A Blast From the Past... Possible Foreshadowing for the Future... And Why the Future is Looking Good for Crypto (Especially if You HOLD Your Steem as STEEM POWER)

If you looked at Coin Market Cap 364 days ago, it would look like this:

https://coinmarketcap.com/historical/20160814/

As you can see, the prices were much less volatile back then, moving hardly even 1% a day sometimes. It didn't even require billions to be in the top of the market cap, either! I like where Steem is at in this list (; A very healthy 5th Place in the list. Things were much simpler back then! The competition wasn't nearly as fierce! Now, the amount of innovation has driven almost every good idea into the crypto-world, to be turned into it's own platform, token, etc.

And if you go to www.coinmarketcap.com today it says this:

https://coinmarketcap.com/

If you do the math, Bitcoin has multiplied itself by about 8, Ethereum has multiplied itself by about 30, Litecoin by 10, XEM by about 400, Dash by almost 20, etc. This has all happened in 364 days, not even a year!

I'm not implying this is a bad thing; far from it actually. This is a super healthy boom in what will be the most pivotal industry of the transformation of this planet. Cryptography and Cryptocurrency, along with the many platforms which help bring power to the hands of the average human, will be the frontier of technology which will free us from the economic and industrial social slavery which has been ruining all good things on this planet for a long, long time.

I really think that one of the craziest things ever is that STEEM, one of the most underrated cryptocurrencies ever made, has stayed ALMOST COMPLETELY STABLE within the 1 and 2.XX Dollar range, for a whole YEAR! That's crazy, man. STEEM IS A SLEEPING GIANT! It's the main crypto with equal male and female users, and it's also just so unique and beautifully incorporated into this amazing community... You just feel at home, amongst your intellectual friends when you're holding your Steem and STEEM POWER on this site (:

HOWEVER, with all great things come people who JUST WANT TO MAKE MONEY, and we can all relate to that, but think about this for a second...

While all these other cryptos have shot up THOUSANDS of %'s over the past year, people STILL WASTE THEIR TIME TRADING STEEM!!! ABSOLUTELY MIND-BLOWING, I KNOW!

C'mon dude... Yeah, YOU, the one trading the STEEM. That stuff is 1,000,000 times more useful as STEEM POWER! Ya dig?

Lemme break it down for anybody who may be a n00b here (it's okay, we've all been there)!

The more STEEM POWER you have, the more POWERFUL and AWESOME you are on STEEMIT, and you have an ability to make a better change for others (: Some peoples' upvotes on here, as you most likely already realize, are upwards of $20, $50, etc! From what's called a 100% upvote! Many of you new steemians are probably wondering where the % comes into play, and this is where:

ONCE YOU REACH 500 STEEM POWER (SP) you get to choose what % of your maximum upvote you want to use. You are also, at this point in time, officially a MINNOW, or like I like to call it, a LEVEL 2 USER. Level 1 is called DUST, lol you don't want to be dust, do you? For the sake of your self-esteem, we will call you a very tiny, but still awesome and unique, red fish. This is what my buddy @sal.tedder looks like, according to www.steemitboard, in his tiny, red glory:

And this is what a Minnow looks like:

BAM!!! Solid Gold, baby! Look at the size of that minnow (:

But really, beyond your animated avatar, which were graciously created by @arcange & @captaink , and tied up beautifully with the Steemit Board Achievement System, there is a much cooler ability that you get when you make it to ~500 SP, and that's being able to choose your upvote!

This is awesome because you can space out your votes better, while keeping your voting power, and thus, upvote VALUE high (: For example, it's recommended to not do more than eleven 100% upvotes in a day, because then your voting power will get super, super drained. So if you like to upvote lots of stuff, you can do that a lot easier with 500+ SP!

To learn more about voting power and how to monitor YOURS, which I do all day, erry day, check this post I made:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@amvanaken/wondering-why-your-upvote-isn-t-even-usd00-01-looks-like-you-need-to-learn-more-about-voting-power-on-steemit-let-it-recharge

You should DEFINITELY READ THAT ^ POST IF YOUR UPVOTE IS NOT 1 CENT OR 1 PENNY. This means that your voting power is SUPER drained and you need to let it recharge!

You start to realize that your upvote is powerful! Many people don't, but you can EASILY cash out your rewards from here, and they CAN make a difference in somebody's life! If I want to just leave somebody 1 cent, I usually do a 5% upvote. If I want to give them my full upvote, like I ended up giving my friend @maddie26 from the picture above, I go with my 100% upvote, which has been bouncing between 15 and 18 cents.

What you need to really wrap your head around, if you are wasting your money on fees trading STEEM for tiny gains... You could easily be making those same gains just HOLDING your STEEM as STEEM POWER and being active on Steemit. You get rewards for doing ANYTHING & EVERYTHING. My buddy @ckelly1618 made some money just upvoting for a year LOL you can be yourself and do what you want here on Steemit, and be rewarded for your uniqueness! Good luck finding those benefits elsewhere on the internet! If you're reading this, and just getting started, or haven't even joined yet, and still looking into it, let me give you some solid advice:

FULL STEEM AHEAD. WE ARE A GO. STEEMIT IS A WINNER!

People say that Bitcoin was the best invention since the internet, and I might agree. HOWEVER, Steemit and everything that goes along with it, is probably the best invention since Bitcoin! And those of you holding Steem in an exchange, or just as fat stacks of Steem in your account wallet built into this platform...

What are you doing, bro??

Not only is HOLDING your STEEM as STEEM POWER super rewarded, but it also maintains a STEADY VALUE and also GROWTH for Steem! One of the main reasons Steem has just been bouncing around a penny or 2 is because there's a ton of people trading BILLIONS of dollars worth of STEEM everyday on Poloniex and Bittrex!

BOOM! Yall have been caught red-handed, so knock it off! Go buy NEO at $50 and sell it at $500 in a year or buy TenX token for $5 and sell it for $50 in a year (not financial advice), but for the love of all things that are good in this world, POWER UP ALL YOUR STEEM AND LEAVE IT AS STEEM POWER! If you really have to be constantly making money, go and upvote all of your posts and comments! We don't care; everybody does it! There's not shame on here, so you're gonna wanna get as powerful as possible before STEEMIT is the norm and ya boy is at least a dolphin (;

I hope that you all found this interesting, and NOW see the full potential of STEEM. It could easily skyrocket just as fast and just as massively as these other cryptos have. Many OG's on here realize this already, and that's why they have like 2,500,000 SP!

Me personally, I'm keeping ALL my Steem Power, and cashing out my Steem Dollars (SBD), which is a good tactic if you're satisfied with your current Steem Power. However, if you don't have 500 SP yet, I highly recommend swapping your SBD for Steem and then Powering it Up! Please let me know if there is anything I can clarify (: This community is here to help!

And it's here to stay!

If you found this helpful and want to support your local international decentralized activist, please consider showing me some love with your glorious upvote or perhaps the coin of your choice, of which, I accept many in donation form (:

Life can be hard for a guy like me, so your help is greatly appreciated!
Bitcoin - 3EckeqFJFYjyg9pahRtEE3KNuhHFR56Hn8
Bitcoin Cash - 1Co1z8cLrHGDrw9byogwZJMTTwryuvcWex
BitConnect Coin - 8HM8vhMWJci9Jeq8BGvB9nmqcrAzZ2vn5k
Dash – Xu3D4yEG7gqfhW813m21vK7RzkBcWtbt4k
Dogecoin - DKoaQEFzURAi1yRqFcY5GZXzF4kHzYRY33
EOS - 0x7cb94f13535e0e27ac220197bb5c69f05563bb64
Ethereum - 0x10dce4F448926bb577dA76F50DB153F8cb8d8A29
Ether Classic - 0x10dce4f448926bb577da76f50db153f8cb8d8a29
Iconomi - 0x5ef8bd06ab379090f0b2b9fdfe6edb849049cd6f
IOTA - ISFWIVQFGTZYWZJV9DDOWYIPBQUDYITOICTXVAFPPWLSATVXYMG9PFOUYXPXGAUELSCHWUUHAM9MVPQZFVZWYNMBUV
Litecoin – LY2XbKYLZP5ug5HPUwAZ4YsxXbvPErT1zM
Monero - 4GdoN7NCTi8a5gZug7PrwZNKjvHFmKeV11L6pNJPgj5QNEHsN6eeX3DaAQFwZ1ufD4LYCZKArktt113W7QjWvQ7CWCu565cq4FkLcqWNde
Stratis - SfkgZ3ns9umfhnStKkoeaBtxgZ1DPXeQXW
ZCash - t1Zs4LDtuEuWFk7AtVfGJ5ZsamZW2iLZhPv

Wishing you all lots of love in life,

Alex