Hostile takeover attempt by some of the most powerful forces in crypto, leveraging millions in assets?

2-year long crushing bear market?

Outbreak of a new global pandemic?

STEEM. DON'T. CARE.

Despite a challenging few years, layoffs, plummeting market cap, and a recent hostile takeover attempt by some of the most powerful entities in crypto, the honey badger of blockchain STEEM just don't care. Even in the face of all of this adversity, the Steem blockchain and community has proven it's resolve many times in its 4-year history and continues to evolve.

The Case for An EPIC Comeback

In this piece, we're going to take a look at everything happening with the platform, why it's exciting, and the 3 biggest bullish catalysts in the near future that could send it to the moon.

For those not familiar with the Steem blockchain, it is a social media-focused platform that rewards creators for their content via monetized upvotes.

Some advantages it has over traditional Web 2.0 social media sites include:

• Censorship resistance

• Built-in monetization

• Community governed and operated

The Steem blockchain isn't just limited to the Medium/Reddit type content like this article, other platforms like 3speak.online offer a Steem blockchain/IPFS video alternative to Youtube as well.

So what are these three moon catalysts that could bring the higher valuation Steem deserves (as a platform with 2 of the top 5 Decentralized Applications (DAPPs)).

1. The Defeat of Justin Sun

Steem has been the talk of the town recently as Steemit Inc. was recently acquired by Tron founder Justin Sun. Unfortunately for Justin, he didn't understand that Steemit Inc. doesn't "own" the Steem blockchain itself. Because of this, he attempted to use his exchange connections to help him vote in his own "witnesses" and take over the chain completely. Unfortunately for him, his plot was foiled and the community has now voted in 11 of their own witnesses.

This is where things get interesting.

In order for those exchanges to leverage their STEEM holdings to assist Justin in his takeover attempt, they had to "power up" their customers' holdings. This means those holdings can no longer be returned to their rightful owners, and therefore those exchanges have frozen STEEM withdrawls. Justin promised these exchanges that he would hard fork the blockchain and change the rules to allow the exchanges to power down/free up those holdings immediately. This is no longer possible.

So what does this mean?

This means that in order to regain control of the chain and get these exchange funds out, Justin either has to:

1. Negotiate with the community and provide something of value in return for our cooperation and mercy

Or

1. Buy and power up even MORE STEEM in order to turn the tides and regain the amount of influence necessary to control the chain.

While it seems unlikely that Justin would double down and purchase even more STEEM, it's important to consider how much he stands to lose if the exchanges cannot retrieve their customer's funds for 13 weeks. In this case, THEY would be forced to buy more STEEM off the market to replace funds.

2. Publicity

Crypto Twitter Clout

Once widely considered a dead project, abandoned by its creator and overshadowed by its younger brother EOS, Steem is finally back in the headlines. Some of the biggest names in crypto have taken notice once more. From Vitalik to John McAfee, the whole space is a buzz about the future of Steem. For the first time in history, a delegated proof of stake (DPOS) blockchain has been put to the test. The way that this event goes down will no doubt be studied in future business school classes.

All this hoopla has already netted STEEM a listing on Kucoin while being relisted on Poloniex as well. This opens up even more liquidity for the token and will no doubt result in the supply being more thinly spread.

Influencers

Steem and its video platforms like 3speak.online and D.Tube have slowly attracted Youtube influencers who are being mistreated by that Google Web 2.0 relic. While we are still missing a breakout A-list internet to truly expose us to the normies, one can imagine that day is growing closer.

Who do I believe would be the perfect fit for Steem?

Gary Vaynerchuk

I may be biased though by the fact that I wrote the majority of this article in his NYC office and met him for the first time today (I was the guy in the black and orange "Bitcoin Miami" shirt if you're reading this, Gary).

That being said, I have written a few articles trying to get his attention over the last couple of years, notice me senpai!

Anyways, Gary has made his living calling out trends in social media and attention, so the greatest decentralized social media platform is right up his alley. Gary's hustler audience could build their own Steem community as an additional income stream.

3. Macro-Economic/Bitcoin Trends

It should be no surprise to anyone when I say the stock market is not looking all that hot right now. The panic and economic effects of the Coronavirus have popped the bubble so to say of a massively overinflated, all-time high Dow Jones.

This crash has caused the Federal Reserve to once again cut rates, allowing banks to take out cheaper loans in the hopes that it stimulates the markets. That being said, it doesn't seem to be working.

What HAS been interesting, is crypto and gold's reaction to these events. Earlier this week we saw one of our first examples of a reverse correlation being formed as stocks fell and gold and crypto remained green.

This is all happening right as we start to approach the next Bitcoin

"Halvening"

Which will reduce the # of Bitcoin mined (created) a day from around 1800 to 900. Currently, most Bitcoin is sold immediately after getting mined to cover the electricity costs of the mining. This means, for Bitcoin's price not to go down, 1,800 coins a day most be bought, soon that sell pressure will be halved.

Check out the chart above to see the historic effects on price after halvenings. We all know what a Bitcoin bull run does for the alt market, so Steem would no doubt be a beneficiary of this action.

Well, that's just about it, if this is your first interaction with Steem, I would highly suggest you make an account and drop a comment so I can give you free crypto with my upvote :)

(S/O @ocdb, this is my #POSH proof of sharing, of #OC on Twitter, I tweeted this to my 11,000 Twitter followers ~~~ embed:1236111566329851904?s=20) twitter metadata:RHJ1dGFuZ0F0SG9tZXx8aHR0cHM6Ly90d2l0dGVyLmNvbS9EcnV0YW5nQXRIb21lL3N0YXR1cy8xMjM2MTExNTY2MzI5ODUxOTA0fA== ~~~

Thanks for reading!

Peace, Love, Anarchy,