I have been blogging since early 2018, not what I would consider to be “long” in blogging terms, but long enough to have become a part of the furniture. During that time I have seen big changes in the crypto blogging space: some rapid, some more sedate.
One of the sedate ones has now become too obvious to ignore: it’s too quiet in here…
How often do you make new followers on blogging platforms these days? It still happens, but it’s not nearly as frequent as it was a year ago, is it? How many comments do you get on each blog post?
Despite the best efforts of many bloggers who frequently leave comments and engage wherever they can (thank you guys – I really appreciate the efforts you make – both on my posts and on the posts of other bloggers), the numbers are still way off what they once were. If I look at Steemit, the platform I started blogging (and still use to this day), I now so rarely get comments that I don’t even check my replies daily anymore! At one stage I would check replies several times a day.
There is also a notable drop in post earnings: my own account has been hard hit – though granted – some of that has to do with the price of the tokens one earns. Even so: token price is a reflection of interest in the token, and interest in STEEM is disturbingly low! I had hoped to be able to earn a living from blogging, though if this carries on I can see that I shall have to make other plans. Even some of the top Steemit bloggers are earning pathetically little compared to what they once did, a clear sign that interaction is shrinking dramatically.
It’s not just Steemit that has been hit, Trybe is visibly empty too. Here, take a look at the bottom of “page 1” of my Trybe friends list. I like to use this list to see who has been online lately. I normally select each member who has been online since I last visited, check their blog and then comment on their new posts. But so many of them have just not been online lately…
It’s hard to engage with friends who are not there! Imagine what pages 2 and 3 look like! I miss the regular posts of some very good bloggers who used to post frequently. Some of my Steemit friends haven’t been seen in nearly a year! 😥
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not blaming anybody for anything here: neither the platforms nor the bloggers. I fully understand that it takes time to generate and curate good content. (I hate the system-gaming heajin-style copy-&-paste posts which have little to no effort put into them) Time IS money, and not all of us can afford to spend several hours a day on crypto social media platforms – especially when payouts are poor. It isn’t all about the money, but it does become “not economically viable” at some point.
I sense a form of despondency among my fellow crypto bloggers, and that is to be expected. The altcoin market remains nightmarish in many respects, that is having a clear effect in the platforms based on those coins. I think that STEEM and the STEEM-based platforms are suffering from that particularly hard: Dan Larimer’s middle-child is playing the role of classic neglected middle-child to a T.
Personally I have already sold off quite a lot of my STEEM, and have suggested that others may want to follow suit. I know that many other STEEM holders have already sold off a significant portion of their holdings.
I won’t be selling of all of my STEEM, and when I do sell it, it’s to buy other altcoins – not to cash out to fiat!
I am well aware that altcoins are not popular right now. I have seen the BTC value of my altcoin portfolio plunge during the last few months. Bitcoin maximalists are everywhere, I don’t recall ever seeing anti-altcoin sentiment this high before (probably because the majority of altcoins have not been around for long enough).
I am NOT a supporter of the saying “The trend is your friend”. Instead I consider the trend to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, somebody who leads you along the path, and then once you become complacent, stabs you in the back with a sharp trend reversal. As a Value Investor and a Contrarian, my default instinct is to oppose the trend. But what does that mean in real terms?
There is blood on the streets. The altcoins are bleeding.
We ALL know: “Buy Low, Sell High”. Yet when the price of something is low, what do we do? We panic sell. When price surges high, what do we do? We FOMO buy.
Hear the wisdom of Bit Brain: NOW is the time to BUY altcoins!
I believe that this is a golden opportunity. Bitcoin can’t keep climbing alone – it makes no economic sense! I saw a Tweet this morning which said that the Bitcoin Whitepaper is the only one worth reading. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are MANY good altcoins out there with a solid token economics model. They will make money, irrespective of what BTC does. I agree that BTC is the only real store-of-value crypto, but it is not the only crypto that has value! I still expect good altcoins to thrash BTC in terms of ROI over the next year or two.
Mark my words, sentiment towards altcoins WILL swing around again, and when it does, make sure that you are holding some good ones!
And this is why I’m keeping some STEEM. This is why I am slowly letting my TRYBE tokens grow in number. It’s just like mining BTC: too often miners shut down when it becomes “unprofitable” to mine. But what if they just kept on mining – took the short-term loss – and then sold that BTC when the market recovered? They would make a fortune in profits, especially because mining difficulty drops when miners pull out.
If TRYBE ever “Moons” by 100x and becomes worth $0.10 per token, then you can’t expect to still earn 1000 TRYBE for each post that you write! BUT YOU CAN EARN THAT TODAY!
So I suggest holding onto that which you can accumulate now, because markets ARE cyclic – often unpredictable, but cyclic nonetheless. I suggest that you keep on blogging, keep on curating, keep on supporting one another. We ALL know that crypto is still in it’s early days and that a lot of money will still enter this asset class. When it does so, it would be good if we could have our platforms ready to receive the influx of new interest, interest which would greatly boost the value of our tokens again.
So take heart, don’t feel down just because your altcoins are worth nothing. Don’t give up just because your earnings are very low. I am literally betting the future of my financial success on crypto – and honestly – I’m not too worried about it. For me it’s more a “when?” than an “if”. (No: don’t follow my example, I didn’t really have a choice due to a rather unique set of circumstances. Don’t put more into crypto than what you can afford to lose!)
Hang in there crypto friends, the altcoins will make a comeback. You’ll see. 😉
“It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
"The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first"
~ Mark Twain
"Crypto does not require institutional investment to succeed; institutions require crypto investments to remain successful"
~ Bit Brain
