STEEM ranks Top 20 and gains the interest of new investors
Just hours ago, I took a quick snapshot of STEEM and Steem Dollar market prices making huge jumps.
Source: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/steem
Source: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/steem-dollars
Sudden jump?
While I re-orientate myself to the sudden jump for STEEM and SBD, STEEM has achieved a market cap of US$629 million , reaching a peak at US$2.45 price and Steem Dollars made a 100% jump from US$1.60 to US$3.18.
Other coins such as Binance Coin [BNB] and VeChain [VEN] have also made huge jumps today. (Source: cryptocurrencynews.com).
I am not very good at scrutinizing the STEEM blockchain or do queries, so I am still trying to find out what happened in the last 6 hours. There have been some talks of buying in STEEM as it hits an all-time low of US$1.58 (Source: cointradejournal.com)
A high trade volume is reported on Korean Exchange, Upbit, which I have trouble doing translations. US$27 million is traded from South Korean Won (KRW) to STEEM and a high volume of US$53 million is traded from KRW to Steem Dollars.
Source: Upbit
To my understanding South Korea is a big supporter of cryptocurrencies and there is a huge presence of the Korean community on Steemit (via steemkr.com, which is the Korean interface for Steem blockchain social media platform). Refering to an article by 
Market manipulation or steady growth?
Good news for Steemit to gain international users as the platform here will be used by a growing number of users. We all play our part, writing, reading, curating, commenting, upvoting, re-steeming and making friends on this new platform.
With the downfall of Facebook as the largest social media platform, blockchain-based websites such as Steemit are gaining ground (see my previous article: https://steemit.com/facebook/@tysler/facebook-is-fighting-a-losing-battle-with-its-privacy-issues)
"I feel like I'm in the Stone Age when I'm on Facebook or Twitter," Kadavy said. "They have no value without what you're contributing to them. If Facebook doesn't respond to this, things can change very quickly. They should be very concerned." Kadavy, a 38-year-old American writer living in Colombia said.
Source: NDTV, Bloomberg author
Source: Martin Eriksson
Stay tuned for more on steemit.com/@tysler
-tysler
All images used are under the CC0 license.