I dunno. The only draw this place - or the token itself - ever really had for me was the fact that I could get paid for my content. Beyond that, I have very little, if any, interest in the whole thing.

I really doubt I'm the only one.

I feel Steemit could have been given a better chance as a self-imposed game of people competing for content popularity, powering up to get noticed, and staying powered up to show loyalty - and the whales rewarding loyalty.

I was regularly buying and powering up at the beginning because I was engaged in the game of trying to be a trending author, getting the big rewards, and trying to the big shots to autovote me.

The game is what motivated me to buy.

What motivation is there now, though? I an buy, buy, buy all I want, but the big votes are gone, and all go through bid bots now. So, yeah, I can pay $200 to get myself a spot on trending, but all I get back is the money I put in, so in the end, I gain nothing. There is no point to use this site anymore. And with that, there is no point in being interested in the STEEM token anymore - outside of pure speculation. I'm holding on to the STEEM I have just in case of some crazy, irrational Korean pump from out of nowhere.

The big cost of the bid bot business has been the loss of the most captivating part of the site: the lottery effect.

"This might be the post that attracts the big vote that attracts more big votes and earns me a spot on trending."

"Oh, that wasn't it. Well, maybe if I buy some more and power up, I increase my chances of getting noticed."

And again and again.

But nope. It's all bid bots now. There's no manual curation, it's all predictable and predetermined. It's just not... fun anymore.

And I get what all of you big shots are saying about the content itself not adding value, and not being enough to really take the token anywhere - but I feel that the game that surrounded the competition for content rewards had something going for it.

It's not like I'm saying anything along the lines of "Oh, I'm such an artist and I deserve blah blah blah", I just enjoyed the game.

And as that game came to an end, I powered down, stopped caring about this site, and gave up - only visiting it from time to time to see if things had changed.

By the looks of things, STEEM is now below 70 in Coinmarketcap, so it looks like I'm not the only one who stopped caring as the focus shifted from the content creation game to other things.