RE: Steem could easily rise 10X today's price within a few months - It should perform better than bitcoin. Steem price compared to bitcoin and future price.
Great post! While I'm very much an optimist and I firmly believe in this platform, there are a couple factors that need to be at least considered before throwing out huge numbers.
First is obviously what's happening as we speak. As great as Steemit is, it is still part of an ecosystem that is in it's infancy stages. Many factors besides its performance can and will dictate it's price. Wars, hacks, developer disagreements, regulation, etc....can and will play a large role in how this token performs. If the rest of the markets are taking a beating, Steem will as well. There's just no way around it. The price of Steem isn't going to $4000 unless many other currencies in this space are going there with it. If and when this market matures into a more fundamentally driven arena then I feel very good that Steem will do very well. But until then, it's still vulnerable to the whims of the overall market.
Second, unless I'm mistaken, Steem is an inflationary token. In other words, there is no hard cap on how many of these things will be created. Of itself, that is not a huge issue as long as the platform continues to grow. But, in time, and even now to a certain extent, it will be looked upon as somewhat of a negative. The percentages aren't huge and they are openly disclosed to everyone but...one of the appeals of Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dash, and others (not Ethereum) is that no more will ever exist. What's there is there. End of story. Again, regardless of how much it actually impacts the overall value of the currency, it is still seen as somewhat of a negative.
Third, while I really like your second point above, Steem needs to be on a lot more exchanges for that to really become a true use-case. While its great for Bittrex and Polo users, the vast majority of the crypto markets can't use it. Again, huge potential for down the road but the platform needs to grow first in order to get it on GDAX and Bitfinex and BitThumb and Binance, etc...
I'm certainly not trying to rain on the parade here but irrational exuberance is why we have events like today. So, while passion and energetic optimism are welcomed and even somewhat necessary for young, growing "companies" (for lack of a better word) to grow and succeed, they need to be tempered with an honest assessment of the risk. This is still an "experiment" and while I agree with you on its potential and, in my opinion, likely success, it's trading at $3 for a reason. It's not worth any more than that......yet. :-)
Seriously, nice work on the above. I enjoyed reading it. I've upvoted and followed you and I look forward to more of your work. Not a big resteemer yet until I get a little more grounded on how this all works but...there you have it. Steem On!!!
@dahher212 Your’s is the best reply of all the below comments, because you present well reasoned arguments which can get an interesting debate going. So much better than the replies saying “steem’s going to the stars”.
Steem vulnerable to the whims of the market
Agreed. Its like the stock market. Everything rises or falls together. On a bad day, like today, virtually every crypto currency is down 20% to 30%. There’s no escaping it. The volatility is much higher than with more mature asset classes.
Steem rate of inflation and hard-cap
This needs to be looked into a bit more. My understanding was that steem has an inflation of 9% a year, falling by 0.5% each year. If that's correct, it should result in a hard cap as well, like bitcoin. However I am far from convinced that the rules are written in stone. A little work is needed to know the exact facts.
Steem is not on enough exchanges
This is dissappointing. There is also bitshares to add to the list of exchanges where you can trade steem. I think steem’s value is depressed because it is inaccessible to many traders and investors who don’t find it on Kraken, Bitstamp, Gdax, and so on. Adding a coin to a big exchange is usually beneficial to its price. I’m hoping that down the line there will be more places where it can be traded.
Irrational exuberance in crypto
There’s no denying the “exuberance”. Future history will tell us whether it was “irrational” or “justified”. You can find plenty of people who are on one side or the other, and some who are just sitting on the fence. One thing which is a fact in these kinds of “speculative” or “developing” markets, is that sentiments can swing quickly for the smallest of reasons. I think the over-loading of the bitcoin transaction network over the last week was one factor that turned sentiment against bitcoin. That gave us a near 40% fall in bitcoin’s price. If the problem passes, bitcoin’s price will go on the ascent quickly. People’s memories are very short when it comes to investing. One week you think it’s the greatest company or best theme in the world, and a month later you are telling yourself that you must have been crazy. You don’t know why you bought and the smallest problem seems to predict a perptually lower price. Sentiment is infectious. People act like lemmings. They throw themselves off the cliff, then the tide turns, when it’s too late.
Resteeming
You earn nothing for a resteem, except gratitude from the blogger. If you resteem, it appears in your feed so that anyone who follows you will see it. However, you should only resteem things you want your followers to read, because you think they would be interested.
If you resteem all the time, it will annoy people, and they may stop following you. On the other hand if you only resteem top-quality stuff, people may follow you so they don’t miss anything. I think resteeming about 1 article for each 5 you write would be acceptable.
I am giving you a 100% upvote to push your comments to the top of this blog!
Wow! Thank you for the vote. I and my steem account appreciate it greatly. :-)
"Irrational" exuberance vs "justified" aren't mutually exclusive. They both can happen when something is doing well. The irrational part is forgetting that they can go down just as easily or that they're not going to stop until they reach some ridiculous number. One of my blogs talks about how bull markets climb a "wall of worry". It means that you need people tempering the exuberance for the market to keep climbing. As soon as those people finally throw in the towel and jump in on the long side, that's when you need to get out. It's the same thing on the downside. I can't tell you how many times I've said, "Hold, hold, ride it out." And then it keeps going down until finally I say, "Eff this! I've got to save something!" and sell. Only to have that be the bottom and things shoot back up. It's human nature. That's why it's best to decide what you're going to do before it happens and just shut if off for a couple days to settle itself out.
As for the inflation.....I'm pretty sure I read that once it gets down to 0.5% a year it will stay there in perpetuity. Not 100% on that but....half of a percent of 500M is 2.5M a year. Again, while not a huge number, when you consider that its >10% of bitcoin, it is significant. Growth on the platform can easily outpace that but, it does mean the platform has to grow. It can't stagnate or value goes down.
That all said, it is still sooooooo early in the game. The sky truly is the limit. As someone else pointed out, the addition of the SMTs and the other media aspects (dtube etc...) available here offer huge growth potential and a one-stop shopping experience that can't be matched by anything else out there right now. The key will really be to penetrate other markets (Japan, Korea, Europe) and getting the crypto listed over there would be a huge step in making that happen. Truthfully, I'm only here because someone told me to buy Steem as an investment. I don't do FB or twitter or anything like that. This is my first social media platform and, like I said, I would never have come here without first learning about the currency. Japan and Korea would explode on Steemit if they had the currency staring them in the face every day. Especially as it rises....
Thanks again for the upvote. More than the money, I really appreciate the boost to rep. I'll 100% your comment too, though I think I'm down in the 60% range for power. Until getting into a debate about votes yesterday I've just been throwing them around wherever I see fit.☺
Oh, by the way, it's @dagger212 and not @dahher212. I wouldn't have said anything but you linked it so....