The best time to publish is now
The immaturity of the Steemit community (a big part of which has a "crypto afficionado" background) can be seen in the statistics that @penguinpablo is publishing regularly.
Who are we?
Under the weight of emotion, people interactions with the blockchain track very closely ... the price of STEEM! There's hardly a rational explanation as to why would anyone read less, upvote and follow less, blog less when the price of STEEM decreases ... unless you admit that most people in the community are here with the "miner mentality" - "I do what it takes to earn STEEM in order to exchange it to fiat".
Therefore, when the price of STEEM is low, simple market mechanics means that the same amount of work is rewarded with less fiat. Thus some people tend to divert time and effort to more profitable endeavors.
On an aside note, this is rather dangerous for the eco-system - as less people produce content and upvote, there's less reason for other people to come to read the content produced.
This is all the more visible with the Utopian business model: @utopian-io supports open source projects. These projects post tasks, people from the community take them up and resolve them and Utopian rewards them with a vote (and sometimes with steem bounties on top of that).
But the programmers, graphic designers, translators who perform the tasks supported or published by Utopian have little attachement to the blogger and photographer community that Steemit addresses. They use STEEM as a currency which they then exchange for bitcoin and ultimately for fiat.
As the price of STEEM descends, the same amount of work thus earns them less dollars, or less euros or whatever other fiat currency they need to pay the bills. Understandably, they turn to better paid jobs.
This risks turning into a "death spiral". As tasks find less and less people willing to work on them, open source projects need to find some other arrangements for getting their things done. Less available tasks then naturally fuels the continuous drain of programmers and graphic designers from the platform.
Fortunately, as the friction is relatively low, those who have an account on the platform can easily come back when the price of STEEM recovers.
What about the Steemit core target: bloggers and photographers ? If this population had been massively present on the platform (as they should), then one would expect the fluctuations in the number of daily transactions to be much smaller, as people who blog and publish pictures were doing so more or less for free before Steemit came along, so they should be less sensitive to the variations in the price of STEEM.
The fact that they still make up a relatively small part of the community is one of our greatest failures. Yes, "our" because this blockchain actually belongs not to @ned and Steemit Inc. but to every holder of steem power (and more so to the witnesses, including @lux-witness).
Power to the bloggers
Here is to those who overcome their emotions and manage to do the rational thing to do: whenever the price of STEEM goes down, there's less competition for the STEEM that sits in the reward pool. If you have the possibility to not think in fiat terms but in STEEM terms, it is precisely when its fiat price is down that publishing and earning STEEM, SBD and Steem Power is both easier and more profitable. Less claims on the reward pool means more STEEM available for your articles ... provided you have the luxury of waiting patiently for the fear to dissipate and the price to recover.
Warren Buffet might not understand (and therefore would not touch) crypto and the blockchain, but that doesn't make his insights any less powerful and true: "Be greedy when others are fearful. Be fearful when others are greedy" That is of course easier said than done (or else there would have been plenty of Warren Buffets around). But if you keep it in mind and think about it often, you can at least develop a healthy questioning routine:
- is this a "greedy" moment? - I reckon back in early January 2018 the answer should have been "Yes!"
- is this a "fearful" moment ? - similarly, the current moment looks pretty much imbued with a lot of fear ...
Other posts on blockchain technology that you might enjoy:
- Steem crypto-economics
- European Financial Transparency Gateway
- Why Blockchain Is a Revolution
- Blockchain in large organizations
- A New Hope
- Steem $10Bln!
- Small worlds
- Decentralized Learning: The Future of Student Mobility in Europe
- The Holy Blockchain
- Blockchain revolution: Money and Credit
- Sovereign identity on blockchain
- Toward a pan-EU blockchain infrastructure
- Blockchain revolution: the CIOs' dilemma
If you know what witnesses are and agree that people commited to keeping this blockchain ticking play an important role ...
(by simply clicking on the picture - thanks to SteemConnect)
It still puzzles me why so many people from the crypto land think and act in terms of fiat. This to me shows that in many cases, their attachment to this space is only conjectural.
Well, there's a whole life of habit behind ... you don't shed a habit so easily (Lupul isi schimba parul ...)
Also, the idea of crypto is that it will change the world (not be simply a vehicle of speculation) - and in order to do that, you need at some point to be able to "live in crypto only" - which is faaaaar far from being even close now ... so ... "fiat is king" ... for the time being at least !
Good analysis, thanks.
@sorin.cristescu
I totally agree if I had more fiat at hand I would buy my way into "whaledom" right now!!!
People need to think of STEEM like STEEM!!!
But I can understand that third-world country steemit members who where able to "hustle" a bit on steemit everyday to get enough money for food maybe even rent, (back when the STEEM price was up at like 6 USD) I can fully understand if these people are doing other things to survive right now...
I think this "depression" is kind of fun, people show their true colors a bit, and many of the more "spammy users" seem to have gone on holiday...
Im wondering what the largest whales are doing, I hope they are not contemplating to jump out from their windows or something...
This "price dip" will surely turn quite soon...
/FF
I've only started learning about STEEM's economy fairly recently, but in my blundering around the platform I've found this interesting contemplation on the future price of STEEM and why one should embrace the Bear Run:
https://steemit.com/steem/@schattenjaeger/my-body-is-ready-for-7-cent-steem-and-yours-should-be-too-and-you-people-better-upvote-this-because-i-m-being-positive-for-once
@eccles
I totally agree, I have been here since december 2017 fairly active, but I realized that "money talks, bullshit walks" around here and since I didn't have the money to buy "whaledom" this has been more like a fun science project in human behaviour then something that generated income...
Its been fun I made some friends... But yeah if STEEM drops even more Im just going to enjoy the chance to buy the dip, because this platform is built for Red-fish, Dolphins, Orcas and Whales... Not really for Plankton and Minnows... And I agree with mr @schattenjaeger... (I know whales and the upper-class here probably hate me for writing this) but STEEM dropping to 7 cent could possibly be "the great purge" all the poor planktons who try really hard but never "make it" have been waiting for... But I guess we will see what happens... The price will go up and down, I think we could possibly see 7 cents and maybe later up to 70 USD per STEEM, so just hang in there!
/FF
"Fun science project in human behavior" - that's the spirit! It's been my attitude here as well, even if I did have the money to buy "delphindom". I find this project unique and fascinating.
Yes @sorin.cristescu!
Steemit is really mind-blowing sometimes, I have learned a lot about myself and human nature and just loads of other things I would have never learned anything about not being here. And thanks for your support it's appreciated!
/FF
I thought I was getting lonely with this same thought! I have been buying Steem since Feb to add to my position and the price has helped me accumulate a good position which I intend to continuing growibg given the potential of this ecosystem being developed. As I experimented with my engagement I have seen the rewards increase not only due to my increased Steem Power but also my increased engagement. I committed to taking time everyday to engage and I have seen the results despite the drop in price and I think it has to do with how quality posts have dropped in correlation to the price. While I want to take advantage of it, I have also tried to step up my curation efforts in an attempt to motivate others in the community by being an example. I think HF 20 will help as sign up accelerates which could lead to more engagement.
Yes - I believe the rate of on-boarding new users is the biggest brake in the growth of Steemit
I resteemed this by the way, good work @sorin.cristescu!!!
/FF
thanks !
Merci pour ton article très intéressant, je ne suis pas sur que le STEEM soit de nature à évoluer, mais la plateforme steemit oui.
Pourquoi tu dis que le STEEM ne soit pas de nature à évoluer ? Tu ne crois pas que le prix évoluera positivement ? Perso je suis très optimiste pour la blockchain steem et par extension pour la crypto STEEM. La plateforme de création de contenu Steemit en revanche dépend de Steemit Inc. (à la différence des dApps comme Busy.org, Steepshot, etc.) et pour le coup, étant donné l'historique, je suis moins optimiste)
la blockchain oui, mais de plus en plus de coins sur le marché, avec une utilité qui ne dépasse pas steemit, c'est une règle simple de marché, pas de nécessité de l'acheter puisqu'on le gagne donc pas beaucoup de demandes et beaucoup d'offres
Les petits ne vont pas l'acheter puisqu'ils le gagnent, certes, mais ce n'est pas les petits qui nous manquent.
En revanche un gros pourrait venir, acheter pour quelques millions, mettre dans du SP et puis dire: vous interagissez avec moi et mes produits, je vous donne un vote ! C'est une excellente plateforme publicitaire, pour autant que la vitesse de croissance de la communauté se fait remarquer. Si on arrive à 3 - 4 millions d'utilisateurs réels (15x - 20x plus qu'aujourd'hui), ce qui est tout à fait faisable, avec des communautés "ciblables" - par exemple les francophones - tu peux avoir des gens qui veulent influencer le comportement et peut-etre déterminer les francophones à acheter leurs produits - et la, le mécanisme "d'incentivisation" qu'utilise Utopian est fabuleux.
Genre, "Si vous postez un commentaire élogieux de mon produit sur FB et que vous venez avec le "proof of work" dans un post steemit, je vous upvote le poste steemit et vous gagnez 5 - 10 euros" - et pour ça, la boîte de publicité doit avoir du SP pour pouvoir voter.
oui c'est une théorie qui se vaut, j'espère que tu as raison, l'avenir nous le dira. Je pense que l'avenir sera plus dans des inter-actions comme steempress, et encore j'ai plusieurs potes qui ont des sites rentables, et ils me disent je gagne entre 2 et 5 KE avec mon site, pourquoi je me prendrai la tête pour gagner 2 euros? Presque personne ne vient pour "consommer" du contenu, mais pour en produire la relation "fournisseur client" ne fonctionne pas. Malgré les apparences je reste très positif mais lucide, mais merci de tes commentaires
Pour 2 ou 3 qui gagnent entre 2 - 5 KE avec leurs sites, combien de bloggeurs qui ne gagnent quasiment rien? Et puis c'est pas la même relation - quand tu as un site Wordpress, tes lecteurs sont tes vaches ou tes moutons: certes tu dois t'en soucier sinon tu n'aurais pas de laine ou de lait, mais ça reste principalement ta source de laine/lait. Celui qui te paie c'est le publicitaire. Pour le moment, ici ce que tu gagnes vient de ta position dans la communauté. Lorsque le publicitaire viendra ici, je parie que c'est pas 2 - 5 K que les bons gagneront mais plutôt 15 - 20 K
The best to create my app is now :D
Can't wait ! :)
App qui fera quoi ?
La suite suite sur Twitter ;)
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STOPDo not miss the last post from @steemitboard:
This is the end of down trend so if you know that you will do well.
I wish it was true - but without a fundamental shift in perception it's more likely to continue to play yo-yo ... We need to "tame" normal people to start using the apps of this blockchain
Steam is a very strong currency I expect it to rise as soon as possible