Guess that chart!

Guess the chart.

Hint: it's NOT a price chart:) pic.twitter.com/AUEVHiW81e
— Riccardo Spagni (@fluffypony) August 8, 2019

At first glance, you think to yourself, that sure looks like a price chart. After a little digging around, you found out that's not the case. It turns out the number of active daily users on a dapp does correlate with the price of the underlying token.

Now, look back to Steem. Does the same story play out over the course of the price chart? Yes, we have read many discussions about the lack of actual businesses, quality UIs, etc. in the past. When everything is so crummy around here, the only thing that keeps the users around is the money. Once that perk is gone, almost everyone jumps ship.

The minority that are still grinding do so for a few reasons. Very few do it because of some idealistic vision for blockchain gaming. Most of the remaining users likely use it to stack goods that could turn a profit later in the next bull run.

Okay, that might not have been the most fair view. Let's pretend they live in a country where they cannot participate in the crypto space with ease. So, having some sort of income in crypto is attractive to them. There exist Steemians that live in such jurisdictions as well. The price sucks, but it's one of their few sources of crypto since they can't use exchanges.

Regardless, this shows the mediocrity of most of the current crypto projects in the space. Once the high price is gone, most people leave. Why? Because there are far superior options that exist elsewhere outside the crypto bubble. In many first world countries, they make more working a minimum wage job than grinding for $0.17 per token.

Why do some people still remain on Steem? Because there are some financial gains to be had here. It's not because of some grandiose visions about decentralization. It has more to do with making some quick bucks or hoping to become the 1% with a lucky speculation.

"But, they (the whales) are selling so low!"

Who cares? What did they do to get those tokens anyway? The larger their stake, the more likely they got them from clicking a few buttons. I would consider $0.01 per Steem to be a huge bargain because of how little effort my keystrokes turned into money.

How's that thrive mode going, @elipowell?