Most people do not realize money is a game. This is something that is not in the mainstream consciousness.

The reason for it is valid. Most individuals are stuck slaving away for what they have. Failure to do so has tragic results i.e. one is going to be without a lot of the basics in life. They are living paycheck to paycheck, fighting every step of the way to make ends meet.

This is not the case for those few who are on Wall Street and high up in the system. To them, money is certainly a game. It is nothing more than a way to keep score. In effect, money is just numbers on a screen. This enables them to keep churning those numbers into bigger ones by creating more products and buying up more assets.

In other words, Wall Street knows what it is like to "create money out of thin air". To them, it is a mere game, one they dominate.

Cryptocurrency now offers this opportunity to everyone. It is something that we are best served to take advantage of. There is no reason for humanity to remain enslaved to the Wall Street elites when there are other options.

I want everyone to consider this point: It is now easier for one to create a digital asset, i.e. one's own currency. than it is to put up a website.

If one is looking for a revolutionary idea, this is it.

Along with the creation of digital assets provides the ability to gamify them. This is where we truly turn money into a game.

@actifit put together something that shows how this works. The team there decided to put together a gamification of the exercise process. It opened a marketplace which allows individuals to buy "boosters". Under this process, people purchase the boosters using the AFIT token which then enhances the payout on their activity posts.

This is serving a number of different purposes. To start, all AFIT spent on the boosters ends up being burned which means that everyone who is holding the token benefits to some degree. Another advantage is that individuals who are active with the application can earn more simply by boosting their power. We see this in the gaming industry all the time. In fact, it is one of the main attractions for gaming on blockchain, the fact that one can get assets that actually can be traded.

Essentially, Actifit is turning money into a game. The marketplace is now full of products that will enhance the earning power of individuals who are active. These booster packs were "created out of thin air" and, on the surface, have no value. Yet, if that were the case, they would provide no benefit to either individuals or the platform. The reality is that the packs have value since they do benefit both.

Actifit is doing something that Wall Street and the banking institutions have been doing for decades. I am convinced most of the derivative market, valued by some at a quadrillion dollars, was created in this way. Wall Street bankers sat around thinking up "products" to sell. When they came up with one, the benefits were realized. Unfortunately, in most instances, the majority of those who benefited were the Wall Street bankers.

Gamification is an interesting concept. In fact, a case could be made that, at the upper end, it is all a game. Elon Musk's net worth increased $9 billion due to the recent run-up in Tesla's stock price. Certainly, the guy puts a lot of work in and is changing the automobile industry. Some could make the claim that the increase in price was just the market adjusting what it undervalued. That might be true but it is still a game.

The truth is Tesla's balance sheet did not change a great deal in a month and a half, yet the stock price did. The earnings are not that much different from where they were before. Much of the speculation is based upon what people expect to happen in the future.

Now don't get me wrong, I am a fan of Tesla and the disruption it is causing. The point here is that Tesla is similar to what we see on Steem everyday. Certainly, we are further back in the process, perhaps only at the time when the roadster was released.

Nevertheless, Actifit is in the same mode. People who are holding the token are doing so in the belief that the platform will grow, thus be more valuable in the future. The difference is, unlike Wall Street stock, the individuals who have stake are, for the most part, participants. They are the users of the platform.

Source

The gamification of the system benefits all the stakeholders, albeit to varying degrees. While I am sure many Telsa car owners have stock in the company, the majority of the stock is held by outsiders. And, as shown, the gaming of the system tends to benefit the bankers, not those involved in Tesla, unless, perhaps, you are very high up in the company.

Thus, I would say one of the next stages of evolution of applications and projects on Steem is how to gamify what is already here. Each tribe could follow this same pattern in an effort to make its project more enjoyable along with providing greater benefit to the user base (stakers).

Gamification was at the core of Steem from the start. The idea that an upvote can have value is a radical concept. Through this, we are able to create the upvote economy. There can be incentives developed around this which stimulate activity. For example, many applications receive delegation which they use to upvote participants. This is a way to grow the user base. At the same time, those delegating to the protect tend to get some time of payout for their delegation. This is increase their stake in the system which, in many instances, they are a user of.

The concept of gamification will become more "real" to people when we are less dependent upon the present fiat system. When one is able to acquire a portion of his or her needs via cryptocurrency that was accumulated in the manner I am referring to, it will then be real to people. For now, it is best to look to those who already mastered the game of money for inspiration and guidance.

Ultimately, we can learn a lot from what the bankers are doing. The only difference is we seek to model their tactics to improve the lives of billions around the world, not just the select few.

// Posted from Steem.