Not sure I follow your reasoning here.
If there was no token at all then this platfrom would be no different from a thousand others which exist already, like Medium or Quora or Blogspot. There would be no point, it could as well fold. Otherwise the operators would need to invent a business model and aside from subscriptions (Medium), ads (Quora) or cross-subsidies (Blogspot), no one has been able to come up with anything .... until the blockchain and the token came along ...
If the platform was to distribute BTC that BTC would have to come from somewhere ... where would it come from ? Who and why would provide a continuous stream of BTC to sponsor the participants on a no-own-token platform?
On the contrary, I am convinced these tokens, steem and hive, are "the real deal", the real advanced cryptocurrencies which can facilitate and support new economic activity which would otherwise not take place
Lol you compare it to platforms that are widely successful like thats a bad thing!
This "experiment" has been going for what? 5 years? In that time how many other projects where all you can do is buy and hold it have surpassed the amount of users here? Probably the vast majority of them
Like I said you monetize the traffic, work with brands, charger for storage of file, pay walls and other monetisation features!
Have tipping and have a lighting node to route payments, allow for eCommerce through Bitcoin theres plenty of ways a platform can generate BTC from engagement on the site
You'll also be appealing to a much wider audience then the 10 or 20k people here!
I'd much rather see 1 million Bitcoiners using a platform and "earn" less for myself and have a busing ecosystem that has a future
What is a "bas thing" is that these platforms are ALREADY there and wildly successful! The business model is very hard to pull through, it's not like you are selling oil. There's probably not enough money in this business for 2 successful platforms. How do you out -compete Medium or Quora with their business model, on their turf, at their own game ?
That this experiment is not as successful as it could have been is a fact. But that doesn't mean the any and all explanations are equally good.
You seem to think that "someone" (who ? this is a decentralized, leaderless platform that strongly rejects leadership) should start doing things to bring it more in line with existing platform by monetizing visits and views (how? you need to steal user data like Facebook and Google do, otherwise your ad rates will be very low) and then with that ad money pay for the infrastructure (witnesses), pay for development, pay for marketing, pay the investors AND with what's left buu some BTC and distribute BTC tips to the writers ... it works on paper as long as you don't put actual figures down. It just doesn't add up.
Nobody is happy with the current state. That doesn't mean that there is an easy fix such as "just monetize visits and views and pay contributors with BTC"
So you shot down my solution, what’s your solution?
I like that reply ! 😄
There is one thing which is highly relevant un what you wrote: "work with brands". True! No matter whether for advertising or for having buyers of hive, "work with brands/companies" is central. But who could do that, in practice?
Who could contact a company / a brand on behalf of Hive and say "Look, I represent this distributed text platform, we generate traffic and views, come work with us - either by placing ads or by buying our token to use it as loyalty points or whatever"
The answer is ... NO ONE ! This is a major drawback of "decentralization " - there is no leader, no one feels empowered to make decisions on behalf of the others, on behalf of the platform. No one is in charge. No one is responsible of drawing up a plan and then following through.
Failing that, then what?
I see no silver bullet. It will be a grind
It can be "grassroots" - starting small like Bitcoin did, having regular dolphins and orcas use the platform as their backend and investing small amounts.
Or it could be a bigger brand who by chance discovers the power of this platform and decides to try ot out and ends up making it work for them.
None of us are expected to come, all by ourselves, with a solution on behalf of the community. It's "decentralized ". None of us can, all by ourselves. We can be a part of a solution, but the solution, if it ever materialises, will involve a lot of luck and "aligned stars"
So basically you have no solution
No, I don't, indeed.
I'm also convinced it's better to be prudent and admit you don't have a solution (with the right benefit/risk ratio) than to invest time, effort, money in an insufficiently well thought out one that proves, after all the time and the money spent, to be worse than the intial situation.
I for one am sure I would not have written so much without steem / hive and the guys which started steem would not have been able to do so without the token and its market value. We do have something unique here. It could be better? Certainly! Could it be worse? Absolutely, it could simply disappear if it became economically unsustainable