I've been part of the Bitcoin community since late 2012 and like many in Bitcoin, have been tracking r/bitcoin daily ever since. Over that time, there have been lots of ups and downs (see below).

By mid-2014, r/bitcoin become a community that I loved to hate. I still visited regularly because the community was discussing a technology that I love but the commentary was often overly emotional with a short-term, price-focused perspective. If the price of BTC went up, there were lots of "to the moon" posts and if the price of BTC went down, there were lots of doom and gloom posts. The short-term focus from the community was a distraction and hurt more than it helped. I personally think the short-term focus has held back adoption and has slowed down the rate at which new, useful BTC products are built.

On Steemit thus far, I've noticed less emotional discussion about the short-term price movement of STEEM. STEEM was down ~16% yesterday and is down over 50% from its high earlier this month, yet all the popular posts on Steemit have nothing to do with the price. People on Steemit seem much more interested in discussing new products built on STEEM and interesting new people than the short-term price movement.

The long-term focus on here is refreshing. It's likely a result of the incentive structure that the Steem team came up with (Steem Power) and the weighted voting-structure that surfaces posts to the top, as well as the fact that it's still a very young community and there's lots of optimism in the early days.

The long-term focus is not guaranteed to continue. But if it does, we are in good shape.