There has been a lot of blood on the crypto markets in the last days, and I see increasingly many people getting afraid for the future of Bitcoin, altcoins, and blockchain technology in general. I for one think that blockchain technology is here to stay, and so are a lot of cryptocurrencies. We might see a lot of bad coins die during this bloodshed, but that might not be such a bad thing after all. I don't think Steem is one of those who will die, due to it being one of the few blockchains that are actually actively used by many different people.
Are you accumulating coins?
Back when Steem was between $4 and $6, one thing I saw a lot of new users say is that they missed the train. They felt like it was impossible for them to grow their account organically, and even with lots of effort they could not get a decent amount of Steem Power. I heard the phrase "you were lucky to be here blogging when Steem was at >$0.10".
Guess what? None of us who actually invested time on the Steem blockchain when Steem was next to worthless were lucky. We either did it because we had high hopes for the coin, or because we enjoyed the small community that was still active. While I can't argue with the fact that we were lucky to learn about Steem at an early stage, this recent crypto free fall has provided us with yet an opportunity to accumulate Steem at a good pace.
While we still have a long fall before we reach below 10 cents per coin, the current market price of $0.4 per Steem allow us to potentially get 10x as many Steem for our dollars if we invest compared to a year ago. It's a great entry point for new buyers, and most people from industrialized parts of the world can probably afford to get at least 1,000 Steem Power if they really want to get involved. $400 is not a very big investment at all, but 1,000SP is enough to give a little influence on the website.
Invest your time
Don't have money to invest? No problem! The great thing about Steem is that we can earn it by investing our time, and there are many ways to earn Steem here. While most users won't be able to get daily upvotes worth tens or hundreds of dollars on blog posts, the low price of Steem allow anyone to get a decent amount of Steem and Steem Power per week if they put in the effort.
If blogging's not your thing, then commenting can also be a method to get some Steem. Many groups, DApps, and users upvote great comments about and on their posts. For example, Steemhunt give upvotes to great comments, Musing.io give big upvotes to great answers, and many individual users like myself upvote any comment in the comment section that adds value to the post.
I believe that anyone who actually puts in a lot of time and effort can earn a good amount of Steem. The current dollar value might not give you a great hourly payout, but the amount of Steem will be. And what would happen if we get Steem back to $5 again? The $2 upvote you got is now worth $20, and the time invested might not have had such a low return after all.
So if you were one of those people who complained about not being able to get in on a reasonable level back when Steem was $5, now's your chance; either with time and effort, or with cash.
Can we all be dolphins?
I think this low price is a good opportunity to create more dolphins, or in other words, a middle class, here on Steem. While it will still require a huge effort to get 5,000 Steem Power, it seems more possible than ever when these low prices.
So my best tip is to keep blogging, keep commenting, keep interacting, keep upvoting good authors, keep paying attention to the DApps, power up, and don't worry too much about the price!