Making an investment is a big decision, especially in a cryptocurrency where there is no shortage of volatility and lack of regulations. Making an investment can further be complicated when there are three options: Steem, Steem Dollars, and Steem Power. On top of that, the price has seen a steady decline since it spiked a couple of months ago, and it seems that everyday there's a new post about how low the price of Steem is dropping, and wondering if this is the best time to buy, or if we're headed into a black hole, never to return again.
The current price of Steem is only one factor to consider
What follows in this post may not be news to everyone. I'm sure a lot of the veterans here are aware of most/all of things I'll be talking about, but now that we're closing in on 100,000 accounts, and the majority of those have registered in the past couple of months, coupled with lower prices, this may be an optimal time for many new members to invest, and I'd like to point out a few things beyond the current price of Steem in an effort to get the most out of their investment.
The magic of Steem Power
Steem Power is sexy. It gives you larger curation rewards, more influence on posts, and can help protect against the inflationary nature of Steem. Your Steem Power is constantly on the rise, and because of that, you're guaranteed to have more Steem when you cash out then you initially invested.
Behind the facade of Steem Power lies the real asset. The Vest. Or MV. Your Steem Power goes up because the cost to convert Steem into Steem Power is always going up.
When I first joined here it took approximately 250 Steem to get 1 million vests. As of today it's up to roughly 350 steem per MV. That means even if the price of Steem remains the same, it will always cost you more to convert into Steem Power in the future. Of course the price has been falling at a faster rate than the inflation of Steem, so for the last couple of months, price was the most important factor in deciding when to invest. However now that we've reached what I think is close to a short term bottom, things may get a little trickier in the future. Because of this I'd like to bring some attention to a more important price to look at: the price per MV.
I took this screenshot yesterday, and it comes from https://steemd.com/distribution.
I love it because it does the work for you and gives you the current cost of 1 MV which was ~ $157 as of yesterday. If you're investing money or transferring BTC you already have, this price is more important then the price of Steem itself, because it takes the constantly increasing conversion rate into effect. The conversion rate is also shown here, and will rise indefinitely. This alone doesn't necessarily help make a better decision on when to invest, because price is still important and it's hard to judge which way the market is going to move in the short, medium, and long term, but I never see price per MV mentioned as something to consider, so I thought I'd throw it out there for anyone interested. You can also take this a step further and look at the historical prices and try to determine the cost per MV you'd like to invest at, or even the MV per BTC ratio that looks like a great opportunity. We are currently at > 4 MV per bitcoin, which is the best it's been since the spike in July.
Another potential variable is...
Here is a screenshot of the top Steem Power holders and who is currently powering down. We can see at the top right that 93 out of the top 200 are currently powering down, and we can see when those power downs get paid out. Tracking this can help give an additional idea of where the price may head in the short/medium term, assuming a high percentage of the powered down Steem gets sold on the exchanges, which I'm assuming it does. Of course increased growth and new members may buy those power downs up as soon as they hit the market, so this along with TA, EW, and a magic 8 ball will not predict price movements all the time, but it is something to think about.
One of the great things about Steem is that you don't have to invest to anything to get Steem Power. You get some just for signing up. You get some for writing posts like this. You get some for voting on blogs you like. You even get some from mining or becoming a witness. Over time, you can even gain an even larger stake of Steem Power by not powering down. It's pretty amazing that there are so many possibilities to participate in addition to an investment of your own, and one of the reasons I've spent so much time on here and will continue to do so in the future.
I'd like to sum up this post be reiterating that in general, the price of Steem has been the best indicator of when to invest and power up over the past couple of months because the price has been falling quickly since we saw the ATH in July. Despite this fact, another variable to take into consideration is the price per MV, which increases over time even if price does not. Although many of you may know about these resources and ideas, the user base is increasing quickly and I felt it was a great time to introduce them to those who might not know all the intricacies of this amazing platform.
It probably goes without saying, but the "Pay me 100% in Steem Power" box has been checked on this post. I'm here for the long haul, and would love to know what you think about everything in this post. Thanks for reading.
*All images are courtesy of pixabay and my iphone*
I was interested in your idea that tracking when the whales power down gives an indication as to when the price will dip. Presumably this works backwards too, as power downs happen every even days. I wonder if anyone has plotted the power downs in a chart against the price to see who tanks the price most?
I haven't seen anyone chart that yet, but it would be very interesting and I would love to see it. Along with seeing when the whales powerdown, it's also possible to see when they send their Steem to the exchange to sell it, so it would be possible to track that type of thing and look for patterns/trends.
A nice post and thanks for sharing. Up-voted, now following & looking forward to reading more of your stuff. I posted a piece earlier about the potential valuation of Steemit that you and your followers may find interesting. If you get a minute have a read. It has certainly got my Twitter followers thinking!!
“STEEMIT is no ordinary Social Media site, it’s pure GOLD..!!”
https://steemit.com/steemit/@stephenkendal/steemit-is-no-ordinary-social-media-site-it-s-pure-gold
Cheers.
Stephen
Stephen, thanks for following and sharing. I'll check your post out, I love the title!
Thanks I appreciate the support. Hope you like the post. Stephen
Good Post,nice reading. Funny, just added the price per MV to my daily Report :) And yeah just bought 1 MV yesterday, price was irresistible.
Excellent, thanks for adding it, I love reading your daily reports. Very excited to see them going forward.
Is 1 MV one Steemit account? So if that's true you've bought an extra Steemit account?:) Please correct me if I'm wrong
usefull summary, I didn't know SteemDown.com, thanks.
Thanks for reading, and I know what you mean, theres so many sites and resources its hard to keep up.
This is a very helpful and informative article. Thank you for helping to teach more people about some of the lesser known aspects of investing in SP. I'm sure this is info a lot of potential SP investors will want to know!
I really appreciate this, and I hope you're right about this helping a lot of newer users. I've enjoyed a lot of your posts so it's great to know you feel the same.
Thanks :)
Very informative. Still confused though being new to Steemit. So, When should I start trading Steem?
That's a great question. I think it depends on your goal, are you looking to buy and sell Steem to eventually power up into Steem Power? Or are you looking to make a quicker profit to convert it into bitcoin or cash?
Looking to make quick profit.
Steem is kind of tough for quick profits because it's so inflationary... I would try with Steem Dollars if I was going for a quick profit because if you buy when they're in the 85-90 cent range or lower, you're almost guaranteed to be able to turn a profit at some point because the range is somewhat predictable.
One thing you could try with Steem is using the SteemDown website to see when a bunch of whales are about to get they're payout of Steem, because then they may go dump on the exchanges. If you see the price drop hard on a day like that theres a good chance it will rebound soon after... at least for a day or two.
Thanks for your advice. You should start a group in here for trading cryptocurrencies. Comment?
Very cool.
This is a side of things I haven't gotten my mind around. Thanks for sharing. The SBD, Steem and SP all make sense, but vests confuse me.
What do vests ultimately affect? Other than the value/cost, what is the significance in my interaction on Steemit?
Also, if someone is powering down and decides they only want to keep half of the Steem they just powered down and put the rest back into SP, did they just sacrifice vests (because it was lower when they initially bought Steem)?
Always learning... :)
Both great questions. I believe vests ultimately affect everything that SP does, so your curation rewards, how quickly SP goes up from "interest", and the amount you add to a payout when you upvote. What I haven't figured out yet is if two people both have 5000 SP, do they always have the same # of Vests or could it be different depending on when they powered up, etc. That's something I'd like to look into more.
For powering down, yes I believe you would lose a small amount of vests if you reinvested half of the recently powered down Steem since the conversion rate would be higher. Might have to look into that more and see if there are any scenarios where that doesn't happen. Thanks, you have me thinking about a lot of new things now which is always good.
Glad I could help promote thought. :)
These could be really important in planning powering down priorities. If it's a factor, then it would also bring up the question as to which SP you're powering down? The stuff you bought two months ago or two weeks ago. Strategies would change in accordance, right?
Thanks for the quick and thoughtful response.
I invested on steem on exchagers more than a month ago and you could imagine how highbthe price when i jumped in. Steen has been low this past days and i never hesitatedbyo invest at this low price and im glad steem is pulling up... hoping it could be the start of an uptrend...
I jumped in a while ago too when the price was high, and have luckily been able to bring my avg. buy in price down some over the past few weeks. It would be nice to see the trend reversed, here's to hoping you're right about that!
Wow thanks, newbie here. Such good information. This is great. Sooner or later a high income earner here at Steemit. Thumbs up for this!
Thank you! You will definitely be a high income earner, just keep putting out great content and eventually it'll happen.
Word.
This was informative.
I'm about to get my first SP purchase made and glad to do it sooner than later! haha
Informative article, thanks for sharing. 👍
Thanks for re-steeming! I was just checking out your blog and saw this in there. Very cool.
Good post bro... i also have added to my SP a week ago. I will add more soon. You have a new follower...
Thanks, happy to hear that, I also added to my SP about a week ago... had to make up for buying in a little too much when I first joined and Steem was going for $2.50 lol.
Yeah ... lol. I definitely think it will be back above that in the coming year and maybe even higher. I will be adding a little here and there as I can.
I invested when Steem was around $3.5 - $3, that was a bad call on my part and not taking the inflation model into consideration! This post has some great info
I made the same mistake at first and have been trying to cost avg down since then. It makes sleep a little easier knowing if I post and curate on a consistent basis my avg buy in price will continue to go down as my rewards bring my SP up.
Thanks for clarifying and making it simpler to understand. I also tick the "100% steempower box" for the same reason as you. The thing is I have made over 246 posts and have yet to get 1 MV ..... but I plug on !!
You're welcome, glad it helped and yes just gotta plug on. There are so many awesome ppl on the lookout for great content now that it's only a matter of time before you start getting some nice payouts. I'll check out your blog.
Thanks, appreciate that!
@driven, thanks - info about powering down is very useful.
Upvoted
Thanks! Happy to hear it was helpful.
@driv3n - thanks a lot for the article! Upvoted!
Very topical for me in particular, because I just think that currencies we have now (Dollar, EUR, Pound) sipmly worth nothing. Just wrote an article about this today:
https://steemit.com/money/@conspi-theorist/why-global-crisis-is-inevitable-part-4-finale-the-2nd-great-depression-will-start-in-2017
ANd of course in my next one will tick 100% Steem Power ;)
I just read your article, thanks for posting that as well I still need to read the rest but there's a lot of info in there I had no idea about. It's great we can store wealth in cryptos, precious metals, and other assets outside of govermnent controlled currencies, it's too bad more people don't diversify more.
Thanks for the info! upvoted
Anytime! Thanks for reading and commenting. It's always great to get feedback.
Great informative post. You got yourself a follower.
Much appreciated, thanks for following and commenting. I hope to post more great stuff In the future.
Thanks for the clarification on Steem power, I didn't know which one to put money on. Now, I'm more comfortable.
Thank you so much !!
Hi, how much is Steem Power worth? Is it the same as STEEM? What is that in USD value? Thanks.
as a new stem member, this article has been very motivating. thanks for saving my time by all the research you've done. hopefully I will get the courage to write my first blog soon!
You know I love to motivate, and I would love to see a blog post of yours. The countdown is on... ;)
Thank you for doing writing this. Gave me a better undertanding of how to check the value of steemit and when to buy in. I bookmarked all the site you listed too. Here's all my links I bookmarked to check the value of steemit.
Any other good links I should know about?
Also what I still don't understand fully is the three different values on steemit that separately represent themselves SBD, SP, and Steem. I saw steem on poloniex but not the other two. anyone know how to check the value of the other two?
I think those are the best sites for checking the value, I think steemprice.com is another one?
You can find SBD on polo as well, but the volume is much lower, usually around 10 btc per day so you may have to scroll down quite a bit to find it. You won't find SP on any exchanges, but when you power down, your SP gets converted into Steem. Luckily SP keeps going up, so even if the price of Steem is flat you would make a profit eventually.
I forgot to tick the "Pay Me in Steem Power" box when posting my latest blog....woe is me...Is there any way to change this??
I don't think there's anyway to change it, I've done the same thing by accident before. I felt like such a rookie.
Great article the only thing I don't really get is the price per MV. And do you have to pay a fee to convert your Steem Power into Steem?
And of course I have upvoted the post:)
So the best time to buy steem power is when the price of 1 MV is low? Great info, unfortunately the site is down for maintenance at the moment.
Fine thread. I fully understand what you're talking about. The crypto space brings the biggest group of uneducated investors with it. This group will only grow. We do need more indept investment analysis. Do you know this interesting site? https://www.coincheckup.com They seem to give this complete indepth analysis of all cryptocoins. Go to: https://www.coincheckup.com/coins/Steem#analysis For the Steem Investment analysis.
Great insight here. I just started here at Steemit yesterday and have been trying to get a handle of the best way forward and this was really helpful, as I'm about to make an investment in some SP!
Upvoted!
Hi! I've been reading about Steem this week, and I don't understand how this MV thing fits into all I learned... it's only mentioned in one place in the FAQ and not displayed in the UI at all. Powering up seems to convert STEEM to STEEM Power 1:1, and on exchanges you buy normal STEEM.
So as I understand, MV is just some internal unit of how STEEM Power is counted on the blockchain, and not something users normally need to think about? But I don't understand why people here are mentioning "buying MV"... Is this something that has changed since this post and comments were written?
I'm going to follow your footsteps brother. Now, I'm going for the long haul too. Thank you for such an informative post. :)
great article, im in!
Can someone please make a conversion chart that performs a similar function of a compound interest calculator. It would be great if someone could have an idea what it would look like if they invested in a 1,000 Steam and converted it into power and held it for 1 year, 5 years, 30 years, etc. Allowing people to play with various inputs and outputs allows the community to get a better grasp of the currency. Knowledge is power, and that type of knowledge grows adoption.
Awesome. Here for long run.
Though I still want to learn more about steem. Can you guide me to any particular blog or user to learn about steem. Which is ur prefered blog on steem?
Thanks for taking the time to write this out for us new people :) I have one question that I think you answered, but I’m still a bit confused. Even though the price of Steem now is very low, I noticed in the “market” on the Steemit website, the price of Steem/SBD is still high around 1.15. But when I started a month ago and the price of Steem was around the same, the Steem/SBD price was like 0.55... Does this have to do with what you explained about the cost of MV? And I’m wondering if you think it will ever come down close to 0.55 again for example. Because once I get paid out in my most recent posts, im wondering if I should just buy Steem anyways to convert it to SP. or if i should wait for it to dip below 1 again (hopefully closer to 0.6 like before aha) Thank you :)
This was a fantastic summary for a n00b steemer like myself. I've got some idea of the machinations of the platform and the currencies behind it, fascinating really!
I hope in future my posts will be considered valuable :)