I'm just reading through some of the steemit posts this morning and it seems a lot of people are a bit down about the price of steem. It's sort of funny to watch as some of the newer people here - even people that have been here about 8 months - seem to think this is a low price.
It's not; and it's not that bad.
I just recently hit a few milestones I didn't really get a chance to mention since I was on vacation the last few weeks.
https://ipfs.busy.org/ipfs/QmbrPofsywvHQBCLBQXX6DWmFUC9kcBcQR4N9VVhcMBu9e
First, I recently hit my 2 year mark on Steemit.
I first joined Steemit on July 23rd, 2016. I still remember discovering this place and being completely blown out of the water at what it was offering. Steemit.com was also even more basic than it is now, which might be hard for some of the newer members to even comprehend, considering steemit still appears like a website from the 90's.
Back then there was no vote slider. You got you're ten votes and that was it before you started to lose voting power. Back then you had no reputation, not that it means a whole lot these days anyway. Also back then, it seemed to be more about quality content and not so much who the poster is: although that still existed. On any given post you could earn $100+ or $0. It all depended on the quality and who saw it. Now it seems to be about who posted the content and it doesn't so much matter what it's about - with some exceptions, of course.
And back then, they payouts were given at 24 hours and 30 days. In my opinion, there should be no limit on when a post pays out, but 30 days was much better than the 7 days we have now. If a post could have the potential to earn money indefinitely, the quality of each post would surely increase. Having payouts capped at 7 days just makes people spit out quantity and not quality.
I joined right after Steem hit the $4 mark. Then, pretty much the same thing happened as it is now. The price ever so slowly dropped, and dropped, and dropped.
It went all the way down to 6 cents.
6 cents!!
Imagine that! Nobody was making any money from their posts, with some exceptions. People started jumping ship back then, too. It was very common for every post, at least for me, to make between $0 and $0.1. There were a number of people that stuck through it then as well. I remember how excited I was when steem made it back to 50 cents - then it kept going.
Was there anything happening on steemit driving the price up? Not really. Somewhere along the way the features such as reputation and the vote slider were implemented but I don't remember them really making the price move that much - maybe a little. It only followed the price of bitcoin, from what I can see and it still is.
If you look at the price from last year at this time ($1.21 on Aug 10, 2017) we're still down but not much. Steem actually went down as low as 85 cents around November last year.
https://ipfs.busy.org/ipfs/QmbrPofsywvHQBCLBQXX6DWmFUC9kcBcQR4N9VVhcMBu9e
Despite being down, the point I'm trying to make is the same thing keeps happening over and over. Steem gets these pumps in value really fast and then just slowly falls back down to a much lower value. People start flipping out and jumping ship each time it drags out and then they come flooding back as it pumps. It's been happening since I started on Steemit 2 years ago.
So don't worry about the price right now. The hard fork that's coming might pump the price up a bit or it might not. The price might pump on it's own like it seems to have been doing or it might not. Since the price is way up over 8 cents, I'm still happy. In fact, Steem is worth more than the Canadian dollar right now so it's doing pretty good after only 2 years. I just wish I could go to the store and buy groceries with my steem without the hassle of cashing it out to bitcoin then CAD then to the bank with a number of waiting periods and fees in between. That will come eventually, though.
Just keep posting because you like to and not because your vote is worth a few cents less right now. Even earning 1 cent from your post is better than making a post somewhere else, too. I was so happy when my 100% vote gave out 1 cent to people some of the time.
The second milestone is that I just passed 2500 followers.
This is a big achievement for me as I'm certainly not the most extroverted person out there - far from it. I'm sure a bunch of those follows aren't real or have jumped ship over the last 2 years but thanks so much to all the people following me and commenting on my posts.
The price is irrelevant. Progress is. We have awesome developement, project lives and amasses a new users and new projects.
I'll rather have a dirt cheap token of good project to HODL, than a overvaluated shitcoin. If i HODL... for those who want to sell steem right now it's not so bright. But meh....
Interesting history lesson. I only wish I had discovered this when you did. The trajectory is just the same as what you experienced from when I got in, down down but I'm not getting out.
there is a lot of panic about the price of steem and thats killing many people .. well i think it happens in crypto all the time
I agree it's not so bad. The community here is still small, but hf20 could help it grow. We still need quality as well as quantity
You make a good point on the quality of the posts being adjusted to the seven days payout time. When the platform rewards short term viral content more than quality long term content, you risk getting a new Facebook type of site.
When it was at 30 day payouts, the was a lot more emphasis on quality. Right down to making sure you run your post through grammarly for spell checking and punctuation mistakes. You don't see that a whole lot any more. From my observation, it stopped around the same time the payout times changed.
The idea of social platforms build on a platform such as Steem is really interesting, but I can't help to think that perhaps steemit.com won't stay the #1 platform long term. It'll be very interesting to see what the Steem platform future looks like!
The ones that are jumping ship depending on price fluctuations were not going to add any value anyway. Let's keep quality content coming in and we will grow Steemit together. I will keep posting everyday sharing my knowledge about music and that is enough for me. If it turns into a nice income down the road (which I believe it will) that would be the cherry on top.
Just amazing to see the roller coaster that it has been for those who were here. It is just as amazing to watch newbies like me to scamper away after hitting these lows. Its not like that most of us were making any money online before we joined steemit.
I am just glad that somebody is willing to read my stuff and upvote it. At the end of the day...... I guess this is kind of a litmus test for those who are willing to stay and those who have illusions of making a quick buck.
It's also not about the value of stem either... It's about the amount of stem you get for the post. A $1 post right now gets you 1 steem. A $1 post when steem is at 10 cents gets you 10 steem (now with $10). Long term, the $1 (1 steem) you earn today could be worth $100 a few years from now when steem makes it to $100.
I joined steemit this January and have been operating on the basis of how many steem tokens I can earn rather than dollars...... mostly because I consider this place as my long term investment.
"Having payouts capped at 7 days just makes people spit out quantity and not quality"
I agree here - surely a good post is a good post regardless of how old it is. I wasn't aware of the 7 day thing so have wasted votes on posts that would not benefit from my vote.
I'm just here for the fun of it, to read interesting stuff and hopefully contribute a little both in terms of content and curation.
Right on! I was just happy for my post to have some readers those days. I must admit that quality is down a bit or is it big time?
It's down for sure. It's hard to blame the content creators, though. There really is no incentive to put out the best quality when you're chances are just as good for mediocre quality these days.
Pretty much.
Congratulations, Stephen!
2 years is a great term!
You have seen much here, and you're an experienced Steemian, so if you say "don't worry", I won't worry;)
Yeah, I've heard about 6 cents price.. so now I'm happy too, it's so bad as many people think.
anyways, we must take Steemit not just a money-making machine. If we just enjoy it, then the price will worry us much less.
Congratulations on that milestone (and for introducing me to steemit and crypto). A social media platform that pays users instead of using them as the product with a cryptocurrency that is fast. How is this not going to work in the long-run?
I remember it being a huge deal when my vote went from a penny to 2. Sadly not far away from that now!