Is It Now a Bad Time to Start or be Active in Steemit?

I started promoting Steemit pretty much as early as learning about it in July 2017. I started with @dandalion and convinced her to sign up just a couple of days after my account got approved, then we both convinced other family members to join.

In September 2017 we joined a @SteemPH outreach event where we brought art and music to students with disabilities. I was given a few minutes to speak with the parents about Steemit. Although I’ve only been in the platform for a couple of months then and had very little knowledge about how it works, I tried to sound confident because I thought of Steemit as a good opportunity for the most likely stay at home parents of special children. That was my first speaking engagement that involved promoting Steemit.

Another event with similar format was held in November with out of school youth of Cavite. While I was more confident, I acknowledged that there were a couple of things still missing; a deeper understanding of Steemit and the Steem blockchain, and time. A few minutes simply isn’t enough to present Steemit and its many benefits other than being an opportunity to earn.

Towards the end of 2017 the thought behind what is now known to be SteemPH Meet Up Caravan started. The plan was originally just to set up a venue for local Steemians in our province (Bulacan) to meet up and get to know each other more.

Here is how it evolved since:

• Bulacan meet up plan
• Added a learning/sharing session of the things we’ve learned about Steemit since July
• Encouraged promotion of growing the user-base through requiring Steemians to invite non-Steemians to join the meet up
• A Cavite meet up plan came up from a single comment which became a trail
• Reformatted the meet up plan to SteemPH Meet Up Caravan City/Province
• This tag line was added to the project: “Humanizing the Steemit Experience through bringing Communities Together.”

There’s a lot that happened from when @dandalion and I joined Steemit in July 2017 till today. Here is a brief summary:

• The userbase grew significantly from 290,640 to 904,058.
• The price of Steem ranged from $0.83 to $8.03 (closing price) between end of July 2017 and end of January 2018. It is currently trading between $1.4 to $1.5.
• The price of Steem Dollar ranged from $0.94 to $13.76 (closing price) between end of July 2017 and end of December 2017. It is currently trading at $1.4 to $1.5.
• SMT was announced in September 28, 2017.
• Payout in Steem was seen starting on the 18th of March.
• EOS was announced to be a direct competition of Steem.

With these developments and movements in mind, is it now a bad time to start in Steemit?

Is Steemit Now Too Crowded?

There were only 290,640 users registered at the end of July 2017, there are now 904,058 registered users as of 10PM GMT of April 1, 2018. This growth rate looks exponential alright, but putting it into context against how many internet users there are in the world of more than 4 Billion people, I believe that we are still in the phase of building the user-base. Anyone who joins for the rest of this year are still going to be early adopters.

Yes, there are a lot more of us sharing the reward pool that isn't necessarily growing, and yes there are those who've been able to grow their networks having joined earlier than us, but we don't believe that those two factors are enough to conclude - Steemit is too crowded to succeed in. It is true that we as newer users will have to be more creative to do well, but anything worth doing is never easy. If you came in Steemit thinking it is easy money, then I can understand if you elect to leave now that the price is dropping, and there are those who are willing to put in extra effort to succeed.

Are the Prices Still Worth it to Stay Active?

I can understand how the price movement can be disheartening for Steemians specially the ones who joined between November to December 2017. At the peak of the price of Steem my upvote was worth 1.80 in payout value, it is now back to 0.36. This means that for Steemians who joined at the time of the peak are now most likely making a fifth of the $ value they were making per post. For people who are just here for the money and nothing else, the movement in price can get demotivating enough to leave.

Having joined when Steem was priced under a dollar, I am not worried about the price movement at all. I would have been extremely happy if the price continued moving upwards, but I know that wasn't going to happen. From when we started, @dandalion and I agreed that our first year will vastly be about a couple of things:

• Building our reputations up, both through the reputation score measure in the platform, and engaging with like minds.
• Accumulating Steem Power. We have taken out Steem Dollar to-date only to support our initiative in Steemit promotion via the SteemPH Meet Up Caravan.

Both of these objectives are hardly affected by price movement. Unless of course Steem Dollar will pump significantly higher than Steem. When that happened last time, we were able to accumulate more Steem Power per Steem Dollar. Keeping ourselves reminded of those two goals for our first year, we are unlikely to slow down with our Steemit activities.

Can SMT Really Push the Value Upwards?

In theory, the implementation of Smart Media Token should create more demand for Steem, drive much deserved attention for the scalability of the Steem blockchain, and allow us to inch forward revolutionizing how interaction happens within the social media environments and the internet in general. The reality however is that this will take time. In this article entitled Smart Media Token Development from @SteemitBlog, SMT was described to be "The most ambitious project Steemit has worked on since the release of Steem in March 2016". I can understand the overall excitement from the community both within Steem and the rest of the cryptocurrency and blockchain tech world. The truth however, is that it can also create unnecessary impatience as we go, followed by dissatisfaction and disappointments with timelines of the road-map.

The real impact of SMT is not something that will be seen in the next month, not even shortly after implementation. It will only realistically occur with the first few successful implementation.

Is EOS a Threat

I honestly see this emerging competition to be healthy for Steem and Steemit. This is not me saying @dan will not succeed in giving Steemit Inc. a run for their money. He's got the technical knowledge that will be backed by the continuously accumulating wealth in EOS. What I am saying is that a competition will be a great incentive for Steemit Inc. to improve the platform to keep their two year head start advantage up.

If the platform @dan and the EOS team is developing turns out to be significantly better, the regular Steemian still win having accumulated experience and developed deeper understanding of how such platform would work.

How About the Debt Ratio?

In an utopian.io contribution I titled SBD, Steem, & SP Payout in Relation with Market Movement, I explained the calculation involved in the mechanism to ensure Steem Dollar holders will not have control over more than 10% of the market cap.

This statement was part of my concluding statement:

With the current movement of the market, the rewards are likely to take a hit in favor of keeping the ecosystem around the currencies in check, the debt ratio minimal, and the supposed peg of Steem Dollar near $1.

Working on that analysis taught me a few things about how there are mechanisms in place to keep the system working as expected.

Conclusion

We flew to Davao on the 31st of March to do a Steemit meet up while we are aware that the prices of Steem and Steem Dollar are in a downtrend. This post is now 1,500++ words and I am already drafting a post for tomorrow about the planned meet up in Davao.

In this post we covered quite a few events within the Steemit community, the Steem blockchain, and the potential social media related blockchain competition. In a nut shell, we remain confident about Steem and Steemit from the perspective of Scalability, Stability, and the Community overall; who collectively just like us will continue to keep their activities within the blockchain up, and promote the growth both in terms of user-base and investment.

Credits:

Lego Figure Cover Photo Background Image - Pixabay
SteemPH Meet Up Caravan Banner - @oppaniayu
Laptop Image - Pixabay
Lego Amphitheater - Pixabay
Steem Price Chart - CoinMarketCap
Idea, Planning, Strategy, Success - Pixabay
Smart Media Token Image - @voronoi
Horse Race - Pixabay