Not sure if you saw, but this post is out there for people who would like to ask @ned a question at Steemfest. He'll be opening up with a Q&A apparently. The question I asked was "Where do you see Steem in 5 years?" After asking that it's been something swirling around in my head for the past few days, so I just wanted to make a post of pure speculation to share with you all.

I know a lot of my fellow Steemians have a lot of ideas on what we could do to address certain issues with Steem. Things like retention, content quality, attracting investors, attracting new users, flagging, culture, etc. Strangely enough when I read people's thoughts on these subjects I feel like I'm in the minority on my stances on most of these things. My thoughts on where Steem will go from here are largely influenced by my thoughts on what is wrong, and what is right with Steem currently. So I'll lay some of that out briefly.

No Steemians behavior is having a major impact on the price of Steem or the activity levels of the site. The overwhelming variable that's affecting these things is the overall crypto market.

Mind you I'm not saying these things have NO impact, I just don't think they have a major impact. Definitely not as much as some people seem to think. What I hear from people sounds like, "If we only did this, then lots more people would be here/invest/stick around". I don't think that's the case, and I don't think at the moment there is anything we can do as users that will have a MAJOR effect on this. Why?

Steem is still and will be for the near future in a hierarchical relationship with the greater crypto market, and crypto is still HARD for the average person.

With this in mind, we don't really have much choice except to be patient. The development across the cryptosphere looks promising. There will be more fiat to crypto gateways, and it looks like the problem of making crypto more accessible is at the forefront of everyone's mind whose developing in the space. Now with this in mind...

Crypto isn't that useful yet.

So just think about this. If someone asked "Why do I need any cryptocurrency?" There's a lot you could say, but I don't think anything that would fill anyone with a huge sense of urgency to buy any crypto, especially in this market. The people still involved are hardcore, true believers. It was easy to get people to come onboard, when things were going 500x like crazy, but understand that THAT was the draw. It wasn't technology or blockchains potential to disrupt the world. It was just crazy gains. The End.

Alright so I sort of needed that preface to build on where I see Steem going, and let me just say, spoiler alert, I'm super bullish on Steem. So the number one factor that I think will positively affect Steem is...

Overall crypto market maturation.

When there are several fiat gateways, especially if we get lucky and Steem gets listed on Coinbase, or even Ethos, when they hopefully get all their stuff working. Basically when its as easy to buy and sell Steem as it is to buy and sell Bitcoin, things will pick up dramatically. When there many more retailers accepting cryptos, when the legit crypto projects have risen to the top and separated themselves from the scams or just the projects that didn't make it for whatever reason, things will explode here. Things may pick up again if there is a random bull run, but as soon as that bull run is over, it'll die down again. There won't be a strong influx of users that stick around until the entire market matures and cryptocurrency in general is adopted more.

At this point Steem can strike out on its own and declare independence from Bitcoin and the other majors, and be it's own thing, not before. Before that it will be just us hardcore people, so settle in for the long haul, because it's probably going to be a while, but I'm not sad about this. It's the opposite actually I'm super excited.

If you've ever known someone who was in the right place at the right time, and made some investment that hugely paid off, and had that feeling like "Wow, I wish I would have known to buy Apple, or Google, or Facebook stock when it was nothing!" Well you're that guy now! Those people didn't KNOW those companies were going to be as huge as they became, just like we have no guarantees that Steem will be huge, but the reason I'm here and more than likely why you're still here is we believe in the product. I think we're in the right place at the right time now, and I think the best thing all of us can do is accumulate as much Steem as possible, and try to have fun with and get along with each other. We're all in this boat together, and it's probably not about to be a huge ass party anytime soon, so let's learn to enjoy each others company and help each other grow!

So I've said a lot and haven't really stated plainly my five year vision, so here it is in a nutshell. Five years from now, the crypto market will have matured a great deal. Coinbase will have multiple competitors and as users, we'll have plenty of fiat gateways, and the barriers to buy and use crypto will be dramatically decreased.

Steem will not only have SMT's, but developers will have had a chance to take their shot at using SMT's to empower their businesses. Most will probably fail, but a few will probably be extremely successful greatly increasing the value and demand for Steem. If not @ned's Destiny project, someone else with big money will see the potential for Steem and create a modern frontend that will solve most of the user experience problems with Steem, opening the doors for mass adoption.

As Facebook is seeing the beginnings of it's end, Steem is poised to convert many of those billions of users to a world where they get paid for their stupid lunch selfies and pictures of their dog being a dog. Five years from now nobody will remember whale wars or any of the drama we're dealing with these days. I've been on Facebook since 2005, back when you could only get on with a college ID. Do you remember what the culture was like back then? Neither do I.

In summary I guess the main bullet points are that Steem is a long play I think. If you're looking for some major return in the next few months, I don't think it's going to happen, but I do think the overall future of Steem is extremely bright.

What do you guys think? Where do you see Steem in the next five years? If it takes years before things really get mass adopted, would that turn you off of the platform? Let me know in the comments, I'm curious about others perspective on this.