Now I'm seriously beginning to think that cryptocurrencies could become a mainstay in one of our basic human activities: gifting. This is coming from a guy who's pretty crappy at buying presents and stuff like that! While some of us may enjoy hunting for personalised gifts for our friends and loved ones, most of us will be tired of doing that by the age of 30.
Gifts come in many shapes and sizes. Some of them have intangible sentimental value, sure - that's a market by itself. But let's consider highly functional gifts with socially accepted value like money. Indeed, some of us tend to give away money as a form of gift or present, especially if we're super clueless about what to give others.
So this comes to the point: why do we still continue to give away traditional fiat currencies as gifts? They're not as interesting or as innovative as cryptocurrencies. We don't have magic internet money back then, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't embrace what we have now. Let's consider Steem a gift:-
There's monetary value in Steem. While its value in the future can't be guaranteed, the same can be said for whatever we hold to be valuable at this point in time. If it rained gold tomorrow, then gold will be worthless. As it is, we can be sure that the Steem supply itself isn't subject to such an anomaly because its production algorithm is secured by the blockchain.
More Steem Power means better voting influence in the network. You can use your votes for charity, to support artists, reward great content, thank your most engaged follower, and whatever else - it's up to you to determine the purpose of your votes. Your votes distribute value in form of Steem. High utility product here, in my opinion.
Precious, and one-of-a-kind. Zero fees with 3-seconds transaction, yada yada. No normal gifts can do this. You certainly don't see these characteristics in gifts like teddy bears and polkadot bikinis.
Steem Power grows over time. It's kinda like having a growing savings account. Just like how a friend bought a small amount of Bitcoin for his daughter, I think I'm going to reserve parts of my Steem to keep for my great great great great grandchildren.
Steem voting is like gifting mini-gifts so that others can also give mini-gifts to others..
So yup, I'm going to start gifting in cryptocurrencies starting from mid-2017, from birthday gifts to wedding dowries LOL. My bet is that cryptocurrencies will become a huge part of humanity's gifting culture in the future as abstractions of their value become more socially acceptable over time.
Fact is, our minds don't really distinguish physical and virtual economic realities all that much, not especially in an age of digitisation and dematerialisation. This is why you're seeing cryptocurrencies growing in value even though you can't see or touch them, pretty much just like the virtual reality of your online bank account balance these days. If you think I'm shilling and hyping up worthless coins over here, wait til you read up about diamonds, DeBeers, and commercial holidays!
Personally, I really can't vouch whether or not cryptocurrencies are great gifts - that may depend very much on their market value, even in terms of sentimentality. But from the perspective of being able to gift something that can be used by anyone on this planet, Steem looks like it's shaping up to be one of the best gifts that I can think of.