I really think that the price jump has a lot to do with SMT
Obviously, Steem blockchain is worth much more than what the Bitcoin is at now. The transaction fees has literally increased to a lot e.g. 4-5%. I was shocked to see that yesterday. project announcement by @ned.
For instance, I was transferring 0.022 to some wallet and the fees asked was 0.001 bitcoin. In terms of speed, it is the worst cryptocurrency with validation time of 24 hrs sometime. Unlike Bitcoin, Steem has a block time of 3 sec on average.
I just hope that Steem shows a monstrous rise by the end of 2018.
And being a developer, I will ensure this happens at least from my side.
Looking forward to develop lots of social platform based on steem-blockchain.