Hard Fork day.

I just made my last purchase of STEEM under HF20 moments ago.

I reached my target of 250k a while back and now overshot it by 5k somehow.

I don't expect any magical turn around for STEEM anytime soon but I do want to solidify my foundation while I still can.

I woke up at 4:30 am today. Couldn't sleep. Hard Fork anxiety I guess :)

On my second monitor, I'm watching a streamer play World of Warcraft Classic that came out today.

It's also something I could be doing my life I'm thinking.

Running around in the Barrens killing Raptors and doing some PvP at the crossroads (I know engage super-nerd mode).

It must be fun and relaxing.

But I prefer the MMO Steem, unlike WoW it can change my life, and it's about to get upgraded.

In the last 2 years I probably dished out fewer downvotes then I got fingers on one hand.

That's about to change. They probably go to bad bid bot posts first.

Not that I have anything against bid bots or the people that use them.

I consider bid bots the first businesses build on Steem and they gave many passive investors a perfect place to park STEEM for a Return on investment for the last 2 years.

But I've always said bid bots will end when something better comes along.

Not that downvotes are something better, but it will make other options for delegation more favorable.

Example: an overrewarded bid bot post doesn't have to be downvoted to zero to become unprofitable. Maybe if just 20% is knocked off it's enough to make a Steempower delegator look for other options.

(sidenote: remember every downvote will put that STEEM back in the reward pool for someone else)

Bid bot owners will have to become more scrutinous about the posts they upvote.

If their upvoted posts get downvoted too much, investors will become unhappy and look for other options. Either better bid bots or projects like Steemhunt that can offer roughly 20% return by utilizing their own token or Dlease.

It will become part of the bid bot owners task to make sure the posts they upvote are not downvoted.

In other words, whatever they upvote should be some decent quality stuff.

I won't downvote decent quality stuff that uses a bid bot.

It will be an interesting dynamic to see it play out.

Some people that delegate to bid bots currently are going to try manual curation now that they get 50% instead of 25% on curation.

That could be interesting too.

Curation is not something I like, but everyone is different. I know a lot of people like it so I will follow it with interest and I'm really curious to see how much curation return they can make.

Just blindly upvoting favorite authors is something other people will try. From what I understand is that your vote should be on those posts before everyone else.

Therefore, it will automatically be a race to zero, trying to get that vote in before the 5-minute mark, so that won't work.

(Remember that every vote before the 5-minute mark will put that curation STEEM back in the reward pool for someone else)

Earning STEEM is going to be tough. So many new factors in play. I can't oversee them all.

But someone will have to earn that STEEM.

But it won't be as easy and secure as before. That will no longer happen under this new ruleset. For no-one.

It will be a real competition.

Everyone will compete, don't think for a second it will be just content creators, also businesses offering a nice return will be in the mix as well as communities.

I do expect the price of STEEM to rise in good time and when it does this place will be flooded with a lot more entities competing.

It's one of the reasons I'm happy I acquired my stake already. When the above happens I want to be passively investing and helping out in the background. (Ultimately, Every increase in my stake beats blogging times 100x)

I have said it many times before, but I'll say it again. When the Steem Blockchain is successful and you will tell your friends years from now that you earned STEEM blogging about your cat they won't believe you.

Haha, they might not even believe you earned whole STEEM's!

Of course, that time is not now, yet.

But I consider STEEM a great blockchain, with great development and great community.

The only thing holding us back is the price. But I'm 100% convinced it will turn around in good time with the path the blockchain is currently on (SMT's, communities, Steem-Engine, all the different projects...etc., etc.).

In 8 hours the changes of HF21 will take place. I'm looking forward to it.

Hope everything will go smoothly!

Enjoy hard fork day!