First of all, a NYC Happy New Year 2018 to all my fellow Steemians! 😁
(click to watch fireworks over Manhattan's Central Park!)
What a difference a whole year makes. I started posting more actively on STEEMIT in October 2016, and by last New Year's, I had just managed to acquire a total of 30 followers.
My Happy New Year 2017 STEEMIT post managed to net a whopping $0.18 and 10 upvotes!
I wasn't the only one trudging it through at the time, even watching STEEM trickle its way down to under USD 10 cents each...
Regardless, I stuck it through, mostly because I thought it was pretty darn cool that I could literally post the same content on STEEMIT that I would on Facebook for free, and actually earn some "free" crypto to boot!
Even more amazingly, on STEEMIT I found a passionate, vibrant community of people with all types of interesting and unique backgrounds. On Facebook, I found myself wasting untold amounts of time fending off those who would berate anyone who didn't wholeheartedly embrace "Hillary Clinton". On STEEMIT, however, not only could I earn money from my posts, but I also crossed paths with a wide variety of like-minded individuals who completely understood and embraced more "Libertarian / Classical Liberal" ideologies.
Understand now, it's not even like I was pounding the table as a "Trump Supporter" either. The binary logic at the time was you were either "WITH US" or "AGAINST US", there was no middle ground whatsoever. Here, I finally "came out" and presented my ideal choice for POTUS:
Next to this, STEEM seemed like a DREAM, where you can come across other terrific like-minded folks from across the globe, and let them know how much you appreciate their work with a simple upvote that would mine them a bit of crypto currency, without any additional monetary investment. All you had to do was put in the time and effort to build a following and post high-quality content to the blockchain!
That's exactly what we did when we first built up our YouTube channel to nearly 100,000 subscribers over a decade ago. We didn't even make a dime for the first TWO YEARS either! 😲 On STEEMIT, we earned some crypto (albeit, only a small amount), nearly DAY ONE! I was also comforted by the fact that we weren't wastefully consuming untold amounts of energy for the sole purpose of mining new BitCoins.
And, in that line of thinking, if PoW has the "potential" to make something so valuable, then why isn't GridCoin worth even more than BitCoin?! Guess you can't count on a bunch of "science nerds" to be nearly as good at pumping marketing and promotion as those in the "BitCoin" space. But perhaps GridCoin too will still have its moment in the spotlight, if a valid use-case can be identified for its token.
Move it along, will ya?! ...
"Come for the rewards, stay for the community!"
I'm always fascinated by those who think they can come onto STEEMIT, beg others for upvotes on their copy/paste posts, and then wonder why they're not finding any success in building their presence here. For me, it wasn't before May 2017 that I finally managed to reach what seemed like a huge milestone at the time... a whopping 250 follows! 😲
I achieved this by respectfully interacting with the community, reading posts by others, spending the time to leave thoughtful comments, and helping add value where I could. I never once wrote comments such as "grate post i lern lots" or "i tink is gud vot me 2! i follow u pls follw me".
Don't ask what people can do for you. See how you can help others. And if you provide value, they will often want to reward you for your efforts. That is the nature of the "gift economy", which was so terrifically described in the following post by 
Around this time, I finally released an appropriate "introduceyourself" post, and it earned more than all my previous STEEMIT posts, combined! I also discussed another big aspect to my interest in STEEMIT, as an alternative to YouTube which gave us so much heartache years earlier (back in 2011), just as our YouTube channel vlogolution was on the verge of breaking through 100,000 subscribers. I highly recommend you all read it if you haven't already, as it offers many tips (especially in the comment section) on how to properly and appropriately build your presence on STEEMIT.
Link: YouTuber's Guide to Re-Monetizing with STEEMIT! And thank you to my first 253 subs!
Fast-Forward to New Year's 2018...!
(and possibly entertaining) enough to deserve your follow! 😊
So, for this New Year's we decided to take it relatively easy, especially given how freezing cold it was outside (where's all that "global warming" when you really need it)?! 😂
We went on to reflect upon our "completely crazy year in crypto", and how 2018 will probably be the year for "big things" to happen for both the STEEMIT and BitShares community. In fact, here's an end-of-year tweet I posted in response to Erik Townsend's report on "the future of the blockchain":
At midnight, I went out in the freezing cold to capture the "grand finale" of the NYC New Year's Fireworks. Within minutes, my fingers already felt numb! 😧 Even worse, for whatever reason (perhaps due to the intense cold), the video captured on Michelle's iphone came out completely blurred! 😭
So, for those of you wondering why my New Year firework photo at the top of this post looks so blurry, that's the reason! lol However, if you click through, you'll see almost the same awesome fireworks show that we captured for my 2017 post. Given it achieved a whopping $0.18 and 10 upvotes, I doubt any of you saw it anyway! 😵
2018, DAY ONE...
Well, we both had expected some "interesting times" in the STEEMIT and BitShares community in 2018 (as described earlier). However, little did we expect such fireworks literally DAY ONE, right out of the gate, with the price of STEEM up over 70% to over $5 each (and now almost $7 as I get ready to post this!), and Bitshares' BTS reaching over 80 cents each, for a combined value of nearly FOUR BILLION DOLLARS! 😮
I hate seeing such sharp and fast moves in the markets, and I'm really not sure why this particularly happened today, right out of the gate of the 2018 new year. For me, the longer the price stayed low, slow and steady, the better. I was more than happy to keep posting, acquiring STEEM and BTS organically over time, and watching as more people started realizing the potential of all these chains. As I wrote in another recent post:
It still seems the crypto-world largely under-appreciates the ramifications of proven blockchain technology that can steadily and reliably maintain such fast transaction times. The closest competitor would be Ripple with its 3.5 second blocks. And on that note, many of you may not be aware that the graphene and bitshares tech has been stress-tested as capable of achieving block times down to 500ms!
Link: How much would STEEMIT or BitShares be worth as SHARES on the New York Stock Exchange?!
Still, I suppose it is time to celebrate, at least a little bit, so...
🤑 BREAK OUT THE PREMIUM TOP-SHELF CHAMPAGNE! 🤑
So that's exactly what we did. We happened to have an old bottle of 1988 Moet Chandon Dom Perignon, and figured what better time than this to have at it, and get a bit tipsy on some of the "good stuff". We reflected on what's been accomplished in 2017, as well as what we can look forward to achieving in 2018!
And alas, it really only cost us about... wait for it... 😂 $50 SBD! 🤑
And so, here's to all my great new STEEMIT friends I've made over the past year...
🥂🥂🥂 CHEERS! 🥂🥂🥂
🙃 I look forward to many more laughs, fun, and
exciting good 'ole times interacting with all of you! 🙃
😛 and Let The Good Times Roll... 😛
As always, I appreciate your upvote, your follow and all your comments!