@firepower: I totally understand your sentiment. It is disheartening for whales like yourself because of the massive plunge in steem values. What you are saying only echoes the general sentiment in the market. All members in Facebook groups and whats app groups are quite down. Their morale is at the lowest. But look at this way: Steemit was only launched in 2016. There's a complete community feel here.
Facebook is shaken with the recent episodes. The entire media sector is shaken with what's going on in the advertising space. What steemians are going through is only a reflection of the general sluggishness in the media sector and the crypto market space.
We've time and again read stories on how institutional investors haven't touched Crypto investments yet. The money that has come in is mainly from mums and dads and a lot of youth. It's still in very early stages.
Also, if you look at what's happening in the media sector and how fragile Facebook's model is currently, Steemit has a promising future. I'm not saying it will only be Steemit in the future. IT can be Sapien too. It can be a whole lot of other players.
Facebook may launch it's own vertical on blockchain. We don't know. All I'm confident is about how we wont go back from here. And everything we learn here will equip us to handle the media landscape better in the future. So hold on tight and keep doing what you are doing...and yes, look out for Sapien too!! :)
I've heard that FB is investing time and resources into Blockchain technology, but this seems to be the case with most big players. But given their recent issues there's certainly a lot of scope for people to move on to other forms of social media. It would be interesting to see how things proceed if FB moves to blockchain and if they come up with a cryptocurrency-unlikely to happen but anything is possible these days.
I hope they have their own vertical on blockchain. Facebook can maintain their hegemony on content around family and friends. Rest should drop off from it. So if you want to know what your mum is cooking for her sisters back in India, you log onto facebook and check it out. it should be just that but it's a strong space to be in! :) Let's wait and watch