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In response to @steve-mcclair's farewell post, I wrote a comment, and it ended up so long that I think it should be posted as a stand-alone post (though I have expanded it a lot as I realised that this has been a core theme in many of my posts so far):
There is a very dark mood in the community of Creators, and farewell posts are starting to become very common recently.
I predicted this was happening about a month ago - it is inevitable, in fact. I am pretty sure that @ned and @dantheman both knew that there would be this difficult phase as it finally dawns on everyone who thought Steem was just about getting paid to write, that this was not a sustainable situation.
You may think, from the subjective data you have in front of you, that there is a rot in the core of the curation scene here, but a tomato seed does not sprout unless the fruit first rots.
My Steem Power is now up over 1250, and in a month's time I get another 1000 for showing up at SteemFEST. I am powering it down but only because I need a little extra, it's not a big amount of money but it will be something to put a smile on my face every week when I start to get a little frustrated that I'm not getting through to people.
I have finally found what could at last be a serious and competent group of investors and developers and we will be working on setting up a Steem Developer Hub in Amsterdam (most probably). A lot of people are concerned that steem is dying, but it was never intended that Steem by itself, and especially not the blog system, was the be-all and end-all of what this project aims at.
A shakeout is inevitable, and necessary
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Even when 95% of the posters are shaken out of the system, and the top 19 witnesses are barely earning enough to operate, the network will still be around. This will be the point at which new developments can really start, and one thing that I have been banging on about since nearly the beginning of my time here:
Steem is not (just) a blogging platform
Steem is not even (just) an ad-hoc public and transparent corporation
Not only is this a transitional process, as some whales engage in stupid, selfish and pointless collusions continue to waste their SP skimming a bit of the pool of rewards for their mates, regardless, those who understand and believe in the bigger mission for the platform, and understand it well, have been gathered together, and they are slowly finding each other and Steem Outposts are going to pop up all over the world, and accelerate development towards the bigger goal.
Steem - from Vapor to Liquid to Solid
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Steem's evolution has been following a process a lot like the condensation and solidification of a cooling vapor, from vapor (pre-beta development and discussion), into the liquid form (what we have now), and the next phase is crystallisation.
I am pretty sure Dan and Ned realised that there would be quite a significant shake-out process through all of this, and that many who they managed to get to join, would not stick around to see it through to the next phase, the physical manifestation, the solidification into a strong and robust but decentralised network of development projects running that build all the very things that anyone who has been following cryptos for a few years, knows have needed to happen but nobody has up to now found a way to make happen.
In fact, what looks bad to many at the moment, is in fact confirmation that a milestone has been reached and the next phase is beginning.
Those who are jumping out, that's perfectly fine, and thanks for your participation in the project up to this point, you have been very helpful and thanks to your help, within a year you will all see how important you have actually been, even if you were not rewarded a hell of a lot in the process. Don't throw away your login keys just yet though. As a comment points out below this post, you could come back here in 6 months time, and suddenly discover that your reward was inordinately larger than you expected, with some time in maturation.
Steem will probably bottom out at maybe even as low as USD$0.20 before the next wave of momentum kicks in, I have been saying this for at least 6 weeks now. Once a realistic valuation is found, investment will flood in, and if you thought Steem was revolutionary, just wait until Steem has enough Power to persuade governments to accept identity documents issued by us as valid passports.
It's going to happen, even if it seems like Steem dwindles away to a shadow of its former self. The hype is about what it can be, not about what it is. To become what it can be, it has to be refined into its pure, solid form, and then from there, it will start to grow really fast.
A hint at what Steem will eventually become
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(albeit in a somewhat dangerous context... and like this little tacker pictured above, that's how life is for the small and new...)
I have been envisioning elements of a system like described in the post above, since 2013. Steem's design filled in some big gaps in my concept which is partly why I have undying enthusiasm for it, though at times I feel like I am talking to a brick wall trying to explain what it is, and what it isn't, and where it's going.
But this is to be expected. I suppose the recent tumble in price has been several more big whales powering down and cashing out their liquid assets. Increasingly, this loss of 'investors' will just be the loss of the mischief making whales I mentioned above.
The foregoing link, obviously, focuses on the application to operating a business in a hostile environment. But to round it out, including all of the references to my writing on the subject, here is one from @dantheman that inspired the second post about Steem being a prototype for a decentralised government:
https://steemit.com/government/@dantheman/what-does-a-truly-decentralized-government-look-like
Another post from me discussing another facet, which I address sparingly in the Agora post, about catastrophe and blockchain insurance systems:
This covers an element of the system that will eventually form, with Steem as the seed crystal in the centre of it. At base, Governments are ostensibly an insurance system. They fail to deliver on their promise because they quickly form into opaque, centralised hierarchies that are disconnected from reality, and become harbours for psychopaths who enjoy being surrounded by yes-men and having the power of life and death (or just freezing people out of society).
Only those who understand where this is all going, are going to keep at it
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But that's going to be enough to get it through into the next phase.
The solid phase.
In fact, the brutal difficulty of making it as a creator of content on Steem has been intentional, and though they have tried to polish the pointy edges that give power to exploiters, trolls and scammers, it is meant to be difficult, because they are trying to find people like me, and others I have been also finding, who will form a solid, hard core that will take this project into the future.
We can't stop here! This is Whale country!
Loki was born in Australia, now lives in Sofia, Bulgaria. IT generalist, physics theorist, futurist and cyber-agorist. Loki's life mission is to establish a secure, distributed layer atop the internet, and enable space migration.
I'm a thoughtocaster, a conundrummer in a band called Life Puzzler. I've flipped more lids than a monkey in a soup kitchen, of the mind. - Xavier, Renegade Angel
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All images in the above post are either original from me, or taken from Google Image Search, filtered for the right of reuse and modification, and either hotlinked directly, or altered by me
I'm not going to pretend I know anything about financial complexities - I don't. What I do know is Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest and the like don't pay out.
What I have seen from my infrequent checks on the exchanges is that a lot of Steem was dropped onto the market at just under a dollar and the price started dropping too.
Now, if 1 million steem dropped onto the market at a $ and the price goes down to 25c then the whales that made a million by selling at the high price can now gobble up 4 million Steem for the same $1 million and the price will rise - therein is a massive profit for a few weeks patience.
Those guys have the titanium balls to gamble like that and the money to do it. Fair play to them, but I know one more thing. If that happens, then my $2000Steem will then be worth $8000 so who wins?
Everyone that has the patience to stick around, that's who!
I think there will be some of the buy back like you say. Some whales probably pulled some out and are sitting in BTC or SBD and will power back up at lower prices and take the bet that they will become God Kings!
I understand your argument that Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Pinterest don't pay out. That is a legit argument for people who spend time on those platforms. I don't spend anytime on any of those platforms. I spend time on YouTube and I get paid there. A big reason why I devoted so much time on Steemit is to build a big following and be in that top handful of content creators on here who could make a full time living on this.
Unfortunately Steemit's reward system is so skewed and has nothing to do with the quality of content in most cases. That is very frustrating. All I would ask for is $100 liquid each day. $200 total payout across 4 potential posts and I could spend full time on here. But when I spend 5 hours on a post and get paid $0.36. You can bet that I'm upset. That was a huge reason why Steve got so upset. I have been on here for over 3 months making solid content and building a following and my upvote is worth $0.01. That is an issue. So at that rate if I put in a full time effort my upvote will be worth $0.20 in 5 years. It is a tough pill to swallow.
I really hope the best for Steemit but if there can't be a way for good content creators with no prior connections to the whales to get on here and make a full time living off this then there is an issue.
Ned and Dan's actions of continuing to power down when everyone is freaking out doesn't make anyone feel good. They have pulled enough money to buy a super car and live the dream. That's cool. Now if they believe in this thing they should stop their power downs at the very least.
It's a peculiar and disturbing process that I go through every so often, I think this is the 4th time in my 2 months (my 2 month anniversary was yesterday), I get a very black mood, and start to think I'm gonna throw in the towel, and then something happens. In this case, after my previous post about starting a Steem Developer Hub in Amsterdam, some people made connections and are now doing the research and networking to make it happen, and I realised and remembered again that this is how it is supposed to be, and what looks bad on the surface has little gems crystallising inside it.
I go through similar moods. For me the thing to remember is that asset prices tend to move in waves, not straight lines. Testing the lows of an asset is important for assessing its value, which would seem especially important if the asset is a brand new framework like Steem. But also everything you said :)
"I get a very black mood, and start to think I'm gonna throw in the towel, and then something happens."
Wonderful! I'm happy for you that your ideas are getting through and will be making a difference soon. Looking forward to SteemFest so I can meet lots of interesting and innovative people like you :)
Buying in - Power up - Long for the Long run brother @l0k1 :)
Return - To the Top
I'll never be entirely sure how long Steemit is going to last, but I think it's similar to what Andreas A. says about Bitcoin - the cat's out of the bag; this technology is here to stay, regardless of if the individual platform succeeds or not.
One thing that I'd like to see someone create in the near future, is a platform similar to Steemit or based on Steem, that is something like Sourceforge or Github... Open source programmers immediately have an easy way of monetising their work, and perhaps dedicate themselves to it full time, pushing software forward in exciting ways.
Looking at the price does seem a little scary at times, but I guess it doesn't matter much in the long term. The community is still here, and so it makes it very unlikely the price will go to zero. And even though the Steem price is similar to before July 4th, the market cap is from 3-4x. We'll see what happens... I'm wondering whether Steem Power will be my retirement or just a fond memory of a time involved in a new type of online community.
In the end they key for us non developers (authors, content creators) is having something that drives you and uses steemit as a platform for that item. Thus when you are feeling the gloo, which I have felt. You can fall back on that item.
For me - I'm using steemit as a platform to write my real estate investing posts. So even if this whole thing was to fall about on the blogging side, atleast I will have written my book by way of posts.
real estate development has been poisoned badly by the free money given out by so many banks in the last 20 years... it should be about the places that are becoming better value because of various other conditions, instead of just how much loans are dished out... on that basis I would say that if you were smart, and bought land in eastern europe in the last 10 years, you did well. every other place the rent and land prices went up stupidly, here, they have been very placid. but the people have become richer. a lot richer, when you balance out the costs.
Thank you for writing this post. I have e-mailed it to young @steve-mcclair
I am the one who got him on the platform initially and we live in the same city. Possibly this will change his mood some.
I know you stated you have a price target of $0.20. My price target is $0.05 two months from now. Not to be negative but I fear it could go that low. Hopefully that doesn't implode Steem / Steemit. This platform is way too revolutionary and I fear for it and for the community that is so awesome here! Steve and I really do want to see it succeed.
Hi @l0k1, I just stopped back to let you know your post was one of my favourite reads today and I included it in my Steemit Ramble. You can read what I wrote about your post here.
Awesome Post/response @l0k1. When people scoff about how STEEM price is down, I reply with, "some dude once spent 10,000 Bitcoin on 2 pizzas. Today, each pizza cost over $2 million dollars at current price of Bitcoin." Silence follows.
Full $teem Ahead!
@streetstyle
ps. I re-steemed this.
Great post! I believe in steem and glad to be a part of the process. Cheers
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Steem/Steemit is a platform with a lot of potential. It can expand beyond the current use case to be a whole economy. It could even replace Bitcoin and Paypal in time. I believe the technology is sound, but I've not studied all the code (or any of it actually). A cryptocurrency is very hard to get just right, but they have at least succeeded in getting people to use it. It's mostly a core of geeks for now. Taking it mainstream is a whole different problem, but that's needed for the next million users.
I'm along for the ride. Have fun at SteemFest
@l0k1 I've been following your posts with interest for a while now, though much of what you write is beyond my comprehension. What I do see in you is a kind of brilliance and a free thinking mind that I respect, so I value your input on this issue.
The number of users at Steemit has reached 10,000. It is inevitable that some will leave. Those who stay here for the long term will profit.
100,00 ;)
Yes, you're right. I also think that those people leaving will also return and find a pocket of Steem waiting :)
if they are smart enough to keep their passwords, within the next 6 months they are gonna get a big surprise when they get the idea to come back and have a look.
Very true.
I liked your article. Helps you like mine ♥ @siams