In my last post, where did all my voters go, I mentioned the stark difference between crypto and stocks. I decided to wait some more before buying steem (and ultimately chose not too), and that decision was based mostly upon looking at the charts of new users and active users. New user growth is dismal, and the size of the network seems stagnant. Courtesy of the reports by @arcange from nov 12. New site stats are available. In deed for the newly released nov 18 stats see, https://steemit.com/statistics/@arcange/steemit-statistics-20181118-en. The new stats issued today (for the 18th) shows a different story, there are a crapload of new users which could be a positive sign. One can speculate as to why this happened-were they existing users creating new accounts? (who knows), a new advertising/news blitz? (nothing newsworthy on google news), are the admins just waiting for the backlog to reach a certain size then mass approve new users/ (same old same old), or are they some new bot net that was created over night that corresponds to the increase of upvotes? (who knows). But none the less, the active number of curators and authors are dwindling faster than the new users can fill in the gap.
As the price of steem dwindles, I suspect, so will the number of active users. Once the utility becomes obsolete, which happens as the active users approaches zero, then it is just another cypto currency. Bitcoin at last look is under 5000, more and more bitcoin miners seem to be turning off their machines. Even I am having second thoughts about buying now. If the price of bitcoin gets too low, there could suddenly be a vaccuum on the network from miners just quitting. I worry to some extent that when the miners quit, the bitcoin bubble will pop and ripple throughout the altcoins. Hopefully I will get a better idea by next week.
Even as the users remain stagnant or disapear, rest assure, the robots doing the bid botting and the robot posting will remain due to the pos nature of steem. One has to wonder though, how many of the "active steem users" are even humans now. The value of a communications network is directly proportional to the square of the connected users. Does metcalfe theorem even applies to bots. Another growing concern I see is the influx of dmania memes; All over steemfollower; makes late night upvoting that much more difficult having to skip over them. But I suppose the network needs all the connected users it can get.
Steemit, so long as it exists, will still be one of the best places to store data that you don't want deleted or censored. Sadly, I hear, the limit is about 64-65kB per posts. I've been tempted to write converters that will put pdfs and other file formats into hexademical strings so people can post the strings to the blockchain and decode elsewhere....but that is too small. I am not sure what the folks at dtube do to post video to the block chain, not even compression will get most videos that small.
The true leaders in the field of crypto will have to consider backing up the value of the crypto-as many have already done. Such as USDT, but not without controversy. Backing crypto with gold sounds like a better idea, since not even fiat is safe. But even the United states is hostile to the idea of an Oil Backed Crypto from Venezuela-heaven forbid if something threatens the petrodollar I suppose. But how is holding say a gold backed crypto any different than I suppose holding and trading gold certificates online. Its not like the online forums faced dire consequences of keeping records on a traditional database-although one could easily argue there were not meant for traditional commerce. Backing up a cryptocurrency with 1:1 assets doesn't seem like a viable option for quasi-POS crypto that rewards content creators/curators like steem.
It needs to become a security like a stock, which sadly is an unwanted invitation to regulation. It needs to start focusing on growth and increasing book value. The more book value per steem, the greater the chance this will translate into market value, the greater the potential reward for user activity. The greater the potential reward, the more users will flock to this platform again. The site has been bare for far too long. Facebook didn't grow by giving out free shares to its users. It grew because of advertisers. Bring on the ads, bring in the money, build up equity, and the users will follow the money trail.