As predicted weeks ago, Poloniex has finally pulled the trigger on Steem notifying users that it would be delisting the token. As I pointed out in my previous blog Steem trading volume isn't in a healthy place. The token price and the overall trend of the Steem market aren't attractive enough for exchanges to continue to provide a platform for price discovery, exchanges are cleaning up and its not about Steem blockchain but whats profitable and worth the risk. While this is a negative development things can get worse if the likes of Bithumb or Upbit makes similar announcement. Much of the discussion over the last couple weeks has centered around the recent hardfork, reward pool and flagging. Now is the time to start looking at trading volume on exchanges as we can see its not about how 'awesome' or 'good' or 'scalable' your blockchain is but what makes business sense for exchanges at the end of the day. It would be naive to make labels "shit exchanges" or "no one uses" while ignoring some troubling metrics around the Steem token. The time has come for more discussion to center around the 'trading health' of the token and engaging traders, investors or speculators as a way of driving energy into Steem.

For starters, investment is an important arm of any successful cryptocurrency project. It needs a financial 'warchest' to be competitive in an ever evolving and innovative space like the cryptocurrency industry. Steem needs to keep several variables happy, its not just the workers or developers on the protocol but the end users and exchanges. Having a comprehensive plan ensures that all areas are addressed. Quite frankly, the end users have been getting the sour end of this deal for some time and traders/ speculators has been left with massive losses (myself included). Its all great to support the vision of the project 'BUT' there comes a time when financial survival takes precedence. Steem with all that it entails and what it can achieve given the ever growing list of opportunities available in the cryptocurrency space isn't attractive anymore from a financial perspective. An I warn, it cannot continue to be a deal where one entity continues to dump or a select few continue to dump while the masses continue to labor reaping very little in the process. I have been on this platform for some time and I have had to scale back my commitment and emotionally detach myself as I have seen business as usual approach and like others who seen the writing on the wall, it just isn't worth the emotional turmoil.

At some point in time sacrifices have to be made and I am not saying Steemit Inc hasn't been making sacrifices, they cut staff and announced reduction of periodic sales. What is needed now is addressing the anemic trading volume across exchanges. The obvious reality right now, there isn't enough users or buyers of Steem to even maintain 25 cent USD price as the sellers come in drones when prices rises. I have speculated in the past how I think SBD can solve the Steem supply sellers dilemma but that has been ignored. Yet again I would share my 2 cents. Steem has an internal market where you can exchange Steem for SBD. SBD has one aspect of it that makes it a "maverick", its has 'scarcity'. A fairly priced SBD can absorb enough Steem on the internal market and indirectly reduce Steem supply on the external exchange. Its important that witnesses feed the price of SBD so that its value can have the intended impact. Lets say SBD price at 2 dollars, and Steem at 25 cents, it would mean that 1 SBD on the internal exchange can reduce the supply of Steem by 4. With hodling and overall money flow, this gives Steem enough buying pressure to catch up to SBD. An while some may say, its easier said than done, a coordinated effort given the fact that SBD is actually held by a few can easily achieve this. One of the drawbacks of this method is that folks who do hold a lot of SBD run to the exist to cash out but they would miss the overall objective as this would improve the money flow around Steem and actually create a floor that they can better realized the value of their Steem. This is a more attractive feature given that fact that Steem supply means there is a lot of sellers that the market simply at this stage cannot absorb without negatively impacting the price on every attempt as we have seen. This mechanism would also give traders a new perspective on the Steem token and ways of trading around it.

Again I have to reach out to the likes of @smooth, @freedom, @timcliff and @neoxian. This is my 2 cents, more importantly, we need to seriously address trading volume of Steem across exchanges as exchanges are in the process of getting lean and ensuring assets on their platform are profitable.

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