Steem at a decision point: When will we see $10?
If you are like me you have been waiting very patiently for the steem price to get some steam.
While most cryptocurrencies have rallied this year and had 10x or more increases steem has been consolidating for a while after it's run-up earlier this year.
Overall my performance of steem is one of the worst relative to other coins in my portfolio, yet I still believe in it more than other coins. Because it is real. Proven. It makes money for its users.
Steem is different and special
Steem is very different from other coins. While most coins are speculative, steem has a real economy behind it, and when I say most coins I cannot come up with any other example, that has a working economy already.
The power of speculation
Other coins and projects in the crypto land are still a work in progress, that is true for bitcoin, ethereum, eos, bitshares etc.
The power of this for the markets is that people are betting on the future, which is very unclear. This creates big volatility because it is very difficult to come up with a tangible evaluation. This leads to bubbles and crashes, which is why we have so many of them.
This is great in times like these where we are running up a market in the current bubble.
Steem is caught in between
Steem is also a crypto currency and in fact a monetary system. As such it also has the speculative power and is also a work in progress. We can see this by looking at SBD which is currently trading at a really weird price. If designed correctly this could not happen. So steem also has a speculative aspect to it. And unleashed potential.
But there is a real economy
However steem is a social network and application and as such has a working product and users. This can be compared with existing solutions. And as such there are real metrics that investors can look at when buying the asset such as number of active users. 
Again this is special as these are much harder metrics that what we have with other projects.
Price reflects
This is reflected in the price. We will not see huge price runs that are removed from activity metrics at steem but at the same time we are part of the crypto currency space and prices are volatile and run and crash.
Price is a feature
The steem price is also different from a facbook stock price. If the Facebook stock price change my experience as users does not change. But for steem the price is part of the user experience. As such a low price will make us lose users and a high price will attract new users.
As such an increase in price is even more exciting because it creates real value. This is somewhat of a self fulfilling prophecy.
Decision point
Currently the price of steem is fighting with itself.
The red line in the chart above forms a downtrend between all the high's over it's entire life cycle.
If this is breached there is little resistance left. I hope steem will make it above this line and the price will move up. I have predicted 5 months ago that I think steem price will be $10 next year in the summer. This could be the first run towards this number.
We do need to hit a few million users before we get there and an initial price run will help get more users.
We can also fall back
The risk however is that the price won't make it as we can see with the wild back and forth currently along this red line. So be ware of that.
I am optimistic
I am overall optimistic for the price. I think latest energy of the price the Mayer multiple is very low and everything is pointing to steem still being good value.
We will see if steem can finally make it to a good performer in our portfolio.
Good luck to you
A great post, thank you for such a good explanation, I resteemed.
thank you for the re-steem
We are already in stage 2 of the 3 stages Dan outlined for bootstrapping this new currency. It truly is incredible how this working economy functions. $10 price target over the summer sounds logical.
Name one other currency which had 400.000 users active using it... don't take traders... It's just a matter of time.. If we only have 1 % of facebook and it is $25. I started today with some promo. And did sponsor $40 from my minnow wallet
https://steemit.com/sportsteamchallenge/@rival/sports-team-challenge-win-usd40-and-start-earning-money-with-social-media
My prediction - on June 5, 2018 we will see Steem jumping over the $10 mark :-)
care to explain how?
Will try soon once back from Amsterdam, gimme time mate
Difficult to estimate as this blockchain industry is somehow fast moving. Wishful thinking is to hit 10$ on June, the trend currently is quite stable upwards. I think it can be achieved once Steemit is positioned with the unique USP it has, which is the real social media community platform, no one else has that.
BUT - that requires a clear marketing focus by the driving players, the community launch will help I hope if the management of this communities are structured well, might attract new content creators that indeed add value.
Why we shall focus on the social community offering? Well, I am pretty sure the SMTs will NOT result in a higher Steem Price, there are better platforms out there to create such tokens easier and with more support. The community is what we need to focus on in our marketing, clear focus and the price will grow - too many different playing fields covered, one focus required.
The "Money Talks" claim should for sure be replaced by sth related to engagement, interaction, community or content - but that is quite clear I think.
In my opinion steem is very undervalued, is thr first real application of blockchain technology in a platform where alot of users use and create content
Thanks for sharing
I would think for steem to rise above $10, the amount of active users on the platform would have to increase substantially. Btw, does anyone know why SBD is trading at such a high price these days?
yes I was assuming about 3M users.
However due to the wealth distribution I am not sure if this is enough.
Essentially the wealth distribution makes new users less valuable. I hope this effect is not too strong.
I hope so too. Steemit has a graet potencial. I hope also that the reward system becomes more attraktive and less bots focused.
$10 STEEM by St Patrick's Day....
This is real start for Steem. In the end of 2018 Steem = $50-100. Thank you for exellent explanation and big support @knircky
I consider steem in conjuction with steemit as an "sleeping giant". Steemit is one of only a few crypto currency applications that can be easily adopted by masses of people. And the blockchain is on of the fastest with very good scalability. Unfortunately there are still too many "outcashers" who are pumped up y some whales. If the whales would only support the steem power "HODLers", the price could already be much higher. But it will soar some time. In the meantime I will accumulate steem power step by step. Bye the way thank you for your generous support and your very considerable articles.
Yes many whales are cashing out. Fortunately that will get more steem into new users, however this has been an issue for the price so far.