I read through @joseph's post about the original comments @dantheman made surrounding the launch of Steem/Steemit, and there was one thing I found particular interesting – Dan purposely went out of his way to make it sound unappealing to people that were not willing to put in the time and hard work to understand how great Steemit was. He wanted to recruit people who were willing to work hard, understood the mission, and considered the project amazing enough to get involved with no guarantee of payoff.
They recruited the whales of Steemit by finding dedicated people who believed in the project enough to invest their own resources - whether that be in time, technical expertise, mining resources, money, etc. - in order to make the Steemit project a success before there was any proof that it would be successful. These are the people that currently hold all the power. These are the whales, and they put in a lot of work/effort/time/etc. to get to where they are - before anyone else believed in the project.
Now they have moved on to recruiting the dolphins. For everyone that complains about the whales having most of the power - how many would be willing to invest as much as the original people did, with little evidence that all your hard work and investment would pay off? Would you be willing to spend hours writing articles and curating content, just to earn hundreds of Steem that might someday be worth something?
Well, the community of Steemit may soon be put to the test. The price of Steem keeps falling, and the amount of liquid Steem being sold continues to grow. There do not seem to be enough heavy investors willing to put in the kind of money that is needed to stabilize the price – let alone change it enough to start going in the upward direction.
Steem seems to be going down, and pending a major trend reversal, it will probably get much worse before it gets better. I know nobody wants to hear this, but that is what we are facing.
Is that actually a bad thing though?
Ask yourself the question – When you powered up, were you looking for a short-term gain, or a long term investment? I know almost everyone here would have answered the latter, because we are all here for the long-run. Two years is a very long time. We need to stop looking at where the price is heading in the next 3-6 months, and start looking at where it will head in the next 2-3 years.
The price might continue to fall for the foreseeable future. If it does though, here is what I predict will happen:
- The people who do not really see the long-term potential of Steemit, and are only here to earn a quick/easy buck will leave.
- The people that stick around will focus more on producing quality content and building a following, because the temptation to post or curate just to earn easy money will be gone.
- A lot more people will be able to buy a large amount of SP with only a few hundred / few thousand dollars, giving them a significant stake in the system.
- The community will do a significant amount of soul searching to identify the main issues that are causing the price to go down.
- The community will turn into a core group of people who still think Steemit is amazing - even if they are not making thousands of dollars a day, and will drive the project to where it needs to go in order to succeed.
- 2-3 years from now, the people who stuck around will be the new dolphins, and will be able to upvote content for more than 1 cent when the price of Steem goes back up.
Regardless of whether the price of Steem goes up or down, I see the dev team and community continuing to evolve the site over the next 2-3 years, making it significantly better than it is today. Eventually Steemit will get to the point that it is ready to officially launch, and be ready to scale to millions of happy users. Once we get to that point, then the price of Steem will naturally follow – and then Steemit will be ready to take over the world =)
So, ask your self the question: Are you someone that believe in the Steemit project so much, that you will stick with it for the next 2-3 years to make it successful? Because the people who answer 'yes' to this are the ones who deserve it, and the ones that will ultimately earn the title of "Steemit Dolphin".
