bitcoin has without a shred of doubt established itself as the "king of cryptocurrencies", all other coins live in its shadow. bitcoin's price is about 1200% the price of its closest competitor ETH, thats a huge margin to be even considered as a competition for now. its dominion of the crypto world is extremely significant,so much so that whatever happens or is about to happen on the bitcoin blockchain affects more than 80% of other altcoins, if bitcoin goes up; most coins go up, if bitcoin goes down; most coins go down including our dear steem. how did bitcoin get to be king ? can steem grow its own legs and pull out of bitcoin shadows?
what determines the value of a cryptocurrency?
just about every economists will be acquainted with this two-word answer: network effect.The network effect is explained by the statement that networked products and services tend to have more value when more people use them, so the value of a cryptocurrency is directly tied to the number of its users and the frequency of their use. Without the network effects, the technology of cryptocurrency is nothing. It's just a theoretical amusement.
bitcoins supremacy stems from this fact,being the first big name in the cryptospace and having the first mover advantage, it has captured a greater percentage of the crytocurrency adopters/users network ( more than 80% of altcoin investors have bitcoin in their portfolio).This is even more guaranteed by the fact that most altcoins have to exchange to bitcoin before exchanging to fiat and vice versa, what this does is
1. gives bitcoin and edge in market capitalization
2. increase transaction volume of bitcoin
3. influences the prices of altcoins that trades mostly via bitcoin
I do not see another cryptocurrency usurping Bitcoin anytime soon, if ever, I think it wouldn’t be about the technology, it would be about the network effect and the demand for the altcoin.
How can we pull steem out of bitcoin's shadow ?
steem is undeniably affected by the supremacy of bitcoin.can steem grow its own legs and pull out of the shadow of bitcoin? YES, it’s certainly possible. we all have a stake in this,we can help steem if we can reduce steems transactions interaction with bitcoin and at the same time find a way to increase steems network effect, this would probably give steem the independence it needs from bitcoin. I have seen various post by great steemit authors like 
Convert steem to local currency exchange We have people from different countries on steemit, thats a fact, and the other fact is that there are people here on steemit that needs to buy steem/sbd and also people that needs to sell steem/sbd . we should encourage ourselves and set up mediums to transact with each other exchanging steem/sbd with our local fiat currency and only use the exchanges after exhausting these mediums.
For instance
There is this altcoin whatsapp group am part of and we get to trade bitcoin/naira among ourselves, most of us are on steemit and we have decided to do same with steem and sbd. Its simple to work it out by calculating what steem/sbd is worth in usd and then calculating what usd is equivalent in the local currency. in my case 1 usd = 305 naira, 1 steem= 1.3 usd and 1 sbd = 1usd so I will trade steem at about 395 naira and sbd at about 300 naira. We have started and if this could be replicated throughout steemit, it would be good for the value of steem.
Imagine steem being able to trade with not just usd but with euros, pounds, yen, and any currency you can think of for that matter. Am not an expert but I think this would short supply to the exchanges and possible lead to a price up for steem. Setting up a marketplace for steem/sbd in steemit chat or various discord channels related to steem and steemit could also help in this regard.
Users that want to get steem/sbd out could first check in the marketplace to see if there are users that wants to buy steem/sbd , they agree on a price and transact via paypal etc. keeping steem/sbd in house will slowly create scarcity of steem on the exchanges for sure. The exchanges determines the price of a cryptocurrency and if there is scarcity of coin in an exchange there will surely be price hike for it.
And now the network effect, we can achieve this if everyone of us make a conscious effort, if all of us could bring in atleast one new user to steemit every week then growth of steemit will be three time faster than it is happening right now. Shout out to 
Imagine the network effect if facebook were to come out with a crytocurrency. Steemit has a head start in that regards, that’s the potential of steemit/steem.
We as Steemians should start accepting steem/sbd via our online and offline shops. make signs or banners that boldly says “we accept steem and steem backed dollars here” . This would help advertise steem and bring more users on steemit.
These are likely suggestions that I thought about, am no expert and would love to get everyone to share their thoughts on this subject matter too, looking forward to your comments. lets make steem great again.
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