If Adoption Truly Matters, Why Is Steem So Undervalued?

When it comes to cryptocurrencies, many are of the opinion that adoption is one of the most crucial aspects of giving value to a project. For years we have heard cryptocurrency hopefuls talk about Bitcoin and widespread adoption. As Bitcoin began to increase in use and popularity, the goal posts just shifted.

We went from adoption being the priority and driving factor, to fixing issues with transaction speeds and fees and then once that problem was solved(Lightning Network), the priority shifted again to institutional money and an ETF.

And this is not a story unique to Bitcoin. Every major cryptocurrency project is seemingly plagued by issues which get resolved, and the priorities and excuses from the community for low token value change.

We get back to the point in the title: if adoption truly matters, why is Steem so undervalued?

At the time of writing this, the price per STEEM is $0.337987 USD and the price per SBD is $0.955490 USD. To me, this is a lot lower than it should be. By all measurable standards, even with the issues that Steemit Inc has had as a company and delays of promised whitepaper features, the price should be a lot higher.

Part of the low price stems from being paired with Bitcoin. When Bitcoin goes low, so does STEEM. When Bitcoin goes high, STEEM goes up, but it has the effect of people selling non-Bitcoin tokens for Bitcoin to "catch the wave" and attempt to make a profit. This is why you usually see other cryptos fall in value when Bitcoin goes on a bull run.

The obvious solution to reducing dependence on Bitcoin is more trading pairs, but STEEM is position #48 on Coinmarketcap, it's not a priority for exchanges to invest in more trading pairs for a non-top-five cryptocurrency.

I have seen the Steem community do amazing things in the past year and a bit. We witnessed the birth of @steemmonsters a creation of @aggroed and @yabapmatt which has since evolved into a fun digital card game with battling and now tournaments, a thriving market for buying and selling cards.

We have seen numerous betting apps and ways of spending STEEM. We have seen developers in the community create tools to make building Steem apps easier. We have @drugwars which is another highly addictive game on the Steem blockchain, as addictive as Steem Monsters.

We can't forget all of the preexisting dApps that were around long before the latest hype. One of the most impressive apps, in my opinion, is @dtube which is a decentralised video platform, an alternative to YouTube and other censorship driven platforms. And as equally impressive, we have @dsound which is a blockchain driven alternative to Soundcloud.

In terms of development and utility of the blockchain, there are not many blockchain projects out there that have such a high calibre of dApps or active passionate community. Many of the top 25 cryptocurrencies barely have a product or any kind of utility.

Then we got Steem Keychain from @yabapmatt and @stoodkev which provides a safer alternative to interacting with Steem dApps. It allows you to keep your keys locally, without fear of your keys being stolen or Steem Connect being hacked. It gives piece of mind to the end user and it is easy to integrate.

And more recently, we have @steem-eng which is another community creation from @aggroed and @harpagon - it delivers a crucial promise of Steemit Inc to allow users to create their own tokens. It's a sidechain solution that doesn't run directly on the Steem blockchain, but it works well and people are building some great things with it.

As a developer myself who has built apps on Ethereum, worked with Bitcoin and Litecoin and gone down the path of experimenting with EOS, there is no other blockchain that equals Steem's ease of use. Working with the Steem blockchain is incredibly easy. I recently launched @steemflip after a day of work, because Steem makes it way too easy.

I liken the simplicity and developer-friendliness to that of jQuery. When jQuery hit the scene, its goal was to help developers write Javascript in a consistent way that was intuitive and familiar, as well as powerful. Steem shares many of these goals, provide simple tools for working with the blockchain without requiring knowledge of lower-level languages like C or C++.

By all reasonable standards, Steem is doing everything right. The community has shown that Steem is well and truly more than a privately owned blockchain, it's owned by the community and people are creating amazing things.

All we can do is keep pushing Steem forward. Keep building dApps and supporting dApp builders and spread the word about one of the fastest and battle-tested blockchains around. I do believe people will begin to take notice, as other projects run out of money and die-out, eventually, it will be Steem and a handful of others who are still standing with functional products.