The brief introduction to Life-Line theory is here.
Steemit has passed the initial phase of its development, which was accompanied by the preparation for floatation and, the floatation itself. Now it has entered the mania phase, and it can take several years to involve every person on this planet into it. I'll try to describe this process, but I will have to give a lot of extra explanations which later you will find in my work "Changing Eras". Subscribe to 
Two life lines.
The Steemit development takes place within the process of two life lines: the dynamics involving new people in the eco-system and the Steem rate. In essence, these are two different closely linked information systems, and by now they have been moving to the beat. But if you think about it, each of them was put in motion by different phenomena. To look into these processes, we need to trace the development of each of the two life lines and puzzle the general information field out.
The Steem rate life line.
Actually, short-term speculators are not the Steemit participants. They prefer to invest to get fast profit – that is how they earn their bread. There are exceptions, but, massively, they are not engaged in the direct involvement of new participants in the platform. Furthermore, they do not develop internal projects for the system development, create useful content or visit steemit.com.
At the moment, the Steem rate is mostly speculative determined by the mood of the short-term investors, but it refrains from falling to the "zero" level by those investors who believe in the system and continue keeping their Steem and SP.
Today, as we know, the short-term investors are in panic and withdraw from market. This panic is a part of the information trend on the transition border of the S-S curve from one life line to another, where a new wave of growth begins. The life line of the finishing information trend was linked to the Steemit entry into the market and the start of payments, causing an inflow of short-term investments and the "pump" rate, which is only a "starting point" by its nature.
When will Steem stop the decline?
The Steem rate will stop declining, expand, and start rising when the last short-term investors will pass and leave the market by closing their deals at a loss. At this point the buyers will begin to prevail over the sellers both quantitatively and by the capital, and the Steem rate will change its direction.
Thereupon, the transition to a new S-curve of life will be completed, investors will believe in the future growth and start buying, following trading indicators. But it's natural to have spreads in financial markets, and we do not need technical indicators to describe it in general terms.
First of all, this process is connected with the fact that the number of buyers and sellers in the market is limited, and their mood always changes in the same manner within a single life line. All of these life lines are nested within the life lines of higher orders including the main trend that we haven't seen well yet. Its development has just started, and the speed of this process can be determined at length by many internal and external factors (such as, for example, the global economic system collapse and the Steem internal market establishment).
The new wave of growth.
Today, the initial phase of the life line, associated with the Steemit entry into the market, is drawing to a close, so we are coming to the local mania phase. Soon the investors will get a second wind. At first, market will slowly mark a new initial trend of lower order, which will move into a mania phase and then to a phase of belated, ending the older order's life line. The start of the nested mania phase will lead to a new wave of Steem rate rapid growth. As usual, the belated investors will get to the top, and the further correction will be completed at a higher level, because in this process there are some investors who will believe in the system and turn from speculators in SP holders.
Local limit of the Steem rate.
Limit of the Steemit local growth is determined by the total number of investors willing to buy the currency right now, the amount of their capital, and the number of sellers in the market. The number of investors will grow, as the information on the system value will be distributed, but the average level of fluctuations will be still dictated by the long-term investors who believed in the system and increased their SP or kept Steem. Therefore, after each wave of growth, the correction will stop at the ever more high level.
The process of an investor behavior changing on the market up trend.
Using the life line theory of and principles of Elliott Wave Analysis, which is built on the same assumptions, the development process of the Steem rate main trend can be presented as follows:
The figure was created subject to all the rules of Elliott Wave Theory, but it is NOT a trade forecast. The figure shows one of the great varieties of options of the Steem rate development, meanwhile preserving and increasing the system value for the people. Each of the phases can include the nested life lines of the financial trends that form the market adjusting to the dynamically changing investor behavior.
The newcomers impact on the Steemit rate.
Ordinary people don't rush to a stock to buy Steem, they write articles and want to shake the money tree. At the same time, some of them, of course, become investors, but they usually lose their money coming into the market at the very top of the mania phase or at the phase of belated. Led by a public sentiment without awareness of the processes described here, they do not take into account the fact that the market behaves irrationally, i.e. it is always against the sentiment of the crowd.
The growth dynamics life line.
Many of us feel that Steemit has the value that needed to be distributed. We are transponders, transmitting information outside Steemit, and we do this in spite of the fact that our activity is now under pressure from the speculative rate fall. The fall in exchange reduced the maximum "cache" of the posts and made the platform not that attractive to the newcomers, loosening the "wow" effect. The effectiveness of the basic mechanics involving users through "Lottery" has decreased, and now we can see the number of newcomers coming into the system reduced, and it is natural, but the information about us continues to spread.
Soon we'll change the life line of development: eco-system would be expanded to new areas, new internal projects, focused on the simple engagement mechanics and the information forwarded by the members, will cause a new wave of growth.
Example of an extension: [Peerhub: Bringing Steem Beyond Social Networks To The New Economy!]
(https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemrollin/peerhub-bringing-steem-beyond-social-networks-to-the-new-economy).
Example of simple mechanics: CrazyChallenge and others same.
Synchronous development of Steem life lines.
Life lines of the dynamics involving participants and the Steem rate will temporarily continue the synchronous development, but that doesn't mean that it will always be like that. At some point, when the life line of the dynamics involving the participants will work off the correlation with the Steem rate and take its independent course, but in accordance with the same laws of information systems development. This happens when new projects of the eco-system and new people involved will provide powerful information rebroadcast outside the system, causing it to expand, not associated directly with rewards for publishing content.
The explosive development.
At some point, Steemit will get so many members that our intersecting social links shall become effective on friends who will not be even involved and familiar with the system. People will see not only one information transponder in their friends’ newsfeed, but two. And then three. And then a potential newbie will dare sign up. Here starts a snowballing growth of the community at the mania phase of the main trend of the life line curve of Steemit.
The external catalyst.
An extraordinary external economic event can act as a catalyst for the system development. Steemit appeared in the perfect storm conditions, when the life line of the capitalism system in the conventional sense comes to an end and needs a natural replacement. Cash gap in the euro-zone banking system will lead to its collapse, and the investors will be looking for a safe haven. Of course, the advanced projects based on the blockchain technology already work on this safe haven, and Steemit, significantly bigger by that time, will be one of those havens. At that time, the investors will enter the mania phase within the main trend which can be characterized by the overall rise, up to the full involvement of every person on this planet in the new economic system.
The resume.
If the Steemit eco-system value for people is increasing and kept, it will continue its expansion. The limit is determined by the number of people willing to accept information and having needs that are met by the community. The more needs the community fills, the faster the expansion is. The more external economic problems there are in the world, the faster the expansion is.
Today we are under conditions of a perfect storm changing the global life lines of people's social organization, and I feel that we will not miss our chance. The era of Aquarius gets underway, and we are witnessing its dawn.