This is a really good series, and I like the way you have made your points @aghunter.

I think it is to be expected that it gets more and more difficult to be successful on Steemit. Let’s pretend for a minute that all Steemit users are investors, and your SP is your share of equity in the Steemit business. (Not that hard to imagine right 😜 )

The really early users were like the seed fund investors. They didn’t have to invest much time or money to get a decent share of the total SP. Although at the time that they invested, there wasn’t as much ‘certainty’ of the success of the Steemit business.

As the Steemit business grows, new investors need to be willing to put in a bit more time or cash to get a decent share of the total SP. Eventually as the ‘certainty of success’ of Steemit grows, it becomes pretty much impossible to get a large share of the SP. Or at least, if leave it too late to invest, Steemit is too far along it’s exponential growth to leave room for a decent return on investment.

To your point...

What I am attempting to highlight is that if we wish the Steem price to continue to appreciate, then we must ensure that the platform continues to attract new users, otherwise over the longer term it is likely to fail.

Steemit is designed so that the whales will ensure the success of the platform - and I think they will. Market forces will make sure they do. I think we will see cycles of times when it will get hard, and users will drop off, but then alarm bells will ring for the whales. They will react.

I’m sure there’ll be times when whales get lazy or don’t do a good job... but that will make the price drop and attract newer smarter whales.

Without trying to sound apathetic, I look at this as a battle for the whales. Us minnows don’t have much influence. So unless I have the money to buy in and become an opportunistic whale, I’d rather ride the waves than fight them.