If you’ve read any of @taskmaster4450’s posts lately, you know that he’s been predicting $100 Steem by the end of 2018, and much higher prices for Steem in years to come. Others here on Steemit have predictions for eventual four-digit Steem values, albeit without specific timeframes. @taskmaster4450 also thinks that 1,000 Steem Power will, for most who get to that point, prove to be life-changing money.
My mind wandered off into the weeds and I started wondering what $100 Steem might mean in terms of an income stream. 1,000 SP times $100 Steem is obviously $100,000 but the potential ongoing income from such an account is harder to guesstimate. Several people have done calculations showing that a 100% self-upvoting strategy using a bot to self-upvote every 2.4 hours can, at least in theory, garner a 35% annual rate of return. So, ballparkish, a 1KSP account can earn about 1 Steem Power per day on autopilot.
But I started wondering about what people with 1KSP accounts who aren’t self-voting at anywhere near that rate are earning in the here and now. SteemWhales.com has gone into limbo, but you can use steemdb.com to sort members by Steem Power. I selected a few people who had just over 1,000 Steem Power. This is not remotely statistically valid, my sample size is way too small. SteemDB sorts by vests rather than by Steem Power but, after converting, it becomes apparent that the site currently has about 5,400 members who have at least 1,000 SP in their accounts. The accounts I picked somewhat randomly to show below are all active with posts, comments, and curation within the last week. All have just over a thousand SP. I checked their rewards for the most recent 7-day period. The numbers will likely change by the time you read this post but reflected what I recorded on 28 January 2018. In all cases the first Steem Power number is for curation rewards, and the next two numbers represent author rewards:
0.951 STEEM POWER
67.107 STEEM POWER
350.074 SBD@ksolymosi
0.488 STEEM POWER
4.330 STEEM POWER
22.057 SBD@fishyculture
0.586 STEEM POWER
0.970 STEEM POWER
2.288 SBD@david777111
0.425 STEEM POWER
3.568 STEEM POWER
17.248 SBD@therealthrawn
Just like some judging throws out high and low scores, I think we need to exclude @ksolymosi’s results. She got several upvotes from @hendrikdegrote who’s one of the biggest whales on the site. So, far from typical.
Guesstimating potential future earnings has huge pitfalls, and the current high price of Steem Based Dollars throws a wrench into the works. But the accounts seem to suggest that it’s not implausible to assume that for an active 1KSP account that’s posting, commenting, and curating, it’s not that hard to be earning four or five Steem Power a week in the current environment.
Let’s assume for the moment that the $100 Steem Price a year from now is valid. Let’s also assume that to get to that point, the number of users on the site would need to increase dramatically over that year (probably quite likely as HF20 should make signing up for Steemit far easier and faster than it was for those of us here now). The total amount of Steem added to the ecosystem is growing by only about 9.3% a year, and that percentage is decreasing. Many more members competing for a reward pool that’s only a bit larger may mean that rewards may be harder to come by but that those you do earn may be far more valuable than they are now. So a 1,000 SP account might only be earning one or two Steem a week in rewards, but that could translate into a couple hundred dollars. In such a scenario, similar active accounts might be making a 10% annual rate of return. Even if membership skyrocketed, the related rise in the demand for Steem (for instance from entities issuing Smart Media Tokens who need Steem Power for bandwidth purposes) could mean that earning an annual rate of return of just a few percent would translate into a significant earnings stream. And don’t forget that your SP earns interest. Maybe not a lot, but with a high enough Steem price, potentially having a big effect on an income stream.
Okay, so I have no way to project any firm numbers. But what I’m suggesting is that acquiring even relatively modest amounts of Steem Power now when it’s relatively easy to do so has the potential to turn into a significant source of income in years to come.
Disclaimer: This should not be construed as financial advice. I am not a registered financial advisor; I don't even play one on TV. Do your own due diligence. Batteries not included. Objects may be larger than they appear in mirror. Some assembly required. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
Pixabay image at the start of the post, dividers by @atopy
Let's hope they can work out the kinks. GO STEEMIT!
100 $ Seems insane to think about.
Hell, i thought the internet would flop back in the day, "who needs it?"
I was just a little off .
I think 100$ for 2018 is a little bit far fetched, but I also thought 8$ for 2018 was far fetched 3 months ago..:)
My personal target for 2018 is 20-30$ which I think is perfectly conservative. Unless we have a long correction i cryptos (why should we) or there is something fundamentally wrong with Steem and Steemit - something we haven't thought about, 100$ within 2-3 years is almost guaranteed. Which of course is sick when you think about it. It will lift a lot of people out of both poverty and out of workingclass/middleclass. With 100$ even I, in a high cost country would make a very good income each month - just from Steemit.
You can definitely see communities in impoverished countries/regions rallying to Steemit in droves, providing tons of support for each other. And not only with bots, but actual comments and quality content. Nigeria, Southeast Asia, Latin America, etc. The altruistic goals of the site are coming to reality.
It will be interesting if Steemit becomes a power player in global news, media, or content sinply because of the ease of access and participation, as well as the financial incentives.
Altruistic goals? I'm pretty sure the creators are anarcho capitalists?
Hmmmm true. I guess a core goal was wealth distribution away from the old guard of central banks and typical power brokers.
I guess my question is if new people get here and rewards are more difficult to come by, what's going to keep them here? I realize this is free money, but the people who start earlier have a significant lead and that will be discouraging to newcomers.
I think our biggest challenge as a community will be 1. Spreading the wealth to newcomers, ensuring they stick around or want to come back and 2. Creating strong communities, right now we have a community mostly focused on crypto, which is fine early, but needs to expand a great deal. Maybe with updates we will see this happening faster. These communities will help with part 1 as well because there is value in content and right now our content is weaker than other sites for most topics
I agree. There are some huge problems. I've noticed many good quality blogs going unnoticed and many low quality articles with huge payouts. Furthermore, all I see above is $0.00 (lots of participation and zero payout on post after post). Steemit would be better off showing payouts in microsteemit. At least everyone feels like they got something for their participation (even if it's a miniscule amount).
Maybe you haven’t looked hard enough? You have only been a member for a few weeks; the site has a steep learning curve. It is very common for newbies to see the site the way you do. My first six or seven posts earned zero.
What do you mean he hasn't looked hard enough? He's saying newbies often don't get the recognition they deserve, which is in part true. Then you see someone post a photo everyday with $200 everyday.
I'm not saying people on here who have a ton of SP don't deserve it, hell half of them probably paid for it, that was just smart thinking right there. The problem is we quickly lose users because they don't see any action on their posts. Hoping communities will help with this. If people would stick it out for more than two weeks they'd start to make friends, gain followers, gain SP, etc etc. All good things in time, but sadly we live in an age where people want instant gratification.
I do think we will see this becoming less of a problem as time goes though
Oh sure, but as long as I’ve been here, newbies (myself included in the early days) seem to see Steemit as inherently unfair with deserving posts getting ignored and crappy ones getting well rewarded. But I think that, as people gain more experience here, they find that it’s more nuanced than that and that there are also excellent posts that get well-rewarded and dreck that gets downvoted to oblivion.
So very true.
Ah I see, yes it is pretty nuanced, good posts are one thing, but community, interaction, marketing, vote bots, the list goes on for things that can accelerate our growth here. Even a bit of luck goes a long ways, like whether or not a whale sees your stuff.
Good point. Perhaps I don't have enough experience. Although there is a lot to be said for the newbie experience when it comes to the adoption of a system like Steemit.
There’s already an issue of people not sticking around. We’ve already got nearly 700,000 accounts but probably only 10% of those are active. I have no way to guesstimate what the numbers might look like going forward, but a more active blockchain should translate into more value.
Steemit seems to sell itself on egalitarianism, yet the scenario outlined your post seems to be a "rich-get-richer" situation. Why would the masses switch from traditional media (youtube, twitter, etc.) when there is only incentive for the most popular and oldest bloggers?
What makes you think that? It seems to me that there is a huge incentive for noobs.
Really? To me, it seems to be imbued by anarcho-capitalism rather than egalitarianism.
It will definitely make it more difficult to invest in your steempower by purchasing some here and there. I divert some of my mining rigs ethereum earnings into purchasing steem and then steempower to invest in the steem platform long term. A huge jump in Steem versus ethereum would make it harder and most government fiat currencies would then buy a whole lot less steem making it very difficult to get any momentum. If what you are saying in the article comes true...it is super important to get your steem power up as much as possible NOW 💩
Steem will take over social media. This is the future. Power to the content creators!
It is going to be interesting to be a part of regardless of where it goes
Are any of those accounts you looked at delegating out?
If you looked at me, you'd see I make a pittance in curation rewards, despite having over 80K SP.
I still get yield, but it's paid by my customers, once a month instead.
Only @fishyculture has outgoing delegations, about 19% of the account’s SP.
Not a big factor then. Certainly nice to look at some of the possibilities.
One implication might be me keeling over from shock at my good fortune, LOL....Great post. Thanks
Thanks for the encouraging words It's incredibly exciting to be a part of this I sure hope it goes to 100 per steem, that really would change my life!!
When the price of Steem will reach 100$ it will become expensive to power up.
Yes, Steem to the Moon in 2018-19
Is this possible ..... If steem go a lot up something 100... or 200$ ... then there in the Steem pool will be less Upvote steem money that steemit can give out ,Is this possible.
I think this year the maximum steem can go is 30.. $
Hats off for collating and elucidating this post!
Reading it was a meal in itself :)
Lots of potential here then.
Hoorah.
And thanks.
xox
I am not sure, I think elgeko or reko made the artwork. However, I also think we will see $100 in 2018