It used to be, not so long ago—a couple of months back, maybe—I had maybe a half dozen tokens in my wallet on Steem-Engine.

Now, there are enough tokens to fill up the entire browser page so I actually have to scroll to see the last one.

Accept for the PAL and the CCC, I've done little to receive these tokens. I'm assuming such is the case for many of us, though I imagine there are those who are using tags or some other way to earn these tokens, as well as buying some of them.

![fantasy-coins-1146149_1280.jpg](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmY7TgadmNbHEuiGdmRWsUcyHKczaYzYRYkB4w6qdMzsiF/fantasy-coins-1146149_1280.jpg)

There's been plenty of discussion regarding the communities that are a part of these new tokens, and the moderation taking place with some of them on posts. In other words, quality control, or if you prefer, a gatekeeper. I guess it depends on your point of view. There are apparently some tokens that don't have a moderator, so there are many options.

There's also been posts regarding how some of these tokens, like PAL, have adopted a 50/50 author/curator payout, similar to what will be happening in HF21 for all of STEEM. Some of them have different versions of curve payouts. I'm not sure where the downvotes stand, but there's probably some free ones floating around somewhere.

What I haven't noticed spoken of much, if at all, is an aspect of the payouts that I think is just as important, if not more so, than these other things. The fact that the tokens are being paid out in, well, *the token*.

Why is that important? Well, think about it. When you get paid for a post or for curation on STEEM proper, what do you get? For a post or comment, it depends on how you want to be paid, but at least half of it is going to be STEEM Power. SP is not a token. The other half, under normal circumstances, would come in SBD, is so designated. Again, not the main token, but the debt instrument (though people seem to like to do stuff with it a lot and consider it better than STEEM).

In fact, it's only when the SBD Debt Ratio nears 10% (like now) and the Liquid STEEM Ratio shoots up (like now), that we start to see any kind of STEEM in our reward payouts at all.

I don't know if I've ever understood the reason why we get SBD—other than to go through a conversion process that probably ends with powering up STEEM. I do understand why the SP—the more STEEM that is powered up, the larger one's stake, and the larger the stake, the more influence over the reward pool.

However, in so doing, STEEM is accumulating, but if it's all being powered up, it's not being used in its liquid form. That means it makes it more difficult to transact in, something I think we would want to encourage more. In my estimation, the businesses that are flourishing on STEEM are the ones earning STEEM, not earning SP through curation and then powering down to do something with it.

Maybe that's the right way to go about things, which means the STEEM tokens may be in for big problems. In my mind, I've always questioned the reason why STEEM isn't what we get, rather than at least half of it showing up as SP, which would then need to be powered down to be used for anything else other than reward pool manipulation.

It is true that many of the tokens offer a power up or staking option. However, you get to choose whether you want to stake or not, not the other way around. In concept, I like the idea a whole lot better than just automatically powering things up on. It puts more choice where it belongs, in the hands of the stakeholder.

Maybe STEEM would be worse off if just handed out STEEM, and didn't go through a much misunderstood converting of inflationary STEEM (~~Witnesses don't get paid in SP, right?~~ The SPS isn't going to be in SP) to STU, and then back out to SBD/SP or straight up SP, or like now, STEEM/SP.

So, that, receiving the actual token rather than a staked-on-arrival version of it, is what interests me the most about these STEEM alt coins, if you will. It will be interesting to see if enough people hold or even stake them to make them go up in value, or because they are conveniently liquid, if they will just continually sell.

There will be another token coming to STEEM-Engine in the not-too-distant future—SNAX. I'm not thrilled that it was delisted from the only exchange it was on—Chainrift—but because of where I live I couldn't buy SNAX, or EOS (the latter can happen via VPN, I just refuse to do it). If there is a STEEM/SNAX pair, though, I'll be able to buy SNAX finally.

So, I guess, if STEEM can't get to more exchanges or indices, than you bring the DEX to STEEM. And with SMTs making some significant progress, those might finally be available sometime next year to build on STEEM even more.

I don't pretend to know where any of these STEEM 'alt coins' are going, or even whether they're good for STEEM as a whole. I just know they've captured the attention of many STEEM users, it's the new it thing to do, and guess what, you need to have STEEM (not SP) to get a token going.

So, as this all continues to roll forth, I say we need to pay as much attention to what it is we're actually earning even as we focus on how much we end up with.

<sub>Image source-Pixabay</sub>