I still see many people cashing out their earnings from Steemit instead of Powering Up, big mistake! The cash you got now might seem good today, but it won't when you see Steem at 100$, so be smart and Power Up today as it will soon be worth much more.
My last Power Up was yesterday when I converted 300 SBD worth about 1200$ to 364 Steem, converted it to Steem Power and couldn't be happier about it. My short term goal is to reach 5000 SP in the next couple of months and long term is 10 000 SP.
To be completely honest with you I was one of the greedy ones when I first joined Steemit, my only goal then was to get enough Steem so that I can buy a motorcycle. Now I could buy 2 of them but wont touch any of my Steem Power for at least then next 5 years. Why? Because after joining and learning more about how everything works I quickly realized Steem's true potential and what it can become after a couple of years of development.
Intro
While still in early beta Steem is on the right track to reshape the whole internet and the way we spend our time online. While you may not value the time you spend browsing Facebook or watching videos on Youtube as something that could be worth money because it's fun and you enjoy it. In fact it actually makes billions of dollars to the corporations to greedy corporations and that the people using their websites are the main source of their wealth that is acquired by making us view countless ads and selling our private data to advertisers. Depending on where and how you spend your time online, to a company like Facebook you might be worth a couple of dollars per month, depending on how much they harass you with ads and if you actually click on them and/or install a suggested app, watch a video, etc.
That couple of dollars might not mean much to you, but combined with all the other websites you visit each month it all adds up to a figure you would probably want to have but instead you unknowingly give it out freely to the corporations owning the websites.
The Power
Processing more than 1,5 million transactions daily with a 0.15% network load while some other blockchains, khm (Ethereum and Bitcoin) have troubles with far less transactions and struggle with 100% load on the network, tens of thousands of unconfirmed transactions and high fees making them highly unprofitable to use for micro-transactions or every day use as a currency.
Notice Bitcoin and Ethereum are almost falling apart trying to handle 180k and 810k transactions/day and are using 100% of the network, while Steem and Bitshares are not even breaking a sweat at 0.15%. Steem is the best performing blockchain today and has been best for the past two months since I started to follow the charts.
Use Blocktivity for once instead of CoinMarketCap and you will get a real feel of the true value of a blockchain
Value of a blockchain lies in it's performance and usability, not the current dollar price and market capitalization.
One way to consider a blockchain project is through its market cap. Another way, closer to the real value, is observing the activity on the blockchain. Lots of FUD and HYPE are responsible for "misplaced" capital in the cryptocurrency space. Here, we are observing which project is actually being used by people, which is in our opinion, the best predictive indicator of value you can have.
Steem is currently the most undervalued blockchain out there, which I still can not understand. People just don't seem to comprehend everything Steem can do in form of it's incredible processing power and scalability to 100 million transactions per day, all with 3s transaction times and 0$.
Steem vs Steemit
The Steem blockchain is something unique and special. First you need to understand that there is a difference between Steem and Steemit. Steemit (the site you are on right now) is just a front-end of the Steem blockchain. Meaning it's just a way to tap into the amazing powers that the Steem blockchain has to offer. The Steem blockchain itself is an operating system for currently hundreds but in a close future tens of thousands amazing apps that will fight to shift power from corporations back to the people by offering a monetary reward in form of cryptocurrency for a wide variety of actions from writing articles, contributing to open source projects, graphic design to producing video content, live streaming and much more.
The revolution
One of the first things that made me love Steemit so much is that, unlike Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, or any other social media platform which earns billions of dollars from throwing ads at their users and collecting their data to sell it to advertisers, Steemit gives all the money earned back to the workforce behind it (the people who actually use it and produce quality content). Without us there wouldn't be no Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, or any other social media platform and instead of taking advantage of it's users Steemit rewards us for being a part of the community and producing and consuming content. For me that is just groundbreaking and I feel as if it was supposed to be like that in the first place, but greedy hands got to the technology first and used it to enslave the whole planet with mobile phones and social media platforms all that while they earn immense wealth while we don't even notice that we are doing all the work for them.
The other reason why I like Steemit so much is that there is no censorship here. No komunist dictating what can and can not be said. No bot army flagging your posts because you are speaking truth or something that doesn't go along with governments opinion. You are completely free to write whatever you want and it will forever stay on the blockchain. Can't be removed or re-written. Like you engraved them into a stone your posts are eternally on the Steem blockchain and on Steemit.
Another point to mention is that there are none and as I know will never be any ads on Steemit, ever! And after getting slaughtered by ads popping up everywhere with every third click in the past couple of years. This ad-free experience is such a freeing and liberating feeling and a big privilege. As you probably know, around 80% of websites today, get most of their income through ads so being in the 20% is a big privilege and something everyone should learn to appreciate.
And finally the main, most important reason why I believe in the Steem blockchain so much, is that in a couple of years it's going to be home to tens of thousands of applications and bussineses that will use the power of decentralization combined with Steemits monetary system to FREE millions of people from the tyranny of the broken monetary system and modern way of life. They will reshape the entire online world as we know it today and shift the power back to the people.
Those who are wiling to put in the efforts needed will always be properly rewarded and with the power of Smart Media Tokens we are going to tokenise the world and give everyone a chance to earn money in form of cryptocurrency.
Everyone willing to work hard and produce quality content that is.
Some Apps based on the Steem blockchain that could change the world
APPICS
Instagram of the blockchain and first SMT project on the Steem blockchain that will offer a much better, visually and content wise version of the popular social media website Instagram. All that while offering a chance to earn a monetary reward for something you would normally do. It will utilize Steemit-like monetary system where each upvote is worth money in form of XAP tokens again going with the same formula of shifting power (money) from greedy corps back to those who deserve it (people who produce and consume the content)APPICS will launch it's first Alpha somewhere around Q3 of 2018 and I suggest you prepare. As APPICS will be a huge success within the first couple of years of it's release because when people realize that they have been fooled into thinking that what they do on social media websites isn't worth anything and that they can actually earn a living from posting on Appics and doing what they normally do on Instagram they will come in like a stampede, in millions.
Read more
Announcing: APPICS | The Next Generation Social APP | First Smart Media Token! 
Utopian.io
Based on the Steem blockchain utopian.io is an app that rewards open source contributions to thousands of projects from all around the world. Anyone can participate and if you can provide a solution via a post and moderators approve it, you will be rewarded with an upvote from @utopian-io worth 50-200$ and more depending on the quality of the content and the difficulty of the problem solved. Things you can do today to start earning on utopian is to do translations for open source projects, bug hunting, making suggestions for improvement of certain open-source projects, tutorials, graphic design and much more.
To make a contribution register with your Steemit account at Utopian-io
Read more
Utopian: My Contribution to the Open Source World.
Dtube
Is a huge slap in the face for Youtube censorship in form of demonetizing anyone who doesn't go along with the mainstream propaganda opinion meant for brainwashing the general population. Censoring any critical thinker or anyone that tries to say something against what the government wa nts their sheeple to believe. Dtube put's an end to this by bringing video sharing to the blockchain. Meaning you can post whatever you want and never fear of being censored. Dtube is already becoming hugelly successful as I see more and more famos Youtubers and critical thinkers coming to dtube as the opresion from Youtube get's stronger every day. Dtube is growing stronger each day and I hope that some day it will put an end to the monopoly that Youtube currently has.
Dtube has over 2 million delegated SP and is heavily rewarding quality contributions so think about switching from Youtube to Dtube as there are no advantages to post your content on Youtube any more.
Read more
Introducing DTube: a decentralized video platform using STEEM and IPFS
Dsound
Is Soundcloud of the blockchain, running on top of the Steem blockchain dsound is offering musicians a way to share their music and earn cryptocurrency instead of giving it freely to Soundcloud or any other music sharing website that in end makes more profits than the actual musician that did all the work.
Dsound now has almost 1m SP and uses all of it to reward good contributions so I would like to encourage you to stop giving your music to the greedy corps and earn some cryptocurrency on Dsound
Read more
Introducing DSound: a decentralized sound platform using STEEM and IPFS
Dlive
Based on the Steem blockchain Dlive is a decentralized version of the popular video live streaming website Twitch but it's much better, because unlike on Twitch you don't need to be a superstar with tens of thousands of people watching you to earn, as Dlive with it's 2m delegated SP rewards every quality contribution with a 40$-70$ upvote currently worth 100-170$ and sometimes even more. Dlive eaqualizes everyone not excluding anyone so it doesn't mean how much followers or SP you have, if you can produce quality content you will surely be rewarded for it, so if you are a streamer or would like to start streaming I urge you to come to Dlive because you will do much better here than you would anywhere else and your work will be more appreciated then ever before.
Dlive eaqualizes everyone while not excluding anyone, meaning it doesn't mean how much followers or SP you have, if you can produce quality content you will surely be rewarded for it, so if you are a streamer or would like to start streaming I urge you to come to Dlive because you will do much better here than you would anywhere else and your work will be more appreciated then ever before.
Read more
DLive - The First Decentralized Live Streaming Platform on Steem!
Dmania
Rewards it's users for making dank memes! Something you would usually do for fun and post on Facebook just to make someone laugh but now you can earn cryptocurrency for it. Based on the Steem blockchain Dmania has more than 600k SP and uses it to reward quality contributions. So why not stop posting your memes for free and try earning something on Dmania?
Read more
Share your dMania Posts on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Pinterest
Steepshot
Is an ap based on the Steem blockchain with a Instagram-like feel to it that allows you to post your images in a much more eye-friendly and easy-to use way. Unlike other above-mentioned projects Steepshot sadly doesn't have a huge amount of SP delegated to reward it's users but it's still a lot better to post your images there than to give them freely to FB or Insta to make a profit.
Steepshot has a really slick and nice looking front-end and I can see mass adoption of the app in the future if it continues to improve and good marketing is done.
Read more
Introducing Steepshot for the Web. Login to Steepshot and enjoy amazing photos!
Zappl
Is a decentralized version of Twitter based on top of Steem blockchain. It's a place for decentralized micro-blogging with a cap of 240 words max per post. To log into Zappl you will need a Steemit account to log in through trusted service called SteemConnect.Everything you post Zappl will also be visible on your Steemit blog.
As wtih Steepshot, Zappl has huge potential and if done correctly it could come to the attention of the mainstream and dethrone Twitter.
Busy
Is another front-end for the Steem blockchain with a much better design than what we have here on Steemit. Meaning that everything you will see there is also on Steemit but it's presented in a simpler and better way. It's a chance to get more users joining from outside of Steemit and give them a more easy-to-use and user-friendly experience.
Solving Steemits problem of being so frustrating and hard to understand to some new users Busy is a great alternative and a way to access your Steemit account if it's down for whatever reason.
Last but not least, meet the holy grail of Steem!
Smart Media Tokens
Is what's really going to push Steem price to the moon. It's a protocol that allows any ordinary website to adopt a Steemit-like monetary system to reward their users monetarily for participation on the platform, such as writing good content, commenting often, voting well, participating in campaigns and contests, rating products, bringing new users to the site, etc. Not only that but with an SMT, projects can start their own ICO with Steem blockchain same way people do with Ethereum blockchain.
NOTE: Every SMT is linked to Steem and as such it will increase the value of Steem as it increases in value. Meaning if a SMT based website gets 10's millions of users their SMT token value increases because of supply/demand, it will in end increase the value of the Steem token itself!
While still in beta there are many great projects that plan to utilize the power of the Steem blockchain and launch their own token. 2018 will be the year of SMT adoption and development, while 2019 will be the year of shifting millions of users from today's popular websites to Steemit-based apps that will allow them to earning a monetary reward in form of cryptocurrency for something they would usually do for free + that's when I think the Steem price will explode and go to 100$.
Read more
Whitepaper
How Steemit Smart Media Tokens can empower current influencers to become brands in their own right.
Smart Media Tokens: Why We're Doing It [VIDEO]
Conclusion
If any of the above-mentioned projects gets mainstream adoption it would hugely impact the price of the Steem token itself bringing it up 5x, 10x, or even higher. While still under the radar they are undergoing constant development and improvements are made daily. Most of them are still in it's "infancy" phase but will soon mature enough to get the needed attention of the general population. That's why I would like to encourage you to always Power Up because your 1$ vote now might be worth 25$ soon and your estimated account balance will go through the roof :)
FOMO ON?
I hope I got you into a FOMO state by now and that you have finally realized Steem's true power and potential. Also hoping that you are rushing to Power Up your SBD or at least get rid of your useless, violence-backed pieces of paper that we like to call money and invest them in some sweet SP.