Time to give my two bobs worth as far as my views on the value of Steem!
Now, some may say, it is like penny stocks, or some may say it depends on the value of Bitcoin, others may say it is more complicated than what it seems, but at the end of the day it really all does come down to the market and demand.
We now have over 400,000 Steemians, or maybe I'm reading this wrong, we now have over 400,000 Steemit accounts on our blockchain.
Either way, i'm going to use half of the later figure, just to be on the safe side!
So, lets say we have 200,000 Steemit accounts on our blockchain.
Of that we have to determine, or at least guestimate how many of us are Steemians, and how many are traders.
Now, there is a lot of overlapping also. Where someone considers them self to be a Steeemian and at the same time is trading their Steem regularly.
I can say this without any doubts, because I have been watching the internal market for SBD and STEEM here on our blockchain for a while now.
It is obvious that the 10% profit rule of thumb applies for many of the people who are regularly buying and selling their SBD and STEEM via that market.
I say 10% as a "standard" figure thrown around all over the net for daytraders and so on, might not be the exact figure for everyone, but I'm using it to make a point, not a determination as to when exactly people buy or sell.
ref: https://steemit.com/market
Nothing wrong with that, as all the funds are here on our blockchain and not being hoarded somewhere in some foreign wallet!
However, what about all the people who are keeping their STEEM and SBD in wallets that are not here on our blockchain?
Nothing wrong with that either, as long as it is hoarded and not "sold" frantically as was obviously the case during the last month or so during the BTC "printing of money" as I like to call it, the so called "forking forks"... every pun intended!
Kind of reminded me of those scenes from movies, especially that one with Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd, Trading Places. An oldie, yet a goodie, from way back in 1983.
SELL, SELL, SELL, BUY, BUY BUY.....
The Team who is managing Steemit is investing a lot of time and effort into the new Smart Media Tokens (SMT). The Whitepaper is fairly clear and straightforwards.
How can the SMTs affect/influence the value of STEEM?
Not to go into all the details and "itty gritty bits and pieces", the SMTs shall be traded on our blockchain here and for every transaction the bandwidth of the "base" account to which the SMT is linked with shall get used up.
So for a SMT to be functional we all need to have the ability to trade it.
To give a simple example, of how that works:
Remember when you opened an account here on Steemit and you got that little message popping up after like 20 or 30 or what ever measly amount of comment "BANDWIDTH".... well if you don't remember, go open up a new account, it costs like 0.5 Steem and some 65,000 vests in delegation (a few STEEM POWER about 35ish give or take) and start playing around with it, make a few posts, start commenting and you will see your bandwidth vanish in no time!
You can open a new account via: https://v2.steemconnect.com/accounts/create
Note: DO NOT FORGET TO WRITE DOWN THE PASSWORD BEFORE CONFIRMING!
So basically the new SMTs shall need to hold in their base account here on Steemit a minimum of about 5,001 STEEM POWER, a Dolphin level to be functional from the very start, later on as the demand grows for it and the SMT gets traded more often, as are the ERC20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, the amount of bandwidth required shall be higher, hence more STEEMPOWER shall have to be in the base account for it too function!
So to cut a long story short:
This means that every SMT shall add value to STEEM!
Shall this alone be enough to make our STEEM beome a market leader?
Maybe, maybe not, probably the later of the two!
So we are back to the figures I popped out with the number of Steemians vs the number of traders.
So, for arguments sake, lets say 100,000 of us are faithful Steemians, we want to not only create wealth through our posts and this wonderful giving economy of ours, but also invest some hard earned FIAT or some other Crypto that we have into STEEM and logically into our STEEM POWER.
I dare say we could use a "compounding" type of rule of thumb as a simple explanation to where I am going with this.
Lets say we all on average invested an extra $100 USD worth of FIAT or other Crypto into our accounts STEEM POWER every month.
A $100 US.... to some is a lot, to some it's petty cash!
However, this doesn't have to be a figure for everyone, that is why I said on average, so those who can invest $1,000 a month without affecting their "I want to go out and party every weekend" budget do so and those who unfortunately can only afford $10 or $20, because times are tough at home, do so, we still get an average. I'll use $100 here for the sake of keeping the figures nice and rounded!
$100 x 100,000 Steemians = $10,000,000 worth of STEEMPOWER (STEEM) on our blockchain!
Not to mention the amounts that are being produced every time the accounts upvote and so on!
Wait a minute.... I said EVERY MONTH.... so its 12 x $10,000,000 worth of STEEM/POWER
= $120,000,000 WORTH OF STEEM/POWER YEARLY!
WOW!!!!!!
Sounds too good to be true!
Well, IS IT?
Why am I even talking about this?
Well, to put it briefly.... as a Steemian... I was very upset, ticked off to say it nicely during the "SELL SELL SELL" crazyness was going on during the "forking forks" in the BTC blockchain.
Every Tom, Dick and Henrietta out there who wanted a quick buck from the "government like" printing of new money was buying up BTC like crazy.
No disrespect to their wishes and goals of achieving financial freedom.
However, did they achieve what they wanted?
PROBABLY NOT.
Yet at the same time, here on our blockchain we have an opportunity of a lifetime, we are at the very beginning of STEEMIT and the opportunities offered by STEEM and SBD are countless.
Imagine if we all just INVESTED into ourselves the amount of enthusiasm and crazyness that was thrown into the "forking forks" SELL SELL SELL.. BUY BUY BUY..... scenes!
If we did that , then "TRADING PLACES" would be the right term to use with what would happen on the Crypto scene..... STEEM becomes a market leader!
So all the wasted energy looking into a quick buck elsewhere seems kind of silly, doesn't it!
If we invest in ourselves, into our own "BEING", into our own accounts here on Stemit, we are actually making it possible for the future headlines of the Crypto scene to be writing up stories about US... the people who were there when there were less than one million users registered on Steemit.com!!!!!
THE LOGIC IS THERE!
I GUESS WE JUST NEED TO PRINT OUT "THE VISION" TO MAKE IT CLEAR AS TO WHERE WE ARE AND WHERE WE CAN BE IN THE NOT SO DISTANT FUTURE!
I completely agree with you about the value of putting monthly amounts into Steem. Maybe not $100 for everybody, but at least some amount that each can afford.
I posted on Reddit a couple of years ago about buying $50 - $100 per month of bitcoin each month to dollar-cost-average into it and create gentle price support, and everybody laughed at me. "If you are sure the price is going up, why would you dollar cost average?"
But the thing is I was sure it would go up, but I had no idea when. The price was around 350 or so when I started and varied between 300 and 400 for a very long time, so I got an average price of $330 or so... for as long as I could afford $25 per week. Eventually I had to stop because my priorities shifted, but I didn't sell what I had already bought.
Well I think you know the ending, except I finally took profits way too soon (in February/March at $1400... oops) The rest I let ride, except some is funding my forays into other crypto-currencies like Steem.
I am doing basically the same thing with Steem now, except my online wallet was charging too much for withdrawals so I moved $700 all at once and will do more in a month or so.
Thanks I think you just clicked in the missing piece of my SMT token puzzle. I was wondering how the SMT related to the Steem blockchain. If it’s anchored to a steem account/profile and that profile need to hold:stake steempower. The inflation rate will get soaked up by new users and SMTs real quick.
Excellent...... I'm glad to read that I was able to word something in a way that wasn't clear as mud!
I'm getting better at this "blogging" game!
Great post!
Sadly I feel that the bots are ruining some of the fun. They should look into the mining buisiness and maybe adjust the profit they can take.
If everything is speculation driven it will ruin any buisiness.
No "bot" can stop a team of 100,000 people who invest in themselves!
THIS IS A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH!
I totally agree with you Sir. These are testing times for Steem but that too shall pass. I have believed in it through the Past to Present and that won't be changed even if Steem still goes Red (Firm Belief). This is high time for any Fiat Investment in Steem since the Prices these days for Steem is less than a $. Better Hurry!