I have been a member of Steemit since July 10th and like everyone else here I have been a witness of how it has evolved over this short time period.

From the euphoria after Juy 4th when the price skyrocketed to the steady decline afterwards. I have listened to the detractors of the project and to the most ardent defenders of the platform.

We have all heard the statement that we are still in Beta. A few have made the counter argument. This "Alpha/Beta" terminology is new to some if not many of the members of this growing community.

One issue that stands out for me is the concern that the project will fail. That fear is expressed implicitly by several comments and posts that point to the declining price of Steem or the fact that the percentage of active users dwarfs that of the total accounts created...to name a few examples.

Those are fact based fears

Of course not everyone shares the same point of view (I include myself in this camp). For those who are on this side of fence we can point to numerous apps, websites, projects, etc that have sprung up around the whole ecosystem.

Some examples:

• Project Curie
• Steempower.org
• Steemstats.com
• SteemQ
• Robinhoodwhale
• Project Thunderwhale

This optimism is also based on facts

I will come back later to the concern of the declining price of Steem...but first let us ask ourselves a question...

Why are we here?

The simple answer for some would be "I am here to make money"

Others will say

• "I am here to make friends"
• "I love to interact with people"
• "I hate that corporate social media profits from my personal information"
• "I am a developer and working on these type of projects is exiting"
• "Anything else that you can think of"

What does this all have in common?

These are all ways to satisfy our needs. Yes we are here because we need something.

The declining price of Steem

Ok back to the price issue.

What determines the price of a currency? The simple answer is supply and demand. If more people are buying then selling then the price will go up and viceversa.

The answer is not so simple but I will not go into economic theory to disect the different variables that influence the price.

Several voices have appealed to the whales to not sell in order to cut down on the supply. Others have proposed in the recent past to limit the say in the platform of those powering down (by removing the ability to vote if I recall correctly).

Neither are good solutions and I will not elaborate since it has already been discussed on multiple posts and comments.

The other way that the price can increase is via the demand side of the equation but...

Why would anyone buy a currency? Why would anyone by anything for that matter?

We buy food to satisfy our hunger, we buy clothes to cover ourselves (or to wear the latest fashion appearel), we buy a ticket to see a movie to have a good time.

In other words...we buy stuff that helps us satisfy our needs.

Steem has two main uses:

1. To "Power Up" thus gaining influence in the Steemit platform and therfore higher curation rewards.
2. To speculate and make a profit on exchanges.

One way of looking at the problem is to increasing the ways that Steemit satisfies the needs of it's current and potential users. The more needs are satisfied the more people will buy in.

We should continue working in this direction but if we only follow that path we will be limiting ourselves.

From my point of view we should think BIGGER.

Look at the Steemit community as a "nation". In order for the currency of the Steemit nation to apraise in value compared to the currency of other "nations" Steem needs to be viewed by "them" as a means to satisfy their needs.

Imagine this scenario:

1. A person who is not a member of Steemit goes to an online store and makes a purchase with his/her credit card.
2. The online retailer is a member of Steemit and has decided to use part of the profits to Power Up.
3. The payment processor behind the scenes uses the funds to purchase steem and transfers those to the merchant.
4. The online shoper does not know it but has contributed to increasing the demand for Steem or SBD.

Sounds to good to be true? Maybe but I like to dream :)

Several members of the community are or have been engaged in projects that involve or contribute to the creation of a marketplace or marketplaces: Hive account@klye, Hive account@steemrollin, Hive account@steve-walschot. So I know we are headed in the right direction (forgive me if I forget the efforts of anybody else).

There could be multiple ways of looking at the posibilities.

So to answer the question on the title of this article:

"The future of Steem lies in the way that the Steemit community creates ways to satisfy the needs of others"

Note: Image credits Pixaby