WHAT CAN WE DO TO INCREASE THE VALUE OF STEEM - Part One - THE CURRENCY STEEM
Recently I was asked what I thought that we could be doing to increase the value of STEEM.
Well, I’m no expert, but I do understand a few things and I certainly have some ideas. Since the currency STEEM is tied to the platform steemit, there are many things to take into consideration when evaluating how to answer this question. That being said, I know that I this will not be exhaustive, so please feel free to share any ideas that you have in the replies below, or just do your own post on the subject and link it below.
I’ll be attempting to answer that question by focusing on two different aspects as well: STEEM and steemit, and specific things that I believe we can be doing in each realm that should help.
THIS POST WILL FOCUS ON THE CURRENCY STEEM
STEEM
SUPPLY & DEMAND
One thing that I think can immediate help increase the value is not selling it. No one will ever pay 50 cents for 1 STEEM when people are willing to sell it for 15 cents. It just doesn’t make sense. Therefore, if you need to sell your STEEM, set your price higher. If we all did that, the only option that any buyer would have is paying more.
As I once said in a post a month or so again, “Your STEEM is worth a dime because you will sell it for a dime.” If people were willing to sell Gold for $50 USD per troy ounce, then the value of Gold would be $50 USD. I believe that STEEM is more valuable than the current price, and I have no intention of ever selling STEEM for any price even near to where it now is.
Also, it makes we wonder what would happen if we went on a “selling strike.” What if anyone who “needed” to sell STEEM sold it this week, and then no one sold any STEEM for a week or two? Based on my current understanding, there is no way that this would not increase the value of STEEM immediately.
ANOTHER SOURCE OF INCOME
I know that many people out there are using steemit as a source of income. Many even quit their jobs months ago to give it a full-time go on steemit. I was entertaining that idea myself, and perhaps one day I will, but right now I have too many upcoming purchases to make to have that be a logical decision.
For those who are currently using steemit as a source of income, it is a huge and helpful blessing for them, but it is also help to keep the value of STEEM lower that it would be otherwise. I too have been using steemit as a source of income, but I have only cashed out SBD, and I have not sold any of my STEEM.
The way that I see it, STEEM has incredible potential to increase in value. Therefore, I believe that it would be unwise to sell any of my STEEM for such a low price. If I can hang on until later, I should, or could, wind up getting a lot more for it. I think that the same is true for your STEEM. I know that it is often enticing to sell some of your STEEM right now for cheap, but perhaps it would be wiser to find some other source of income to replace whatever you have been getting for selling your STEEM.
Personally, I leave home at about 7am five days a week and don’t get back home until 6pm, at least… often it is later. For the time being, I’m working long and hard very often to have another source of income. I know that for many, working on steemit from home is a lot more appealing than being gone all day working for someone else, but I think that if we really put effort into doing what it takes to not sell our STEEM now, it’ll pay off for us by increasing the value.
Even if the value just doubled, you’d either get twice as much for your STEEM or you’d only need to sell half as much! That sounds excellent to me!
THE POWER DOWN
Once the time restriction on powering down was reduced, many more users began to power down. The goal of this powering down is by and large to sell the STEEM. The more people that are powering down and cashing out, the harder it will be for the value of STEEM to increase.
Obviously, some people just need the money right now, or just want it, so I’m not really going to attempt to convince others to do otherwise, though it would probably work out well if they did stop powering down.
The purpose of mentioning it here though is more to encourage others to wait. A lot of the Steem Power that was previously gained and is now being powered down will deplete itself in about another two months, for those who starting their power down right after HF16. This means that it is possible that in about 2-3 months, there simply won’t be as many people selling STEEM.
Of course many other vairaibles exist when evaluating the power down and how HF16 has influenced how users are using their power down option, but I believe that we will be seeing the trend that I mentioned above in the near future.
DIRECT WITHDRAWAL
If you’ve ever cashed out any STEEM or SBD, you’ve most likely had to go through a middle man to convert it into the current currency of your country. Most likely, it may have been Bitcoin (BTC). With my SHIFTCARD which is tied to my Coinbase account, I can instantly spend the BTC in my Coinbase wallet as easily as I could use a Debit Card tied to the USD in my bank account.
Though it is not that difficult to transfer STEEM to Bittrex or some other trading site and convert it into Bitcoin or some other currency, it still means that there is a process to go through, and a middle man. If STEEM required no middle man, then it would increase the ease with which it could be used, and I believe that would increase the value as well.
I can’t wait for the day that we can have a card tied directly to our steemit account and access the STEEM there for our purchases just like I can currently do with the BTC in my Coinbase wallet by using my Shiftcard.
CONCLUSION
Those are just a few of the ideas that I have been thinking about. As always, there is no guarantee and any investment can be a gamble, but I’m willing to do what I can to help.
Many of you are probably way more educated about financial issues, so what do you recommend (pertaining to STEEM) that I may have missed or left out?
I know that there are things that can happen to the platform steemit that can affect the value of STEEM as well, so I’ll be covering some ideas about that in the near future.
As always, thanks for your time and involvement in this community!
@full-steem-ahead
FOLLOW
Hey @papa-pepper, I think the one thing we need to do to make STEEM more valuable (as you pointed out) is make it useful.
The supply and demand things works, sort of, if you are collecting STEEM, and then trading it, like baseball cards.
But you don't trade money like baseball cards. You buy stuff with it.
So we need to make STEEM useful, usable. We need to give people places where they can spend their STEEM.
That way, if users power down and spend their STEEM, that's ok - they are using it. It is being used as a currency, not as baseball cards.
Then it becomes valuable because you can buy stuff with it.
I'd suggest getting on board with the likes of Amazon, eBay, the Android app Store, iStore etc and get them to accept STEEM.
Then new users (and old users) will have a concrete reason to earn STEEM. They will want to put up good content because they want to buy a new drone on Amazon and the drone costs (S)400.00.
Or they want to buy (my) books for much less than (S)400 hehe.
We need to start thinking of STEEM as money and using it as money.
People get money. They're not interested in the crypto bit, or the blockchain, or the disruptive technologies.
They want to know 'what can I buy with it and where can I get it?'
When we can answer them, 'whatever you want, anywhere you want' then we have the killer app.
Excellent!
I totally agree with this comment! I was about to say something similar, but you put it in a better way than what I could have written ^^
Thanks for that :-)
Great comment! I agree completely.
Very good article! I agree with you. Hold it and stock up on Steem. This platform with some improvements WILL be the primary social platform of the future!
I believe so too!
You got me thinking so i posted an short article and referenced this article. Any thoughts? https://steemit.com/steemit/@thedeplorable1/helping-steem-go-mainstream
I'll check it out, thanks!
This is untrue.
the buyer would have two options. Pay the asking price or not buy.
Imagine for a moment that the market price is .35. The lowest asking price is $.50, and the highest bid is $.20
Question: Assume for that no new actors enter the market. WHat determines where the price will go next?
answer: Whether the buyer or the seller crosses the gap. This is ultimately determined by which actor has a more exigent need (or want) for steem.
The nature of seller needs is clear -- they want cash (or bitcoin). Or they believe that the price of steem will go down.
There is nothing you can do (or others on steem can do) to change the exigency of seller need. People need cash. They need it for hookers, cocaine, and gambling. And also rent, food and bills. Also, some people believe that steem's value will decrease, at least in the medium term (though it is partially offset by price speculation in the opposite direction). There is nothing that can be done about this. Its pretty much constant.
What drives price is the exigency of buyer need? Currently, there is no reason for anyone to need or want steem aside from price speculation (and price speculation works both ways, it also drives sellers). If you say to someone looking to buy steem "50 cents or kick rocks", its very easy for him to say "kick rocks"
If youre looking for a reason for price decline, you have to look at the correltion between volume and price movement.
If steem's decline was fueled by a glut (a bunch of extra steem on the market) , it would be easy to see. What you would see is a correlation between frequent, heavy volume and sharp price decline.
On steems price chart, you see precisely the opposite:
Infrequent, heavy volume accompanying sharp price increase, and frequent low volume accompanied by steady decline.. This correlation indicates that sluggish demand is causing price decline.
What happens when you take a market with low volume and sluggish demand, and engage in price fixing (which, btw, is exactly what youre proposing). Everyone loses interest, and buyers go buy something else. What would you do if oranges cost $150 a piece? What for the price to decrease, pay $150 or buy tangerines?
two more points. Very nearly every bitcoin mining operation not only sells their mined coin, they do so nearly immediately (to pay electricity and other production costs).
That is to say that nearly every bitcoin that comes into existence right now is immediately sold on the open market. And theyre almost always priced to move at or near market price.
You realize that when you use your shift card, you're actually selling the bitcoin, not holding it, right.
That is to say, lets say there is a steem visa card. You go buy a $4 latte with your steem visa card. Whats really happening is that the card issuer is paying $4 in cash to the coffee place, and sellilng $4 worth of your steem on an exchange at current market prices to pay themselves back.
Yes, I realize I'm selling Bitcoin when I use my shift card. If we had one that was fueled by steem, we would be doing the same thing. However, it would make the process of spending steem very user friendly and they would only be selling the exact amount they needed at that moment.
If you are on right now, go to chat.
Point taken. I was speaking in terms of interested buyers, but you are correct, they do not have to buy.
Just an addition: if you refuse to sell under $0.50, there will most probably be no trade, and without trade, no price is set. The price in the last completed trade would stand for a long time, but not go up to $0.50, even when all the sellers agree it is or should be there.
Appreciate your Article. I too use the Shift Card. Something people fail to appreciate, is time-factor-acceptance. Traction is a 'slow' process after acceptance. Steem has not "breached the gate", yet.
There will be the 'Pump & Dump' after HF17. (Don't need a ball of crystal to see this) I think about my life 6 years from now, where it started and where I will be then. The selfish "Me", says let it languish @15 cents. My current account reflects .00002 of my real retirement. The "Year of the Blockchain" is 2017. Just a mater of what creators like @ned and @dantheman will do to push it forward. I do my part, you do yours. We'll meet in Austin, Eh? %^)
I'm not selling anything right now. I did transfer 5 SBD and 50 STEEM to Poloniex a little while back in order to see if I could really understand how all this works... and I'm a learn-by-doing kind of gal. Other than that, tho, am sitting tight.
Good brainstorming material here! Thanks for the space to discuss.
Thanks for sharing! I still get walked through the process when I sell SBD.
Very true ideas...More users may help too. Also if the market got consistently higher people would naturally feel they could not sell because they would miss out. At least it is rather stable right now (better than going down!). Respect for never selling. I to this day have never powered down! I may eventually just to have more steem but not necessarily to sell.
Right- I'll cover more users when I share about ideas for steemit that could help. Thanks!
You forgot the most important part: Making sure good content reaches the front page, while encouraging the growth of the user base.
The world doesn't need another crypto-currency, and there's already been many allegations surrounding the centralization of STEEM and how it was mined in the beggining. I truly do not believe STEEM is viable without steemit. It will never survive as a "currency for currencies sake" like Bitcoin has. Everything you've said here about holding on to STEEM will be for nothing if you can't actually buy anything with it.
What we need is more people. More accurately, we need their eyeballs looking at content that's paid for by advertisers. Once this site hits a million unique hits a month, advertisers will start realizing that buying STEEM is valuable, as it will allow them to get exposure for whatever they're selling. They realize that, and demand for STEEM increases exponentially. That's it. That's the only way this will ever work. Good content. More people. It's the only long-term way for any of us to make any real money. Without a massive increase to this sites popularity, the currency will be effectively worthless. The bubble will pop.
While I agree with some of your content here, I disagree that we need to be focusing on growing the platform to sell to advertisers.
If that was the plan, we would already have ads, and the site would suck.
No ads is one of the main drivers for me being on the site. I'm free from holding my had out for the advertising buck.
I get paid for MY content, not the content of the ads.
I think once the ads come in, the site will do well for a year or so and then everyone will leave because it will be just like Facebook - a wall of ads and ads masquerading as content.
Dare to dream of a site not tied to the advertising dollar. Difference is valuable.
Then where does the value of STEEM come from?
I don't disagree with what you say. I have AdBlock on for a reason. I don't watch cable for a reason. But nothing is free. Most of the time you engage with content on the web, it's was put there, or facilitated by, someone trying to make money.
And who is paying you anyways? Where does the currency come in that allows me to buy groceries. The only reason people are buying steem now, is because they think it will be worth more in the future. You can't actually do anything with it directly.
At least with steam the advertising is overt, and regular people are getting paid for the content they provide. Unlike reddit, which has been usurped by covert advertising scemes.
You are sharing mostly about the platform steemit, which I will cover in Part 2, but I agree with most of what you are sharing.
Roger that
;-)
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We will have to enlist the help of @dan and @ned and a few whales to create a strategy or challenge in order to stop or at least slow down the sale of steem. Papa should make a post calling out to Dan and Ned specifically! We need to do something!!
great post