Is STEEM quietly moving up into a higher league? One where it is supposed to be by any number of reasons, but somehow kept getting overlooked or ignored?
Of course, no one is going to just hand over something to you for free in a brand new world, mostly competitive rather than cooperative. You are either a shining star on everyone's lips, or you have a cutting edge marketing (these two can go hand in hand), or there is a mutual advantage.
I think it is only a matter of time before STEEM will return to a top position by other criteria too, like market cap. And I also think our community gave us strength to move forward during some pretty difficult moments in the past. And will always be an advantage. That's one asset most other blockchains don't have.
These past few weeks we've seen some interesting news. Last week we've been announced that STEEM now has a USD trading pair at a small exchange. While this is a small step, it ticks one important goal we have for STEEM. To have direct fiat pairs. Waiting to see that on bigger exchanges when it will be possible.
But news for exchanges didn't end here from Steemit side. Yesterday they announced STEEM is now listed on Huobi Exchange, which is one of the top exchanges. Not only that, but it has a STEEM/USDT pair too, on top of the traditional STEEM/BTC. STEEM price reflects this news, and it's up by over 7% at the time of writing this post.
And now let's arrive to the exchange made for STEEM. You might've heard bits of information about of it until now, because Steem Engine's Smart Contract Tokens (SCT) will be listed there. But it's launching today, and now it becomes real. They also support ERC-20 and TRX 10/20 protocols and will support SMTs when they are ready.
What's interesting about FreedomEx from our perspective is that it puts STEEM in the center and develops around it. One of their next objectives is to create STEEM/USD, STEEM/CAD and STEEM/EUR pairs.
One challenge I think they will have is that, being a new exchange, their liquidity will be building up from ground zero, and the platform is still in beta phase. If you have questions for them, there is a launch party at 6pm CST.