RE: Finally Powering Down my Steem. Enough is Enough!
Just be aware that this is how a market fundamentally works. It will test your limits, playing on your greed and fear to levels that seem almost metaphysical, as if it is making its moves based on your decisions, alone, and that's because this is a well-oiled-machine that has taken over a century to perfect. The game is moving your wealth into the whales' wallets and the method is to make their move one day or week after most of the participants have given up, making more money on those people later FOMOing back in.
Of course, there will be those assets/ stocks/ cryptos that just go down and down and continue to under-perform until they are essentially worthless, which is why it would be horrible advice to suggest that you should just HODL in any context. But just know that you won't be the first to literally sell it all on the very day that the next big move up starts, because that's a common occurrence for any random market participant, that's the big money game participants (or "smart money") showing how successful they've become at reading the market cues (collective psychology of the majority).
In the top 100 of Alt-coins there are now 20 coins at their all time low against bitcoin. Some of them looked very promising a year ago. 5-10 others are in the red zone. Big shake-out of the Alt-coins has begun? If this is so, how to determine if Steem is not one of those coins that will slowly dissapear?
Short answer, we don't have any way to know that it won't be one of the losers. More nuanced answer (suggestion), weigh what fundamentals you can gather, compare and contrast what Steem has to its competitors and determine for yourself whether it deserves to be in its current position. Invest or speculate accordingly.
I've always been a diversify your portfolio type of dude (you could even say a conservative speculative investor), so this under-performance of Steem hasn't really been of much concern to me, especially since I've been heavily hedging my position in EOS, which has been performing relatively well.
Very simple. When the Flagship product, Steemit, is not able to create a solid base of users even by paying them - you realize how wrong that is.
It would be the same as to be rejected by a prostitute. Man... There must be something very, very wrong in that case
I totally understand what you're saying and am fully aware of this psychological element.
I'm sure that if everything were mooning right now I'd be a happy camper - oblivious of the underlying failings of the platform and its management. But that is the problem isn't it? When the market is doing well, it's full steam ahead with development. When the market is bearish, they just stop developing. But they don't stop selling. What kind of crap is that? We are losing value at a faster rate than other top 100 alts. Why else are we down to 60 from 50?
I will never FOMO back in, I am confident a new site will come along and destroy this place.
Indeed, if some people get together and find out a product that can offer something extra besides FB, YT, twitter etc. and that is easy and pleasant to come back to and lets you earn a buck or 2 in a transparant matter without giving you the feeling that you're left out or screwed, then such a platform will take off and Steemit will be nothing else than a forgotten dream that turned into a nightmare, while Steem will be just one of these crypto platforms competing with other ones.