Ouch! Yes, a lot of people bought on the way up... but I'm glad you're still here and being part of the community.

In a sense, the current conditions seem to be a good sorting mechanism of those who are just here for the money from those who actually care about content and social interaction.

I started here because I felt "ready" to resume personal blogging after about a 7-year hiatus. The rewards were never something I counted on, simply because I had a very long string of experiences with "write for rewards" sites crashing and burning, and I expected Steemit to do the same. But the lure of the blockchain environment was that I could potentially "park" my content here, and it would not "go away" because some company stopped paying their domain hosting fees.

That I ended up making a lot more than "handful of spare change" was purely and completely a bonus.

I only ever marketed this site to others as a blogging and social content venue... generally completely omitting any mention of "rewards" as anything but a coincidental.