When I got to the Steem Blockchain in July 2016 all there was build on top of the blockchain was Steemit.com.
That's what Steem was for me at the time
You often hear people on here say that STEEM 'used to be' a top 3 coin and OH! how we have fallen.
But I like to put that in a little bit of perspective.
This is what happened to the STEEM price 5 months after the token became tradable on the exchanges for the first time.
Now in hindsight, this is not so crazy.
STEEM was 100% pre-mined at the time and STEEM never had an ICO.
And that last part is key it means that STEEM was never backed by an initial value.
For what Steem was at the time it was most likely overvalued.
You had a handful of accounts with all the STEEM and a whole bunch of content creators with nothing.
Also, the economics were not in favor of any buyer with a 160% inflation for instance and a two year Powerdown period for anyone that wanted to stake their STEEM.
When those few mega whales started to vote (and often bundled, and remember this is N^2) their votes on some content creators it doesn't take much to imagine what happened to the payouts on those posts.
They exploded to often THOUSANDS of dollars.
When people talk romanticly about this period of Steemit.com you can bet your ass they are probably the people that got voted on.
For the rest of the people, it was shit and you couldn't do anything about it yourself to solve the situation. Even buying STEEM to help yourself was pointless under n^2. Because of N^2 you couldn't buy influence. The only way you were going to earn anything was praying to the whale gods that you were good enough to be blessed with an upvote from them.
I hated it because I can't stand it if I have to rely on someone else in this life. I like to be independent. Be in control.
I got my chance.
With the STEEM price going down rapidly at that time a lot of people that were earning STEEM/SBD wanted to get rid of it as soon as they could and the price of STEEM tanked.
In November 2016 HF 16 changed the economics. The Powerdown period went from 2 years to 3 months and inflation from 160% to 9,5%. here.
I remember thinking at the time that this would mean that everyone that wanted to get out of Steem could do so in 3 months. I expected the price to go up after that.
I had to go into the Exyle Blog archives and dig up this post:
This is what I thought back then from the post.
The chance of the whole top 100 powering down is not so big. So this is worst case.
Under the old rules, the inflation rate was so high that the flow of Steem hitting the market every day would be going up every day forever.
Under the new rules the inflation is way lower (only 9,5%). So once all the STEEM is sold there is no more STEEM hitting the market. The Flow will stop after 3 months.
I started to buy as much STEEM as I could back then throwing in whatever I could spare. It was a bottomless pit.
This is what taking risk is and believe me it was fucking scary.
But as it turned out I was almost right. Not 3 but 4-5 months later the price went up.
And not much later we found ourselves in the craziest bull market I had ever seen and 9 months later STEEM had gone up from $0,07 to very briefly $8,60.
Most people know about this history.
And after that peak and the bear market, we are now back to what I would say reality.
With STEEM back at realistic prices is it dead?
I would say no. I would say Steem is much better and stronger today as a blockchain then it ever was.
I would even say this time around it's undervalued.
STEEM is much better distributed than ever. We have more development than ever and Steem inc. has made incredible changes to the blockchain making sure we can scale in the future and it's cheap to keep it running.
Plus you can do way more with STEEMPOWER than ever before. (RC credits, making accounts, delegation, etc, etc).
I know the STEEM price is lacking behind compared to other projects, it sucks obviously, and this seems to be a concern for many.
But for me, that is only a concern for the sellers and not really for the builders or the buyers on this blockchain today.
I'll leave this post with my latest Twitter ramblings.
I will continue to build and promote STEEM because I believe in this project and my personal vision for it.
When the next bull market starts STEEM is ready. If you believe in STEEM this is the time.
I am part of witness @blockbrothers.
Please consider us for your witness vote if you think we deserve it here:
Vote for @blockbrothers via SteemConnect
Set blockbrothers as your proxy via SteemConnect
We are the creators of Steemify a notification app for your Steemit account for iOS.
Get it Here:
Another way to look at it is if we take the current market cap from @coingecko, ~112 000 000 USD, and then divide that with the number of active users from their latest Q1 2019 report, ~60 000, then that means an average of 2 000 USD per all active Steemians, that is not a bad number, thanks @exyle.
Thanks for the interesting history. I know people complain that many new users are earning zero, but in any new community one joins it takes time to build connections.
When I joined 15 months ago I quickly realized I needed to engage with others via comments and communities to get recognized.
I agree that Steem is well prepared for the next boom and I feel that real people users and the infrastructure to support them is key.
Eventually the market will recognize that.
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The real problem is steem is continuously falling in relation to the rest of the market. As an investment, steem has been the worst performing coin in the top 100 for a long time. I don't think it will ever die but clearly it wasn't a great choice as an investment vs any other coin in the top 100
THIS
What an idiot.... Quoting this out for a reason? You also want to be independent yet you are dependent from @dayleeo's vote from SteemHunt.... AutoVote my Ass!
You nailed it @exyle.
I was not here in those days but did hear stories about it. While many talk about how wonderful it was, there are many who had horror stories. In fact, the only way to get noticed then, from what I heard, was bots.
For most, that was the only realistic chance.
By the way, do you have a discord account?
From what I remember back in the day there were no bots that came later when Steem delegation was introduced.
Back then it was just whales with huge amounts of Steempower and content creators with almost none.
I am on discord every day. I'll send you a message.
I gave your tweet a heart or a like, not quite sure what to call it.
Interesting about the first spike. That should be kinda predictable. The other one cannot be explained by looking at just Steem.
However, during the most recent spike, we saw Steem go from around 52 cents down to 29 cents while BTC went nearly 2X during the same period.
Steem is recovering again, but what this delayed or reverse action tells me is Steem is acting somewhat independently from the rest of the market. This only means two things, one is that it is so toxic or unknown no one wants to touch it. However, given the recent mini spike before BTC moved and all the positive developments, I doubt this is the case.
I think it's more related to non-Steem people just not touching anything below the top 30.
Everyone is so focused on making Steem a platform to make money on, this scares me a little because it reminds me of the first spike you talked about, if no one is paying 4 dollars per Steem, it will never be worth 4 dollars per Steem. We have to push Steem as both an excellent investment and a platform where you can make money on without investing.
What you did for your father is great and I think we should give extra credit to anyone who on boards an investor as opposed to a blogger/SNS convert.
I rarely 100% agree with someone regarding STEEM. But with you, I seem to agree 100% all the time and this is another one of those time. Excellent post and a great vision.
Great post. I have personally been tired of people nostalgizing how things had been good back then. I even saw someone complain how with linear reward curve he was making still satisfactory amount of money but yet still blamed that to be the reason why he got tired of blogging.
Messing with the curve is like grand socialist idea to just give poor people more money and everything is fixed without any regards to actual economical facts or considerations. Five cent blog-post is a five cent blog-post, and messing with the reward curve will just cause more "real" value inflation when people gain more than they earn.
You can almost see the same pattern from the first crash to the second, with those little blips during the accumulation phase before skyrocketing.
I’m still accumulating some STEEM with spare change.
It is extremely undervalued considering the development that is taking place.
Posted using Partiko iOS
That's how I always did it too! I'm looking forward to the rest of the year.
This too lol
Brilliant stuff man. And I couldn't agree more. Screw the drama, focus on building and letting the world know how great STEEM is :)
That's the spirit!
Yeah you are right.. Steem blockchain is stronger than ever... We have cool dapps and new dapps are being constantly developed.
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This crypto space is the new wild west. Steem sure does seem to be the reliable, sturdy & useable system on the scene though. It seems a no brainer for me too. But, i guess it's because we are forward thinking people who enjoy freedom. I am still dealing with having my funds locked in limbo. Gladly it's not a lot of money but it's still frustrating that two corporations (the bank and etransfer) can decide to lock the funds up. I am waiting for Netcoins to cooperate and help as they have the ability to cancel the etransfer from their end. But, i dont know how they'd return the funds. When asking my bank to help me they started asking a zillion questions about which devices i am using which apps and programs it's clearly a means for them to find out even more about my personal i information because i am trying to buy tokens and these corps want to make it as difficult as they can. In over 10 years i have used etransfer A LOT and this is my first time having this issue. I will go into the bank and raise a stink if i dont get some help from Netcoins today. Not cool! It's my money and i should be able to buy what i want 🤷♀️ Steem to the moon!!
Thank you for the historic review. I'm believer, I have continued to build my account during the lows. As your account grows investment options become available. I earn tokens from some of my delegations and SBD and steem from others. With all the Dapps, it is a great platform that will continue to grow.
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Mark @exyle I Know You are Excited about STEEM and I am Too. I am Very Excited Today for DEC. Steemmonsters Continues to get Better and Better.......
It´s all a matter of perspective... And the most important part is that STEEM has not been sleeping through all these years. It doesn't matter how "hard" the times/prices can be, this blockchain kept developing and solving its problems.
Wow, that is really awesome history lesson. It is crazy to see how much things have changed in just a few short years. I know I started on here right around the $8.00 mark. I really wish I had gotten on the platform even six months earlier.
Steem is the first crypto I’ve actually been engaged with a community. Whilst I’ve only been here a very short time, I’m enjoying the company of a few people in my niche thanks to @organduo.
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I like optimism that is backed with some facts. We are a long way from where we should be but we are not doing so badly. With consistent work I believe we will get there.
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Thanks for the history.. I didn’t join until the summer of 2017 so I missed the very early days. Can’t wait for the next bull run
Let the bullrun begin steem will be able to handle all the pressure !!
Thank you so much for participating in the Partiko Delegation Plan Round 1! We really appreciate your support! As part of the delegation benefits, we just gave you a 3.00% upvote! Together, let’s change the world!
You have receive an upvote. Thanks for playing moonSTEEM
Wow, nice one bro... So educating and inspiring
If you have some BTC to spare, STEEM is very low priced in terms of satoshis!
Finally some objective information about the history of Steem and how this place is becoming more and more decentralized and versatile! The future is bright!
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Even in the last bearmarket Steem was a later mover
The fact that steem is one of those alts least tied to how BTC reacts gives me some indication that there is something going on here that we're doing right. It's going to take time to work out the kinds, to keep redistributing, to get dapps on here that are new ways of attracting users that don't want to blog
Im not really emotionally tied to the place or the rewards its just a site I use to share my thoughts so either way price doesn't phase me. Unless its 8 dollars and up then I for sure would be affected by that sort of valuation
I honestly have to thank you for this encouraging post as i thought Steem days were heading to be over.
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Yes absolutely right my friend this is the right time to get up trend in market we will see a next best value of STEEM in crypto due to his small but strong community.
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The great ecosystem continues to build value and now in becoming more sustainable will allow it to be a great for all potential stakeholders to participate in; whether it be investing, developing or engaging!
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Great analysis about steem and it's price. I believe in Steem.
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A bit of history to wake up the community and appreciate what we have here going forward.
This quite inspiring!
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I think that wild bull market was just a taste. Wait until this thing really takes off. It won't be long now that it's out of beta and there's a real business model behind Steemit, Inc.
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Great Post, Mark. Definitely looking forward to continued great things from Steem. This is the place to be ;)
I hope you are right! I'm new to Steem I've been here less than a month and don't know a lot about crypto at all. I've just been trying to create content everyday. I'm slowly learning and reading this article made me feel better about it