I've been feeling a bit weird lately, I like to blame it on overactivity only or burning out but I am not sure if that's what it is. It's not a surprise though that it has felt as if the lower the price of Steem gets the more weight is placed upon each still active Steemian to stay active and try and help get this platform out there to the eyes of newcomers who may never have heard of it due to the lack of marketing over the years. It's kind of a weird feeling, even though general attitude here follows the price as that's something we tend to do as humans at the same time it feels as though many forget all the other benefits of our blockchain without thinking of the earning aspect.
It feels as though if we could just grab the attention of many for just five minutes to let them know what we have here, what exists, how it helps them when they are facing problems on centralized platforms without the security of math on their side keeping them safe - most would jump to the opportunity to start their Steem journey no matter if it's going to $100 or $0. Obviously the price is never going to $0 as long as the chain has active witnesses and keeps producing blocks, the Steemit team has done a good job to keep the costs of running this infrastructure as low as possible. Without a doubt the price is being suppressed either by people wanting out, not trusting that this will go anywhere anymore and wanting a "reset" in another chain, on top of that the obvious leaks we've always had where downvotes cost to be used against abusive stake that brings close to no value to our chain and content consumers and those rewards will keep being sold no matter the price and to finish it off the stake that Steemit has to dump for their own costs.
Steem is quite unique in many ways, not just cause of the SBD aspect which is another layer that at these times adds extra sell pressure to the price of Steem when authors aren't getting rewarded in SBD anymore so they sell their Steem instead. It has a very effective double edged sword system where when things are going right all things build up together and stack on top of eachother to reach all time highs of epic proportions, but when the speculative money starts to disappear and the general crypto markets are all in downtrend it stacks the opposite way where most things work against the price and multiply that by a huge factor instead. If anything is to be said about the future outlook is that there are a lot more active users here today than there were last all time low and on top of that there are so many more accounts that have been created and due to their importance of keeping the keys safe and secure I am sure that many of those currently inactive users will quickly find their keys again once Steem starts to make some noise on the markets again. All it needs is a couple big pumps which in this day and age doesn't even require a lot of money. Another positive thing to this bear market compared to the last one is that the average volume (even though it looks low compared to many other coins) is relatively higher than it was pre-2018.
There is so much going on here and so many projects with a lot of potential continuing to work and being started even at these prices it is difficult to understand how the prices can be this low and it is not great for morale but once you've seen this happen a few times you start to understand that this is just how the crypto world works. I am personally really looking forward to the changes with HF21 and am hopeful that we as a community will work together to patch up these leaks that we have been plagued with for so long. Last positive thing I can say is that it can not get much worse than what we've had going on for the past few years when it comes to the EIP so let's see how this goes and try to make the most of it.
And lastly, to get back to my title, I think I'm going to take a short break from my daily responsibilities on Steem, focus on myself for a while, maybe post more to make the most out of the last few weeks of 75/25 (:P), mainly just to feel a bit more refreshed in preparation for HF21 as I will be trying my best with what's in my power to improve Steem with curation, downvotes, onboarding and this other secret project we've yet to announce.
Thanks for reading and to all my followers that have stuck with Steem through thick and thin, although we are decimated in amount right now I have faith in you that you will be doing a lot better with the new EIP than past accounts that are not here today would have done in your shoes. Although I am a bit tired of the general complaining and whining and feeling a little bit like "these people don't even deserve a pump of price", I still believe that Steem is much bigger than all of us and if anything all the people that aren't here yet and don't know about Steem are the ones that will deserve this project to see the light of day and I am looking forward to welcome them with open arms and make sure their Steem journey is as pleasant as it can be.
