SteemMag – Steemit’s Weekend Digest #25: An Overview of Steemit @ 10: Chats with An Early Steem Investor (and a Whale) …. Steemians Talk…A Chat with a Top Steem Trader and lots more

Wow. I’m happy to welcome you to yet another edition of SteemMag, (the twenty-fifth edition), a weekend digest for Steemians. I’m so sorry I missed last week’s edition due to some unforeseen circumstances.

Every week, I take a look at some of the most important topics and have a chat with top Steemians who have expert views on such topics.

In case you missed it, here are links to Issue #1 , #2 , #3 , #4 , 5 , #6, #7 , #8, #9, #10, #11, #12 , #13, #14, #15, 16,#17, #18 , #19 , 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24

This week marks the 10th month of Steemit existence and almost 12 months of Steem as a currency. A lot has happened over the past few months, and in true SteemMag fashion I reached out to a number of Steemians seeking their opinions on issues affecting Steemit.

All of the interviewed Steemians have been on Steemit for at least 6 months with @smooth being the earliest. He created his account in March 2016. Wow!

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In page 1, SteemMag had a chat with @smooth, one of the biggest account holders on Steemit. He’s also one of the most known whales contributing actively on discussions concerning Steemit.

I also had a chat with a couple of Steemians on The Steemians Talk feature.

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In page 2, I had a chat with @ozmaster, a top Steem trader. For months, he has been analyzing Steem trading and I got him to briefly talk about Steem history.
I also had a chat with @acidyo, one of Steemit’s earliest bloggers.

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A Chat With @smooth

a. How far do you think we've gone? b. progress made?

@smooth
a) Not far, b) not much. There has been minimal growth in the user base since last summer, the UI is largely unchanged. The only big change was the dropping of the hyperinflationary economic model which was sold as a way to bring in big investors, which also hasn’t happened. I also view one of the changes rammed through as part of the economic model change (abruptly cutting witness rewards) to have been harmful as it further contributed to the centralization of funding for the entire ecosystem with Steemit Inc, which frankly hasn’t delivered much.

Our Achilles heel?

@smooth
Absent and/or ineffective marketing. Slow development. Undefined and shifting vision, with far too many economic changes being pushed out too quickly and done in a top-down manner. Many sources of perceived pervasive unfairness and tone deafness to this on the part of the team, even while they have aggressively engaged short-term self-enrichment on a massive scale. Poor distribution of the token. Centralized funding dependent on an entity that has not demonstrated performance of much of anything past the initial launch.

The Price and Trading of Steem

@smooth
The economic redesign seemed to stop the price (and market cap) decline for a while, a sort of honeymoon (and also likely also tied to a temporary pause of cashing out by the individual members of the development team). However, recently the decline has resumed, I suspect because of disappointment that the promised benefits of the economic rewrite (interest from larger investors, improved trading volume and liquidity) have not materialized, and also because the roadmap that was released was widely viewed as a disappointment.

One bright spot has been SBD which despite, at best, lukewarm support from the team has become far more stable in price and is improving in terms of liquidity. Recently a community member reported starting a service that allows direct usage of SBD with a debit card, but I don’t know many details about it.

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What can we do to make things better?

@smooth:
I don’t know. I will continue to support initiatives and community efforts however I can, with the hope that something makes a difference.

Your "blunt" opinion on where we are headed...

@smooth
Continued decline unless major changes are made, which I don’t expect.

Personally, with your years of consulting experience, do you think Steemit can evolve a sustainable business model?

@smooth:
Maybe in time, after current and past bad decisions and directions have run their course. As an investor in a business demonstrating the same sort of issues I see here (especially ineffective marketing and lack of demonstrated performance in delivering improvements to the platform), or an advisor to an investor, I would look for a significant changes before committing any more capital.

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Thank you so much having a chat with SteemMag despite your busy schedule. It’s always a pleasure having you on SteemMag. Thanks for all your contributions.

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Steemians Talk: What was your expectations when you joined Steemit? Have they been met?

@sigmajin
Well, my business is mainly about helping people from other countries do business in the US... and steemit seemed like something that could potentially integrate a payment system with a marketplace system and allow offshore business people to both connect with US consumers and accept payments from them.

Which is really about all you need to make the magic happen... I also saw a lot of momentum behind it, so initially steem was also an investment for me. The investment paid off quite a bit -- I sold off most of my steem when the price spiked and made around $100K on my initial investment. The business part, not so much. I think steemit still has potential for business, but it’s an unrealized potential at this point.

We need way more price stability and also way more rules/systemic stability. I do still have an eye on steemit for business purposes, so I’m still hopeful. In a way as a social platform though, it’s exceeded my expectations (even though there is a lot of room to improve). I've met some interesting people here (which I didn’t expect to) and that’s some value i wasn't looking for but found anyway. One of the reasons I’ve stuck around and tried to help others on the platform when i can is that money wise I'm doing pretty well on my involvement in steemit.

Check out page 2 for more interesting chats and features Thanks :)
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