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Many investors into crypto are looking for the unicorns to arrive into the industry as *privately held* startup businesses valued at a billion dollars and upward, including me. Privately held is going to be a bit of an issue for decentralized platforms like Steem though, as what is privately held, or rather, what isn't?

I was just looking through a wiki list of [unicorn startups](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unicorn_startup_companies) and found it interesting that as I flicked through quickly, there were names that I recognized from crypto - *Coinbase, Robinhood and Bitmain.* There are likely many more hiding there too, it is just that those stood out. What is also interesting is how many financial services that handle online payments are in that list and then the question is, how many of them are dabbling in crypto and blockchain. 

https://i.imgur.com/6AtDwuB.jpg

Steem at the height of the last bullrun was valued at around 2 billion dollars making it a technical unicorn at the time, but by definition of the "privately held" it is unlikely to ever appear in those lists, although Steemit Inc may one day based on the valuation of their holdings at a future price. I wonder if any SMTs or communities are going to be able to pull it off as they will also be *privately held*  and if successful in onboarding and building economic value, could well be the new internet model for Web 3.0. 

Capital investing up until now has limited who can become an investor and what the reach of that investor has, but moving to decentralized platforms, almost anyone can buy in with *very little capital* and have possibility that could be highly rewarding in many ways. If you think that while someone who bought into Facebook relatively early would be much richer, they don't actually have much investment control over their holdings other than buy and sell. That changes where for example on Steem, an investor can distribute and direct the inflation pool, vote for witnesses and even support businesses and people on Steem with that investment directly. 

It is much more flexible as an investment vehicle and because it is possible to earn more stake by being active, it is possible to cost average without having to actually buy more while using it to add value to the coins they hold through the way they use it, without having to rely solely on some board of directors. Not only that and as I have mentioned before, an investor into Steem isn't only investing into what distributes Steem, as all the SMTs can have an effect on Steem blockchain value, making it more like investing into an index fund.

As I see it, owning and staking STEEM now is like investing into all future developments on Steem including all future potential unicorn companies that leverage Steem and SMTs to empower their users and carry their transactions. We actually have *no idea* what will be created on the Steem blockchain over the next decade and we have no idea what technological advancements will be made in any number of areas that will enable more to be created. Things like speed of harddisks or storage capacity could fundamentally change capabilities and scalability and these things are developing *all of the time* as they are needed in other areas also. 

This is the exciting thing I find about investing into Steem is that there are so many unknowns and so many interconnected relationships across so many industries that the dynamics involved are enormously complicated. People like to of course limit possibility to the moment and contain in what they know, but with so muck complexity, no one can know what will evolve, what tech will be innovated, what discoveries will be made and how all of the factors involved are going to affect each other over the coming years. What is know though is that change is always happening and we can make the assumption that technological innovation isn't going to disappear. 

I am pretty sure that 20 years ago, man of the unicorn companies in that list were not even dreamed of, and 20 years ago, no one would have predicted that some of them would be dealing in cryptocurrencies that are traded between private individuals without having any centralized backing. Twenty more years from now and the technological, political, economic and social landscape will have likely shifted a great amount again and, we on Steem could very well be playing a role in just what that world looks like. 

While everyone who invests is likely hoping for some form of economic remuneration, what is great about investing into Steem, blockchain and crypto in general, is that it has the possibility to fundamentally change the way economies operate and how we ourselves interact and organize our lives. Some act to maintain the status quo, some to see what else is possible and I believe that on Steem, we are *just starting* to scratch the surface of possibility.

*Investing with change, for change.*

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]

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