Last year, I was a Steemit.com skeptic. How can people generate free money by posting content to a social media platform? Curious about new technology, I gave it a go and posted some of my amateur electronic music. Likes trickled in and I accumulated 290 Steem and about 650 Steem power. My earnings didn't seem like much compared to what other popular users were bringing in and I lost interest.
Last night, the price of Steem climbed a bit and then surged to $6 USD with an 80% rise in less than a few hours! Steem has a market cap of $1,457,297,481 USD now with a volume of $100,577,000 USD just in the last 24 hours. Looks like many Steemians had a New Year resolution to Steem harder, but I know how my New Year resolutions usually go... Not an expert in forecasting, but I believe Steem will dip in price for a while before rising again as Steemians cash out.
Decided to try cashing out on the anomaly seeing the buzz and chatter about the price spike on Facebook and Twitter, but I had a problem. I lost my Steemit login key on a crashed laptop a few months ago... Spent time recovering the laptop this morning in a frenzy. Luckily and with much relief, I recovered the laptop and my Steemit login key. Quickly converted 290 Steem to .0.1212374 Bitcoin( ~ $1677.93 USD) using Blocktrades. F'ing amazing!
I was a little worried about transferring funds to another account on Steemit to expedite the conversion of Steem to Bitcoin, but it's a pretty smooth and slick process. In your Steemit.com wallet, there is a drop down next to your Steem total. Select the "Sell" option and it redirects you to https://blocktrades.us. You specify the amount you want to sell and Blocktrades provides a transaction ID. You then transfer Steem to 
Might regret cashing it out if it climbs any higher above $6 in the short term, but I still have about 650 in Steem power I'll keep locked up to put to use on Steemit. Awesome platform! Money from practically nothing, hobby music making and sharing. That's pretty damn cool Steamit! Thanks! Made my New Year seeing a return on my music making and sharing.
Quick video of how to cash out with one my songs in there:
