Last night I was notified of a few things that show the bears are out again. This, of course, was before the strong move upwards in the price of STEEM this morning. Perhaps this put them back in hibernation for a little while but it does not matter. Bullishness for STEEM should not come from short-term price action.
I am on record stating that I believe we will see $100 STEEM by the end of the year. Nevertheless, in this post, I am going to forget all that. Let us look at the situation as if nothing changed throughout the year.
At present, there are somewhere between 35K-40K daily users. Let us suppose the recent growth rate does not hold and we see a pulling back to about 500 per month. This is not a radical figure since it is less than 2% monthly growth. My presumption is this is a natural growth without any external marketing, changes in the UI, or SMTs. Everything stays the same.
So why do I conclude this growth rate is guaranteed?
My conclusion is because people are making money on the STEEM blockchain. PERIOD.
The 35K-40K are all earning STEEM. That means any amount of posting, commenting, and upvoting will get people some STEEM in their account. While many want to compare to the whales and others trending, let us take another view.
If one earns 50 SP on here, at $3 per token, that is $150. While this is a small amount, it is more than 98% of all bloggers make on the traditional platforms. At the same time, if someone gets to 500 SP, that puts them in elite company for blogging. Very few people ever make more than $1500 through the likes of Blogger and Wordpress. I would surmise this is less than 1% of all the people who try their hand at it.
Since people are making money, word spreads which presents the growth rate. Again, I am not talking about doubling each month. What I am focusing upon is the natural, word-of-mouth growth of a little less than 2% per month (let's call it 20% a year). This is an abysmal growth rate yet still would add over 8K daily users to the blockchain. People like to tell others of their success. This is how daughters, sons, mothers, fathers, and neighbors get involved.
So even with nothing more than users sharing what they are doing with people they know, we can see 20% growth a year for who knows how long.
Another guaranteed aspect of all this is the steem blockchain does not contain the questions other blockchains presently have. Steem is already established.
Look at the latest blocktivity.info stats. Steem is only getting further ahead in the number of transactions it is processing on a daily basis. This tells me there is growth. It also states that things are happening. Steem was designed to be a social media/blogging platform. This role is being fulfilled at this moment.
Other blockchains carry with them major question marks of where they will eventually end up. Will Bitcoin end up as a store of value? Who will end up as digital money? How will blockchain X scale up? Will blockchain Y be knocked off by blockchain Z? None of these questions exist for the Steem blockchain. It is an scaled blockchain that is operating as a social media site that rewards both content creators and curators. And did I mention, people are making money?
What happens if the price of STEEM does collapse? What if the present price action is based upon future projections of advancement that do not occur?
Let us review that.
If the price action starts to plunge downward, at what point do some people on here buy? I cannot give an answer to that in terms of a figure but I can tell you there is a point where many of the daily users would pick up more STEEM. One of the wonders of this blockchain is there is a built-in incentive for people to buy more STEEM...it enhances one's SP. This, in turn, creates a snowball effect which enables one to take part in a greater part of the daily reward pool.
What this does is creates a floor in the price. Personally, I am sure I was start scaling in heavily if the price hit $1.50. A few months ago, I kept buying down all the way to $.85. If the price hit those levels again, I would be powering up and I believe many others would also. The reward pool does not change from its original distribution plan. Therefore, each day STEEM is available to anyone who participates. Powering up would only enhance each person's account.
Hence we have a blockchain that is fulfilling the purpose it was designed for, has tens of thousands of people making money, and has a built in pricing floor since a portion of the 40K daily users would purchase STEEM if the price pulled back enough, to me that is guaranteed success. Even with a measly 20% annual growth rate, an rounding error in the crypto/blockchain world, we would see the pricing hold in a steady range, at worst. This means that everyone who is active would be adding to their accounts daily by participating in the reward pool.
Where is the downside in that? And this is the worst case scenario.
Even at its worst, STEEM is a money-maker for people.
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