To this very moment, there is a popular school of thought in the crypto industry that believes that the parabolic run that took Etherum to an all-time high of $1,389 was greatly driven by only one thing - the madness of ICos on the ETH blockchain.
While I consider the said school of thought to be quite extreme because other altcoins that had no ICOs features also reached their all-time high during the same period, there is no gainsaying the fact that ICOs did have a positive impact on the price of ETH and its dominance on the CoinMarketCap's rankings.
So, the question here is whether the forthcoming release of the SMTs, which has superb ICO features, according to a recent blog post authored by @Steemitblog will have the same positive impact on the price of Steem and perhaps improve it's ranking on CoinMarketCap.
In answering the above question, one needs to first explain what a blockchain-based ICO means in a layman's language. A blockchain-based ICOs means decentralized fundraising for a project. In the case of Steem, an ICO could be much more - it could mean the start of a new Steem-based token economy and the redistribution of wealth based on certain parameters.
That said, ICOs provides existing businesses and start ups with the rare opportunity of raising funds from users around the world. And for the users, ICOs present a fresh investment opportunity for what could break the jaws of wealth in the years ahead.
So what's the point here? ICOs involves fundraising and fundraising, as the name clearly suggests, involves money. This means that the advent of ICOs on the Steem blockchain, if successful, will bring massive new money into Steem.
As a matter of fact, business owners, investors, and developers will all converge here to take Steem to a new level. And of course, that should have some positive impacts on the price of STEEM and its rankings on the CoinMarketCap. We have seen this happen before and it could happen again.
On February 15th 2019, following the launch of Steem-Engine tokens, we saw some great improvements in the price of Steem. By the following month, STEEM had rallied from a low of $0.26 to a high of $0.54. However, the rally was short-lived perhaps because investors were skeptical of SE tokens because unlike SMTs they are built on a sidechain.
Hopefully, the launch of the long-awaited SMTs will significantly impact the price of STEEM, bring it to top 50 on CoinMarketCap, and herald the unleashing of its full potential. Truly, the possibilities are boundless and the odds are in the favour of Steem.
Until I come your way again, I wish you a full STEEM head.