.) But did Nadella make the same mistake with LinkedIn, except it would be 3.4x bigger?A classic case of turning a loser into a winner… for one person.

The only clear winner in the whole deal is Reid Hoffman, the founder and Chairman of LinkedIn. Just four months before the acquisition, LinkedIn’s share price plunged 44% in one day after the company announced a bad quarter and lowered forecasts. Hoffman lost over a billion dollars in his net worth, which was about one third of his wealth then. Fast forward to June 13, 2016, LinkedIn announced a merger deal with Microsoft. The stock price shot up by nearly 50%. Hoffman’s net worth went back up by US$800 million. Four months after the merger was completed Hoffman also joined Microsoft’s Board.

‘Inconsistency’ would be the word

By all measures LinkedIn wasn’t a great company; even though it kept boasting about its user growth. Having hundreds of millions of users is pointless if you can’t effectively monetize it. In fact, it becomes a huge cost to keep the platform running and prevent bad user experience due to capacity issues at scale. LinkedIn’s historical ability to make money for its investors is as choppy as its stock price.

But would it be fair to conclude this without taking into account market conditions? Well, the best comparison to LinkedIn would be Facebook, which was listed almost exactly a year after LinkedIn. Since then its earnings and stock price has steadily trended up, whereas LinkedIn was a constant whip-saw.Was LinkedIn’s turbulent performance bad luck, bad times or bad management?

Where were the problems?

In the aftermath of that 44% stock price plunge, much was written about what LinkedIn’s problems were. History is history, but let’s look at four which are pertinent to our discussion later.

?Jack of all trades.
LinkedIn had?—?and still has?—?multiple branded apps: Job Search, SlideShare, Learning, Recruiter, Sales Navigator and something call ‘Elevate”, which purports to “build your reputation by sharing smart content”. A news and publishing app called Pulse was integrated into the main app in May 2017. The idea of selling relevant services to your user base is good, but not if you can’t do it well.

?Bad at integration and scaling.
LinkedIn acquired many companies to introduce various services, but wasn’t so good at making them work. In July 2014 it acquired Bizo for US$175 million to build a B2B lead generation product. That product was scrapped less than a year later. CEO Jeff Weiner said it took “more resources than anticipated to scale”. In April 2015 LinkedIn made its largest ever acquisition?—?US$1.5 billion for Lynda.com, an online video training provider. In Q1 2016 Weiner again “acknowledged that integrating and scaling Lynda will require greater investments than previously anticipated”.

?Ads were expensive and user-unfriendly.
Natalie Halimi, a marketer with 10 years of experience, wrote about LinkedIn ads back in July 2014. She used the headers “high CPC, poor dashboard, poor analysis” and concluded “ LinkedIn need to reassess their pricing strategy to provide better ROI for advertisers”. I too have tried using LinkedIn Ads and compared them to Facebook, Twitter and Google. I have to say I completely agree with Halimi.

?Overvalued, full stop.
Just before the plunge, LinkedIn shares were trading at 50x forward earnings. Twitter was at 30x, Facebook 34x and Google 21x. It was one of the most expensive stocks in tech. Even after the plunge, analysts felt that LinkedIn should be trading at 30% lower to reflect fair value. But despite knowing all these, Microsoft decided to acquire LinkedIn… at a 50% premium.

Why?Microsoft’s prescription: remedy or mistake? In an internal email to employees after the acquisition was announced, Nadella claimed he wants to create “a vibrant network that brings together a professional’s information in LinkedIn’s public network with the information in Office 365 and Dynamics”. By doing this, he said Microsoft would then be able to detect the project the user was working on and help them connect with “experts” via LinkedIn to assist them with the task or serve them relevant articles in their LinkedIn news feed.

This begs two very important questions.

One, anyone who uses LinkedIn frequently will know profiles are hard to trust these days. Many are fluffy or even completely fake. How would the experts be qualified? Two, digging into users’ projects provokes personal privacy and corporate secrecy issues. Microsoft tracking what their users do in Office 365? Sounds like a class action legal suit to me.

Nobody I know in big corporates or government organizations has gushed to me yet about how LinkedIn has served up great articles or experts for whatever they are working on in Office 365. I doubt that vision is going according to plan.

The irony is more than thick

Irony 1: If Nadella’s strategy to attract even more Office 365 users via integrating LinkedIn works, it may face monopoly lawsuits yet again. When Microsoft introduced Office 365, it was to battle Google’s G Suite which appealed to smaller businesses with its cheaper pricing and cloud-based subscription model.

It is succeeding. According to a 2018 Bitglass survey, Office 365’s global market share has gone up to 56.3% from 7.7% in just four years. G Suite has stayed at about 25% since 2016.

But…

Success in this strategy will just create the same old legal issue Microsoft had always battled?—?MONOPOLY. Irony 2: Why wasn’t it Google that bought LinkedIn instead? Here’s an interesting tidbit: LinkedIn’s employees were actually using G suite?—?the whole bag: Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Hangouts, Docs, Sheets…?—?before the Microsoft acquisition.

So…

Irony 3: Two years after the integration begun, the Microsoft team was still in the process of moving the LinkedIn team over to Office 365. How could Microsoft possibly convert its worldwide enterprise users to a sophisticated combination of Office 365, Dynamics and LinkedIn when it is struggling itself to move the LinkedIn folks over to Office 365?

And so LinkedIn is facing integration problems yet again with big acquisitions, except now the financial burden is on Microsoft…Could Microsoft succeed as the (super generous) white knight? The acquisition was completed in December 2016. It’s been more than two years. How has it been? According to Microsoft the acquisition is a big success. It has managed to grow LinkedIn’s revenue quarter after quarter since. But revenue is all Microsoft ever talks about in its press releases.

Why?

LinkedIn is still operating at a loss for Microsoft due to the large amount of intangible assets it has to write off on the purchase?—?US$7.89 billion to be exact. In FY 2017, LinkedIn brought in US$2.3 billion of revenue for Microsoft. But after amortizing US$866 of intangible assets, Microsoft made an operating loss of US$924 million on LinkedIn. In FY 2018, the situation was the same. Despite LinkedIn’s revenue more than doubling to US$5.3 billion, after amortization of US$1.5 billion Microsoft recorded an operating loss of US$987 million.

The amortization will continue for another 20 years based on Microsoft’s FY 2018 report. Most of the impact will be felt in the first seven years, after which the amount tapers off to about US$107 million per year. But here’s the REAL kicker. Remember the part earlier where Microsoft paid a 50% premium for a company that was hardly making any profits before the acquisition? Well, that means it pretty much bought a company based on conceptual ‘Goodwill’ and not actual value?—?US$16.8 billion worth to be exact.

In layman terms, what this means for Microsoft is, even after the US$7.89 billion has been completely amortized, it is still making a loss of US$16.8 billion on the acquisition. It doesn’t take any more number crunching to realize that Microsoft has a huge task ahead of it to prove the price it paid for LinkedIn was worth it. And I think Microsoft’s shareholders have came to the same conclusion.

Put your money where your mouth is

In October 2018, Microsoft said in a regulatory filing that activity on LinkedIn will be one of six factors which will be used to determine how much performance stocks Nadella and four other top company executives get. Performance stocks accounted for one-third of Nadella’s compensation in FY 2018. The tracking will take place over a 3-year period and the payout will only be given in 2020. At first glance binding Microsoft’s key leadership to the performance of LinkedIn made perfect sense. After all, it was the largest acquisition the company had ever made.

But consider this:

When the acquisition was first announced, Weiner said that Nadella promised him LinkedIn would be operated as a “fully independent entity”. Well, Weiner reports directly to Nadella under the terms of the deal. How independent can your decisions be when your boss’s bonus depends on you now? So it is indeed strange that this compensation scheme was not imposed on Hoffman and Weiner but Nadella and his C-suite instead. Even more strange is why Microsoft’s compensation board weren’t concerned about user activity not translating into actual profits for LinkedIn.

The metric being used is bizarre. Microsoft will count the “number of times logged-in members visit LinkedIn, separated by 30 minutes of inactivity”. So that’s basically how often me and other LinkedIn members open our LinkedIn mobile app or visit its website. How does that translate into LinkedIn being able to make more money? Other than perhaps create the chance to deliver more ad impressions?

But Cost Per Impression (CPM) is already pretty competitive compared to rival platforms according to one study for 2019. It is Cost Per Click (CPC) that is still stubbornly high for LinkedIn.Indeed, there is no transparency as to how LinkedIn’s revenue has grown quarter after quarter since the acquisition. LinkedIn is now reported as a product under Microsoft’s ‘Productivity and Business Processes’ segment with few financial details given. In any case, the pressure is on for Nadella and his team. 2020 is coming soon, and it could be either pay day, or pain day.

Article Produced By
Lance Ng

I write about business, technology, society and people around the world… Investor | Entrepreneur | Thinker…

https://medium.com/@lancengym/the-endgame-for-linkedin-is-coming-31d4a8b2a76

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Ex-Soviet State Uzbekistan Considers New Crypto Move

Ex-Soviet State Uzbekistan Considers New Crypto Move

Uzbekistan cash.
The country’s new Digital Trust fund is studying raising funds via security token offerings.

The former Soviet state of Uzbekistan, finally under new leadership after decades of Islam Karimov running the show, has discovered cryptocurrency at a time when no one seems to want it. No, they are not launching a cryptocurrency like Venezuela’s Petro coin or the breakaway province of Abkhazia’s coin plans over in the nation of Georgia. New president Shavkat Mirziyoyev says crypto is legitimate tender, at least for cryptocurrency traders. He legalized exchanges in the Central Asian nation in September and created a fund that same month to invest in blockchain-related startups and research and development called Digital Trust. Other than being an investment vehicle for new technology, Digital Trust is stepping on the crypto bandwagon in trying to bring security token offerings (STO) to a country few in the crypto world have even heard of.

Uzbekistan may not be on anybody’s radar, but its foray into STOs are another testament to crypto being akin to a potential godsend for raising capital in emerging and frontier nations like Uzbekistan. “We are looking very carefully at STO and just starting to build the framework for it,” says Bobir Akilkhanov, investment director at Digital Trust. “We understand that ICOs were a hype tool for investors, with no assets to back up those coins. STOs are more of a legitimate investment because you can tokenize your assets. We are working on the laws to build the market. We don’t want to hurry through it and make all these mistakes and have something that is not useful.”Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev launched a blockchain fund in September, two years into his presidency. Crypto exchanges and trading is legal in Uzbekistan. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko) photo credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS

He did not disclose the funds assets under management. And they have no STOs or cryptocurrencies in the portfolio. Right now, this is just Uzbekistan testing the blockchain waters, which is separate from the muddy crypto waters, of course. Neighboring country Kazakhstan is doing the same with blockchain so as not to miss anything. One of their core holdings in the fund is Delta City, a large scale real estate project in Tashkent with all the smart-city bells and whistles … and no tokens.

Uzbekistan traditionally attracts investors from South Korea, China and Russia. For crypto and blockchain, the ones showing interest are from China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Singapore. STOs are sort of like the grown-up, Wall Street-ish version of the initial coin offering, the cryptocurrency market that ushered in the euphoria for crypto between 2016 and 2017 until that bubble burst in 2018. Coindesk, one of the premier publishers of crypto/blockchain news, hasn’t published a story about an ICO since December 5, and before that … November 14. If cryptocurrency investing is ever to professionalize, it needs traditional investors, and traditional investors seem to prefer the STO.

Digital Trust says it ideally wants to see if they can raise money for Uzbekistan assets in STO offerings, either belonging to private or public companies. The fund is currently looking to establish partnerships with leading blockchain service providers where they can test drive a homegrown STO market.Workers operate sewing machines at the Platinum Moynaq Cotton Cleaning Factory in Uzbekistan in March 2018. Proponents of cryptocurrency say that poor countries will have an easier time raising money from foreign investors via cryptocurrency. Photographer: Taylor Weidman/Bloomberg photo credit: © 2018 Bloomberg Finance LP© 2018 Bloomberg Finance LP

“Companies can raise money the old-fashioned way too, through bond offerings. But STOs are an interesting avenue because it makes some of your state assets more readily accessible to foreign investors,” says Igor Khmel, CEO and founder of BankEx in New York, a fintech company providing STO services. “For the same reason you are using a smartphone instead of a rotary phone, STOs are faster, cheaper and more efficient because of the blockchain-based securitization of assets. They are easier than an initial public offering, easier than venture funding and more accessible than the bond market."

Some are suggesting that STOs could help $1 trillion of assets migrate onto various blockchain platforms before the end of the decade. Like the dying ICO market, STOs have true believers. “If it plays out the way I think … it is likely to be the greatest investment opportunity humanity has seen in this era,” CEO of Polychain Capital in San Francisco, said during a panel discussion at the Web3 Summit in Berlin in October.Olaf Carlson-Wee, founder and chief executive officer of Polychain Capital. STOs are “the greatest investment opportunity” in crypto. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg photo credit: © 2017 Bloomberg Finance LP© 2017 Bloomberg Finance LP

According to a report in Longhash, a blockchain news and information portal with offices in Shanghai and Hong Kong, OpenFinance Network and tZERO are STO-focused exchanges set to offer a flood of listings in 2019. Coinbase recently acquired a broker-dealer license and an alternative trading system license, along with a registered investment advisor license, out of the expectation that cryptocurrency investing and fundraising is far from dead. Binance plans to launch an STO trading platform with the Malta Stock Exchange. And in Uzbekistan, BankEx is the early entrant in an otherwise tiny crypto market. Digital Trust brought them there.

“The main thing about these markets is you have to have open networks, which makes it kind of borderless, so it doesn’t matter where you are anyway,” says Diego Gutierrez Zaldivar, founder of RSK Labs in Argentina and a well-known bitcoin guru throughout Latin America. “Blockchain is just the combustion engine to all these things related to cryptocurrency, but you need the full car. You need an internet of value for all of these investment plans to come to fruition,” he says, adding that countries where economies are volatile are more apt to see crypto thrive over time, so long as the infrastructure exists to make it happen.

The Uzbek currency, the som, is relatively stable. It was allowed to free-float under the new government and lost over half of its value in the process. But since September 2017, it’s been relatively steady between 8,000 and 8,300 to the dollar. Their GDP growth rate has been over 5% since 2004, according to the World Bank. It’s poorer than India, with a GDP per capita of less than $1,600. It would take the average Uzbek a year to buy half a Bitcoin.

“Our goal is to starting our STO platform in niche markets, or niche regions like Uzbekistan,” says Khmel. BankEx is also present in the crypto havens of South Korea and Japan. They are moving into Thailand mainly for digital-asset custody. “Uzbekistan is different. We will be doing STOs there. The government wants to become a blockchain-centric government,” he says. “Each country has something unique to offer, I think. They can become one of the main markets in the region for companies considering STOs. We are taking the first steps with them to make it happen.”

Article Produced By
Kenneth Rapoza

Senior Contributor

Markets I write about business and investing in emerging markets.

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

All About Security Tokens Landscape, With The Founder Of Polymath

All About Security Tokens Landscape, With The Founder Of Polymath

Security tokens are an intriguing development,

that function as a bridge between blockchain networks and legacy financial assets. Following the rapid and blessed decline of the ICO, security tokens – particularly the security token offering (STO) – have started gathering momentum among financial institutions, service providers and regulators.

To understand STO's betters, I recently sat with Trevor Koverko, founder of Polymath who offers a look at the current state, and future, of security tokens. In 2017, Trevor wanted to tokenize a private equity fund he was running, but found it hard to do for an existing financial security, especially on the technical and legal side. This drove him to launch a security token launchpad for himself and other STO projects. He grew to raise around 60 million USD in funding.

YV: Can you provide some context on the ST-20 security token standard, for the audience that may be unfamiliar with what exactly a security token is and how they function?

TK: If you look at how important the standardisation of ERC-20 was for Ethereum, it's clear that security tokens similarly need a common set of functions that we all agree upon. Even the NYSE had to standardize its tech stack before it could truly scale. Built into the ST20 standard are transfer restrictions such that only authorized individuals can buy, sell, and hold the token. There are features that restrict trading for a defined period of time, or that limit the number of shares any one individual can hold.

YV: What do you view as the current stage of the security token market?

TK: I believed STO's would overtake ICO's, but didn't expect adoption to happen so fast.

The infrastructure needed to support things like institutional-grade custody, licensed security token exchanges, and regulatory clarity is progressing faster than I could have imagined. Many players are creating tools for this ecosystem. 2019 is on pace to be a pivotal year for security tokens.

YV: What can security tokens add to financial assets?

TK: One of several things that security tokens bring to the table, is that they unlock liquidity. LP shares, startup equity and even fine art are all typically illiquid assets. STO's have the potential to unlock this value. They can make small, private non-liquid securities more accessible for everyone.

The technology is open and transparent, so international trading becomes trivial. It’s open 24/7. It’s the concept of a global, national agnostic market that never closes. It’s faster and cheaper to make trades. It’s the idea that security tokens are programmable, whereas many legacy stocks are not. You can command security tokens to do things like automating corporate governance, proxy voting and dividends — all perfectly documented on the immutable blockchain

YV: What regulatory progress is being made with security tokens?

TK: STO's are simply securities. They live in an upgraded format than a traditional security, but they are still a security.

We are fortunate that financial securities have very clear definitions, with enormous bodies of case law and precedents behind them, that tell us what the SEC considers a security. So, you have to follow all the registration forms, secondary trading rules, and for most offering types, investors need to be accredited. The beauty of the blockchain is that code can automate a lot of those rules.

YV: Is there a specific financial asset that you think will initially emerge from the rest with STO's?

TK: We are very bullish on the ownership of funds tokenizing – think LP shares, REIT units and so on. I’m seeing many people choose real estate as a first mover, and I tend to agree.

However, I like to take inspiration from other decentralized projects that have reached scale -for example with Ethereum. I noticed the team didn’t choose which vertices to attack first – instead they opened it up for the world, and let the market decide how to use it. It was community driven. Like Ethereum, we are going to see a lot of small companies that need the money, or struggle to raise capital traditionally turn to STO. But once bigger, well-funded projects see the possible benefits of tokenization, they won’t be far behind.

YV: Ethereum is also very developer-driven. How can more developers be drawn into the STO market?

TK: An active and engaged community of developers isn't just important for decentralized projects, it literally is the project.

That is what made Ethereum an unstoppable force, the 30k plus of volunteer crypto engineers that self-organized within dozens of meetups globally. Without an army of talented, open-source developers, it hard to make consistent progress in this rapidly evolving ecosystem. It's important to incentivize for-profit developers to build products on top of your platform.

They are expensive and elusive compared to other professions, and the 2017 bull market certainly did cause some dislocation in terms of scarcity of talent and salary expectations. However, 2018 caused the crypto labor market to clear and now is a great time to be aggressive building a deep technical bench of senior engineers.

YV: How do you view the role of broker-dealers, and other service providers, evolving in the STO market?

TK: The thing about security tokens is that it’s not necessarily anything new. Securities laws have an enormous amount of precedents and established case law to guide issuers. Security tokens aren’t looking to skirt regulations; they are looking to embrace and follow regulations in this new environment.

KYC, AML, accreditation attestations, secondary trading restrictions, broker-dealers – these are all things we had to think about during the architecture phase of our company. While security tokens offer hope for the crypto market, is it important to do your own consideration before investing or participating in any type of funding, especially in the crypto market.

Article Produced By
Yoav Vilner Contributor

Crypto & Blockchain.. A serial startup mentor and CEO. Veteran blockchain advisor.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/yoavvilner/2019/01/17/all-about-security-tokens-landscape-with-the-founder-of-polymath/#23b823e860f0

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

How Ex-Facebook And Google Employees Are Uniting To Battle The Monsters They Created

The fightback has begun, at the new Centre For Humane Technology

In December 2017, Facebook's former vice-president of user growth Chamath Palihapitiya confessed to his "tremendous guilt" over creating "tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works."

His comments followed former Facebook president Sean Parker, who the previous month criticised the site's lack of social responsibility, arguing that from the beginning it exploited "a vulnerability in human psychology" adding "God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains."

They're part of a broader trend of former Silicon Valley big shots turning their back on the behemoths they helped create, as the debate around social media ethics and the societal cost of addictive technology continues to grow.

Now, a cohort of such rebels have united to form an action group with the specific aims of holding tech-giants like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and YouTube to account.

The Centre for Humane Technology wants to reverse the 'digital attention crisis' and 'realign technology with humanity's best interests'. Their team includes former Google Design Ethicist Tristan Harris, former Mark Zuckerberg advisor Roger McNamee and former head of user experience at Mozilla Aza Raskin, to name a few.

"What began as a race to monetise our attention is now eroding the pillars of our society: mental health, democracy, social relationships, and our children," the group argue, as they take aim at everything from Snapchat supposedly redefining how children measure friendship to Instagram glorifying a non-existent 'perfect life' to Facebook's much-reported tendency to segregate us into political echo chambers.

But how? The Centre for Humane Technology aims to lobby governments and try to persuade technology companies like Apple, Samsung and Microsoft to pursue 'humane design practices'. They will also launch an anti-tech addiction campaign at 55,000 schools across America called 'The Truth About Tech'.

The emergence of the group is the latest blow to tech companies who have been facing continued criticism over their lack of corporate social responsibility. Facebook has recently been forced to admit they sold $100,000 worth of adverts to fake Russian accounts in order to influence the 2016 US election, and last year both Facebook and Twitter agreed to hand over information to the Commons watchdog committee in order to aid an enquiry into Russian-sponsored pro-Brexit accounts, which may have aided the Leave vote during the referendum.

Add to that the criticism Facebook faced over their controversial live function, which not only hosted streams of suicides, rapes and the murder of an 11-month-old girl, but raised ethical concerns about welfare of employees bought on to monitor this content.

"Facebook appeals to your lizard brain — primarily fear and anger," said early Facebook investor and advisor to the Centre, Roger McNamee. "And with smartphones, they've got you for every waking moment."

Could a resistance be on the horizon?

More like a replacement with something for the people, buy the people and of the people, something exactly what Markethive is and about time.

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Adobe buys Marketo: Who wins, who to watch

Adobe confirms it's buying Marketo for $4.75 billion

Vista Equity Partners bought Marketo for $1.8 billion in 2016, taking it off the Nasdaq after an initial public offering three years earlier.
Marketo's customers include Eventbrite, GE and Kaiser Permanente.

Adobe on Thursday announced that it's acquiring Marketo, a company that sells marketing software, from Vista Equity Partners for $4.75 billion.

The move could have implications for other competitors like HubSpot, Oracle, SAP and Salesforce.

Earlier on Thursday CNBC reported that Adobe was close to announcing the deal.

"Adding Marketo's engagement platform to Adobe Experience Cloud will enable Adobe to offer an unrivaled set of solutions for delivering transformative customer experiences across industries and companies of all sizes," Adobe said in a statement.

Marketo was founded in 2006, went public in 2013 and was acquired by Vista for $1.8 billion in 2016. Marketo's customer list includes Canon, Charles Schwab, Eventbrite, GE, Microsoft and Hyundai. Marketo's CEO, Steve Lucas, will continue to lead the company inside Adobe's Digital Experience group and will join Adobe's senior leadership team, the statement said.

Lucas talked about the opportunity of the unification of Adobe and Marketo's technology in a blog post:

The combination of Marketo and Adobe's Experience Cloud will form the definitive system of engagement for B2C and B2B enterprise marketers. Marketo's exceptional lead management, account-level data, and multi-channel marketing capabilities will combine with Adobe's rich behavioral dataset to create the most advanced, unified view of the customer at both an individual and account level. The result will be an unprecedented level of marketing engagement, automation, and attribution power, all with a goal of delivering end-to-end, exceptional experiences for our customers, where and when they want them.

Adobe stock is up 78 percent in the past year. The majority of Adobe's revenue comes from its Digital Media business, which includes the Creative Cloud software. Marketing software is included in the Digital Experience business, which generated $614 million in revenue in the most recent quarter, with 21 percent growth year over year.

Adobe's software has proven useful for marketing directly to consumers, while Thursday's statement emphasized that Marketo offers marketing tools to people working inside of businesses.

Both companies have many customers in common, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said on a conference call with analysts following the announcement of the deal. "It was clear [that] joint customers were looking for this integration," he said.

Marketo improved its go-to-market approach during its time as a private company, Narayen said.

Article from

Jordan Novet
Technology Reporter for CNBC.com

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Crypto Winter Isn’t Fatal For All âPicks and Shovels’ Makers

Crypto Winter Isn't Fatal For All ‘Picks and Shovels’ Makers

Executives say key infrastrucute is continuing to be built
Dropping equity valuations also attractive buying opportunity

The crypto winter that’s seen major digital assets crash by as much as 90 percent hasn’t been bad for all of the firms building infrastructure or investors looking to pick up equity in projects that dropped appreciably. "This is the most productive phase we’ve ever been in," said Konstantin Richter, chief executive officer of Blockdaemon, a firm that creates and hosts the computer nodes that make up blockchain networks. That’s because various efforts in the space need to deliver on their ambitions and are turning to firms like Blockdaemon for help. "Projects now need to show their colors. The time is up of raising a lot of money and talking a lot of talk," Richter said at a panel discussion hosted at the Los Angeles bureau of Bloomberg News.

After seeing cryptocurrency prices soar to records in late 2017 and early 2018 — Bitcoin peaked near $20,000 and Ether traded over $1,300 — the market had a disastrous time last year. Bitcoin is down about 80 percent with Ether having dropped about 90 percent. Investors and the public appear to have major concerns about what blockchain technology can actually deliver in the real world after hearing promises of its transformational potential.

"The skepticism is warranted in many ways because this technology is nascent and untested at an industrial scale," said Adam Jiwan, CEO of Spring Labs, which is using blockchain technology to build a decentralized credit-reporting system. He said the shakeout has been good for picking up employees who have seen their funding dry up or been cut loose from development firms. "Our hope is this presents us with a great opportunity to recruit talent," he said during the discussion.

The rise and fall of digital currencies validated the approach at Maco.la, a Los Angeles based investment, advisory and recruiting firm, said co-founder and principal advisor Sheri Kaiserman. That’s because the firm decided at inception last year to make equity investments rather than buying initial coin offerings, she said.

"We felt like the best way to make money is to buy the infrastructure companies — the picks and shovels — that are helping build the foundation," she said. "They are coming down in valuation, which is the best part of the crypto winter for us," Kaiserman said. Maco.la is looking to invest in projects that avoid the repetitious work being done in the space at the moment as well as ones that have a high likelihood of being acquired, she said. "That’s why we focus on ones where we think Microsoft might be interested or that Google might be interested."

Blockchain, originally developed as the ledger technology that powers Bitcoin, is promising for corporations, if they can figure out how to use it. Proponents predict billions of dollars in savings by handling data and transactions more efficiently and rapidly. Yet most corporate efforts are still in early development or testing. Still, depending on when a blockchain startup raised funding, it could still have plenty of money to spend on development, Richter said. "There are projects that are so well funded they’ll last for years," he said. Any ICO that went before the summer of 2017, for example, may have been able to buy Bitcoin at $600 compared to its current value of about $3,600, he said.

Health Care

Kaiserman said blockchain has the potential to radically change how global payments are made, specifically remittance payments when you factor in that Western Union charges 8 percent to 10 percent to send money compared with "a nominal cost" of Bitcoin transactions. There is also the chance to use it to give 1.1 billion people a digital identity around the world who currently lack a documented existence. Her favorite use is in health care, she said.

"I would love to be able to go to a doctor and the knowledge of my insurance is on the blockchain" so that "the insurance company knows that’s a covered diagnosis and there’s no need for reconciliation because we’re all sharing this one ledger," she said. Spring Labs is advised by former Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chair Shelia Bair and former Goldman Sachs president and Trump administration chief economic advisor Gary Cohn. The firm avoided an ICO because they thought it would hurt adoption and risked regulatory scrutiny, Jiwan said. It’s working closely with regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission to understand how to transition from a firm backed by equity to issuing a token that would be used on its network, he said.

In November, the SEC announced its first civil penalties against two crypto companies for allegedly violating securities offering registration rules with their ICOs. Both Airfox and Paragon Coin Inc. will need to pay $250,000 in penalties and register the digital tokens they sold through their ICOs as securities to resolve the matters against them, the SEC said Nov. 16. A few weeks later, commission Chairman Jay Clayton said cryptocurrency entrepreneurs should get their “act together” and register their initial coin offerings with the SEC if they want to avoid problems down the road. "There’s some important issues in terms of straddling the transition from security tokens to utility tokens," Jiwan said. "The SEC’s primary concern is speculation ahead of actually delivering a functional technology, which, by the way, is reasonable," he said.

Article Produced By
Matthew Leising

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-16/crypto-winter-isn-t-fatal-for-all-picks-and-shovels-makers

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

BitMEX Research: ICO Tokens Allocated by Teams to Themselves Lost 54% of $24 Bln Value

The value of tokens that over a hundred of initial coin offering (ICO) teams have allocated to themselves has decreased by 54 percent from the initial figure of $24 billion. This was revealed in the latest research by cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX published Jan. 16. BitMEX has conducted a research of the ICO market in collaboration with analytics firm TokenAnalyst, looking into treasury balances of more than a hundred projects on the Ethereum (ETH) network. The analysis reportedly made use of machine learning techniques and was based on the interpretation of smart contract data and transaction patterns on the Ethereum blockchain.

According to the report, the combined value of all the tokens that the analyzed projects have allocated to their own teams, has gone down from $24.2 billion at the time of each individual token’s issuance to about $5 billion as of today. BitMEX cited the 2018 crypto bear market as one of the main reasons, along with $1.5 billion worth of transfers to external addresses,

further explaining:

“Based on current illiquid spot prices, the ICO teams still appear to own around US$5 billion of their own tokens, money they essentially got from nothing, depending on ones view. At the same time the teams may have realized gains of US$1.5 billion by selling tokens, based on coins leaving team address clusters.”

The report also highlighted that the historical combined peak value of the tokens controlled by the subject teams was more than $80 billion, using each coin’s individual price peak. The conclusion drawn by BitMEX and TokenAnalysits from their research is that the ICO market suffers from a lack of standards and transparency, especially in regards to allocating tokens to the founding teams. BitMEX noted that the analysis could be further complicated by the ability of ICO teams to mint, burn, buy, and sell their own tokens. As BitMEX found in November, at least 12 ICO projects, each of which has raised over $50 million via a token sale, have yet to launch. The company’s CEO Arthur Hayes commented back then:

Article Produced By
Ana Alexandre

Total change in her career took Anastasia into the world of analytics and business information as a researcher and translator in 2010. Some time later she got into FinTech, a dynamically developing segment at the intersection of the financial services and technology. Ana joined Cointelegraph in September 2017.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitmex-research-ico-tokens-allocated-by-teams-to-themselves-lost-54-of-24-bln-value

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

CryptoCurrencies: What is an Initial Loan Procurement and why it will drive the Markethive.

CryptoCurrencies:
What is an Initial Loan Procurement and why it will drive the Markethive.

There seems to be a lack of awareness around Initial Loan Procurements (ILPs), as well as a lot of confusion if that. This post will try to explain what ILPs are and their significance to finance and Markethive.

The Initial Loan Procurement

is a new fundraising method that is similar to an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) but in the form of loans rather than coins. In this ILP scenario, borrowers and creditors enter loan agreements through legally binding smart contracts. Markethive is one of the firsts to offer an ILP along with the originator from Blockhive. ILPs (Initial Loan Procurement) disrupt the global debt capital market and have the potential to become bigger than ICOs. Blockchain is revolutionizing finance, especially capital markets, which allow companies (and even governments) to raise money from investors globally.

Let’s talk about how companies and governments raise investor money:

Companies can either sell stakes in the company or equity.

This is done by issuing stocks and stockholders share the company’s profits. Likewise company losses are stockholders losses and companies aren’t required to pay the investors back. On the other hand, companies can borrow from investors by issuing corporate bonds. Although bondholders don’t share in the company’s profit, they will be paid back their original investment + interest unless the company goes bankrupt.

Governments can issue government bonds to big investors as well and the logic works the same as corporate bonds. Since the government is deemed less risky, government bonds typically have lower interest rates. Examples are US Treasury bonds. When companies/governments first issue these financial securities, they are issued in what is called the primary market. The average joe does not participate in this market. The big banks and institutional investors are the usual investors. After this, the already-issued securities are traded in the secondary market which includes retail investors like the average joe. Ex. Stock market

Then there’s the private capital market. All companies start private and once they get big, they might go public and list on one of the stock exchanges. Ex. Uber is currently a private company valued at $70B, and they are supposedly planning an IPO soon. Only then, would the average joe be able to buy Uber stocks and invest in the company. So who invests in these private companies early on? Big institutional investors such as Venture Capital firms (VCs) with lots of money get to invest early on for equity and if the company takes off, they could multiply their investments by orders of magnitudes.

This was how things were done TRADITIONALLY.

With Blockchain technologies, modern finance is changing. Initial Coin Offerings provide companies (and governments) with a whole new way of raising capital. It’s easier, faster, and the whole world gets to participate. Although coins are not 100% like stocks, a lot of them behave that way: Many tokens will profit if the issuing blockchain company becomes successful. (For example exchange token holders earning trading commission fees). Like stocks, there is no legal obligation for the company to pay the investors back their original investment. Initial Coin Offerings serve as the primary market and exchanges like Binance serve as the secondary market. This change is happening extremely fast. In 2017, more money was raised with ICOs for blockchain start-ups than ALL of Venture Capital. Pretty much EVERYONE can participate in these ICOs as well as trade the tokens once they are listed on exchanges.

This is why regulators are going crazy about cryptocurrencies right now. Throughout history, financial market crashes have devastated many lives, and each time regulators stepped in with rules to protect consumers. Let’s not debate the pros and cons of regulation here, but it’s just the way things are. With cryptocurrencies, regulators see more risk than ever for consumers as now regular people are participating not just in this unregulated secondary crypto market, but in primary markets as well through ICOs.

Meanwhile,

the global debt capital market has barely been disrupted by blockchain tech. If anything, there are many crypto projects in the works for peer-to-peer lending, but there is only one project that I know of focused on disrupting the public debt capital market: Initial Loan Procurements (ILPs).

A fundraising structure utilized by Markethive,

this has the potential to grow even bigger than ICOs (The world debt market is way bigger than the world equity market). This year Markethive will be one of the firsts to offer an ILP, like Blockhive, and will be one of the first companies to raise capital by decentralized crowdfunding of debt.

To summarize Markethive’s ILP:

we are targeting 10.5M Dollars (USD in Bitcoin) from lenders (think ILP). In this decentralized world, anyone can participate. The loan period is projected to be 10 years and the interest is 20% of Markethive’s operating profit. For example, if I lent Markethive $1,000 through this ILP, I will be repaid this principal in 10 years, and also earn interest over that period (In Markethive's case, 20% of Markethive’s operating profit will be distributed across the lenders. Furthermore, the ILP structure issues Hive Foundation Shares (HFS), which will allow me to sell my loan contract in the secondary market, if I don’t want to wait 10 years to be paid back. Each ILP will have its own FLAT to provide liquidity in the secondary market. Markethive's FLAT is also called Hive Founding Shares.

All ILPs are powered by legally-binding smart contracts (loan contracts between each creditor/issuer), and digital identity/signature solutions. The token utilized for these products will be traded on the open market exchanges (yet to be announced)

This is HUGE.

Instead of issuing traditional bonds, corporations and governments can participate in this decentralized form of crowdfunding loans. It’s fast, easy, and the whole world can participate.

'

The financial revolution is now just starting.

The need

The Markethive team believes that there is a need for an alternative to ICO due to the following shortcomings. The token economy is based on the demand, and sometimes selling tokens doesn’t make sense because the token has no real function for your business. Also, laws and regulation are an important consideration, because countries such as China have banned ICOs. Taxes also play a major part. Some countries consider money raised through ICOs to be income rather than capital and may tax it at rates as high as 40 percent.

The alternative

Markethive has partnered with smart-contract development firm Menlo Tech and the original developer of the Monero Coin to develop a way to raise funds using loans. Here are some unique points of ILP: The structure is as effective as an ICO because it is open to individuals around the world. It is legally binding because agreements are digitally signed using blockchain technology which records information in a distributed database so they can’t be easily altered, adding a level of security for creditors.

Because ILP is in the form of loans, it is considered to be debt, and not subject to tax.
For businesses that don’t need tokens in the first place, ILP provides an alternative so more time and energy can be spent on business development, rather than creating tokens with no actual usage.

The ILP is regulation-friendly. Markethive conforms with regulatory frameworks designed to fight fraud and money laundering. Therefore, participants of ILP will be required to submit their identification and to go through the process of authentication (KYC). The Markethive team says, “ILP provides a fast track alternative so more time and energy can be spent on business development. Last, but not least, because ILP is in the form of loans, it is considered to be debt, and not subject to tax.”

How does it work?

In Markethive’s case, We first ask our creditors to register their identification, address and other information. Then, they will digitally sign the loan agreement and send Bitcoin to our registered account. Once we receive the Bitcoin, the contract is made. That means Markethive’s creditors can receive 20 percent of Markethive’s monthly profit as an interest payment.

After the loan contract is made, Markethive will issue the Hive Foundation Shares (HFS the FLAT Future Loan Access Tokens). HFS gives creditors the right to transfer loans to others, using Markethive’s Wallets, Markethive’s internal exchange or on public exchanges. The team further clarifies, “When individuals receive HFS tokens, they become potential creditors and can use the tokens to sign loan agreements with the borrower, in this case, Markethive. Once they have signed the loan agreement with Markethive, they are now the new creditors of the loan agreement and they will get the interest payments.”

Take part in the Markethive ILP

The ILP seems like a much more secure approach to fundraising while keeping the ease of raising funds like the ICO. Markethive is a first test case of this new funding method. It is currently in pre-launch and you can register for it here – https://markethive.io

Article Produced By
Thomas Prendergast
Founder
Markethive

https://markethive.com/group/marketingdept/blog/cryptocurrencies-what-is-an-initial-loan-procurement-and-why-it-will-drive-the-markethive

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

THE RESULTS of the reddit cryptocurrency survey – a comparison of opinions, demographics and portfolios of redditors from different subreddits

One month ago I posted a survey of over 40 questions

to a range of different cryptocurrency subreddits and collected just over 300 responses. Since then I have processed the data and taken a look at the different demographics, opinions and portfolios of different users as well as comparing the results from different subreddits. This post is the results of this survey.

In this post I have condensed the results to a number of key stats and graphs. If you want to take a look at the graphs or read the discussion, they can be found in the full report. For the graphs, just scroll down to each section in the report and you will see them.

How do steemit users compare to reddit users?

I don't know so I have set up an almost identical survey for all steemit users to respond to if they like. If I can collect enough responses then I will make a comparison post like this one comparing reddit users and steemit users! If you would like to fill out the survey, you can do that here.
The live raw data collected from this survey can be found here:

Key Stats:

Section 1: Reddit and social media use

• Two thirds of cryptocurrency subreddit users frequently browse non-crypto related subreddits.

• Over 70% of cryptocurrency subreddit users used reddit previous to finding out about cryptocurrencies.

• For 1 out of every 8 cryptocurrency subreddit users, reddit is the only social media platform they use to keep up with crypto.

• 94% of cryptocurrency subreddit users check the price of their cryptocurrencies daily!

• Over 40% of cryptocurrency subreddit users check the price of their cryptocurrencies over 10 times per day and 80% check the prices at least 3 times per day.

Section 2: Demographics

• 95% of cryptocurrency subreddit users are male.

• The median age of cryptocurrency subreddit users is between 26 and 30 years old.

• Almost 50% of cryptocurrency subreddit users are from Europe and another third are from North America.

• Over 75% of cryptocurrency subreddit users either have a University degree or higher or are currently studying at University (University is the same thing as college for any Americans reading this).

• More cryptocurrency subreddit users are living off money they made from crypto than there are users who work in the blockchain industry.

• Over 20% of cryptocurrency subreddit users are students, of these students, 60% of them are at University.

• Nearly 40% of cryptocurrency subreddit users consider themselves gamers.

• 2 of the 331 cryptocurrency subredditors sexually identify as an attack helicopter. It is fair to say that I have learned not to add an “other” gender option in future surveys!

Section 3: Experience and interest in cryptocurrencies

• 70% of cryptocurrency subreddit users consider themselves HODLers.

• Decentralisation is the main ideological reason for cryptocurrency subreddit users to be into crypto and blockchain tech.

• 36% of cryptocurrency subreddit users got into cryptocurrencies in 2017 and 27% got into crypto in 2013.

• 45% of cryptocurrency subreddit users have previous experience in the stock market.

• The average cryptocurrency subreddit user is into crypto for the money but still has a significant interest in blockchain tech.

• Most cryptocurrency subreddit users consider themselves very likely to mention cryptocurrencies to a friend.

Section 4: Crypto Portfolio

• The median cryptocurrency subreddit user has somewhere between $5,000 and $20,000 invested in cryptocurrencies.

• Nearly 45% of cryptocurrency subreddit users have invested either less than 10% or more than 90% of their total savings in crypto.

• Nearly 10% of cryptocurrency subreddit users would rather not share what price category the size of their investment in crypto fits into for this semi-anonymous survey.

• 80% of cryptocurrency subreddit users have made a profit off their crypto investments.

• 60% of cryptocurrency subreddit users who invested in crypto after June 30th 2017 have made a profit off their crypto investments.

• 60% of cryptocurrency subreddit users own altcoins outside the top 10 coins by market cap.

• 50% of cryptocurrency subreddit users own 3 cryptocurrencies or less.

• Nearly 30% of cryptocurrency subreddit users have invested in an ICO before.

• The average (median) cryptocurrency subreddit user is signed up for 3 cryptocurrency exchanges.

• For just one third of cryptocurrency subreddit users, altcoins outside the top 10 coins make up more than 10% of their portfolio.

Section 5: Cryptocurrency Knowledge

• Most cryptocurrency subreddit users believe that they understand blockchain technology quite well.

• More than 50% of cryptocurrency subreddit users have fully read a whitepaper.

• Over 75% of cryptocurrency subreddit users know of Satoshi Nakamoto, Vitalik Buterin and Charlie Lee and who they are.

Section 6: Opinion

• Most cryptocurrency subreddit users think that 3-5 of the current top 10 cryptos will still be in the top 10 in 3 years.

• Nearly 40% of cryptocurrency subreddit users don’t support SegWit2x.

• Just 10% of cryptocurrency subreddit users have an unfavourable opinion of Bitcoin.

• Nearly 70% of cryptocurrency subreddit users have a favourable opinion of Ethereum.

• More participants have a favourable opinion of Ethereum than Bitcoin.

• More than 55% of cryptocurrency subreddit users have an unfavourable opinion of Bitcoin Cash.

• Almost 75% of cryptocurrency subreddit users have an unfavourable opinion of Bitcoin Gold.

• 50% of cryptocurrency subreddit users have an unfavourable opinion of Bitconnect while a further 47% don’t know how they feel about it or don’t know enough about it to have an opinion.

• 45% of cryptocurrency subreddit users have an unfavourable opinion of Ripple.

• Nearly 55% of cryptocurrency subreddit users have an unfavourable opinion of Ethereum Classic.

Final Section: Subreddit Comparisons

• Over 70% or r/Bitcoin users are opposed to Bitcoin Cash while just under 20% of r/BTC users are opposed to it.

• Over 25% of r/ETHTrader users don't have an opinion of Bitcoin Cash.

• 80% of r/BTC users approve of SegWit2x while just 6% of r/Bitcoin users approve of it.

• Over 50% of both r/Ethereum and r/ETHTrader users don't have an opinion of SegWit2x.

Which Subreddit has the highest rate of ICO investment?
The highest rate of ICO investment by users from r/CryptoCurrency where 38% of users have invested in an ICO.

Which subreddit has the most compulsive price checkers?
The two trading oriented subreddits (r/BitcoinMarkets and r/ETHTrader) had the most compulsive price checkers, with r/BitcoinMarkets having a significantly higher percentage of compulsive price checkers.

Which subreddit rates their crypto knowledge the highest?
r/Cryptocurrency, r/Bitcoin and r/BitcoinMarkets all have similar distributions with the same averages (median of 7 out of 10 and very similar mean values just below 7). r/ETHTrader rated their crypto knowledge the lowest with a median of 6 out of 10 and a mean just above 6 which as about 0.7 lower than the mean values of other subreddits.

Closing Words

That's it! If you want to read through the full report I made or want to see the rest of the graphs, I have left a link to the report where you can find them near the top of this post. I will also leave the raw data and the spreadsheets I used to process the data below if any of you are interested. Finally I’d like to thank everyone who participated and especially those who gave criticisms and feedback on what I covered in the survey and how I formatted it. I’m open to any recommendations for next time and criticisms of this survey so that I can make my next survey better.

Article Produced By
trickybits

https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@trickybits/the-reddit-cryptocurrency-survey-a-comparison-of-opinions-demographics-and-portfolios-of-redditors-from-different-subreddits

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden

Earn Crypto Part 2: Incentivized Social Media

In this article, readers will be introduced to incentivized social media networks

that enable participants to earn cryptocurrency for contributed content. More specifically, readers will learn how they can make money on the get-paid-to-play-blog platforms Steemit and Yours.

What Is Incentivized Social Media?

Incentivized social media are digital content networks that pay their users to contribute and curate content. As opposed to traditional social media networks like Facebook and Twitter, which harvest users’ data, incentivized social media networks reward their users for contributing to their networks. While incentivized social media networks exist outside the cryptocurrency space, it was arguably the cryptocurrency sector that enabled the birth of this new breed of social media through its ability to process micropayments at low-costs to anyone in the world with an Internet connection. The market-leading cryptocurrency-paying incentivized social media network is Steemit. However, there are also other platforms, such as the bitcoin cash-powered Yours network that pays users in the bitcoin hard fork cryptocurrency.

Steemit: Curation, Creation, and Earning around High-Quality Content

Steemit was launched in 2016 as the first blockchain-powered social media network. The platform was built on the Steemit blockchain and pays its users in cryptocurrency to publish and curate content. Steemit users are rewarded in a combination of the platform’s three native digital currencies: SteemPower, Steem Dollars, and Steem, with the latter being the most popular and most widely traded cryptocurrency on third-party exchanges. Users can earn cryptocurrency for publishing high-quality original content and for upvoting popular content. The financial rewards for popular content are split among the content creator and the curator to ensure participation among the social media network’s users.

Using SteemPower, users can also increase their influence and the number of financial rewards they can receive for posting and curating. SteemPower can be acquired by exchanging Steem Dollars and Steem into SteemPower. For successful Steemit users to cash out their earnings, they have to turn their Steem Dollars or Steem into bitcoin or other digital currencies on third-party exchanges as very few retailers accept Steemit’s digital tokens as a payment method.

The blockchain-based platform provides an excellent channel to earn cryptocurrency for anyone who has a knack for creating, or at the very least spotting and upvoting, high-quality content that other social media users will appreciate. Some of the highest earning posts have made several $1,000 worth of Steem while the highest earning Steem users have made tens of thousands of dollars by posting content on the platform.

Yours: Income for the Bitcoin Cash Community

Yours.org was launched in 2016 by bitcoin developer Ryan X. Charles to enable social media users to be financially rewarded in bitcoin for posting and curating content. After the Bitcoin hard fork in August 2017, Yours joined the Bitcoin Cash camp and implemented BCH as the new digital currency of its platform due to BCH’s ability to process microtransactions at close to zero fees. Therefore, Yours users are now rewarded in bitcoin cash (BCH), instead of bitcoin (BTC), which has resulted in the platform gaining popularity in the Bitcoin Cash community.

To make money on Yours, users can post content and place a price on that piece of content that has to be paid by users who want to read it. Prices can range from $0.10 to several dollars, depending on how much you believe people will be willing to pay to view it. Users can also earn bitcoin cash by upvoting popular content early. It costs to vote up content but users are rewarded with a share of later votes for the same piece of content and are, thus, rewarded for recognizing high-quality content early on. Additionally, users can also earn BCH from tips, which can be paid directly to a user’s profile page, their content, or a comment of theirs.

Making Sound Money on Incentivized Social Media Platforms

While Yours is still in the process of establishing itself as a crypto-powered social media network, it is effectively only being used by the Bitcoin Cash community. Steemit, on the other hand, has become a go-to source of income for content creators from around the world. Steemit has managed to grow its user base to over one million people in less than three years and has become particularly popular in emerging markets where the bulk of Steemit users are reportedly located.

It is difficult to say exactly how much one can make on Steemit because the financial reward is linked to the amount and quality of the content provided and how much content they curate. For individuals living in developing countries where the average monthly income lies below $500, however, a successful Steemit user can supplement a substantial percentage of their income by being active on this incentivized social media network. A brief glance on Trending Posts on Steemit shows that the most popular posts of the day are earning around $250 and the topics covered are not just focused on cryptocurrencies and the blockchain.

Steemit and other cryptocurrency-powered social media networks like Yours and those still in the making, therefore, provide an opportunity for anyone, anywhere to earn digital currency to supplement their income provided they put in the time and effort to create and curate amazing content.

Article Produced By

Alexander Lielacher

Alex Lielacher is a former bond trader who now writes about cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. He holds a degree in Investment & Financial Risk Management from Cass Business School, London and has been following bitcoin since 2011.

https://btcmanager.com/earn-crypto-part-2-incentivized-social-media/?utm_source=Telegram&utm_medium=socialpush&utm_campaign=SNAP

David https://markethive.com/david-ogden