Though STEEM is fast (3 seconds confirmation), scalable (100K transactions per minute), and has many DApps runs on it (steemit, Dtube, Zappl, Dmania etc.), has a community of half million users; why STEEM has not seen 10x growth while other coins such as Litecoin has seen 10x growth in last 6 months.
Hold on!
Smart Media Token (SMT) has not been released yet. Therefore, investors do not know when it will it be lunched or be successful. However, there is a tremendous demand for it. Interestingly, due to ad-blockers, media companies are starving for profits. Moreover, companies love blockchian and therefore, when opportunity such as SMT rises, they will adopt it like starving dogs. For example, a company added blockchain to its name, its stocks soared to 400%.
STEEM's trade volume is very low: STEEM only have 15 pairs and traded on more or less 10 exchanges while LTC has 400 pairs and traded on more than 100s of exchanges. Though it is ranked around 30, its trade volume ranks around 60-80 on average. However, there is a initiative by 
User growth is slow: Current user sign-up is slow since it is basically processed in manually. However, there are some pay-for services. But automatic, free and easy-to-use sign-up service is in the roadmap 2018.
STEEM distribution: STEEM is not distributed well enough due to its nascence. However, as price increases, whales downsize their holdings and new users buy up STEEM form the market cap, it will be getting distributed among large number of strong hands. Therefore, demand against supply will rise, so will the price. However, it takes some time.
STEEM voting controversies: Steemitians are discussing how to handle spams, self-voting on thoughtless comments, voting bots and high post rewards by gaming the system. These are subjective and controversial issues. However, system is getting better to deal with these issues. Some whales are taking initiative on voting abuse. Day by day, steemitians are being more conscious and pro-active against the abuse.
STEEM publicity: STEEM is not a fully developed product until SMT lunch. Developers are busy with SMT and other priorities. Once SMT and communities are released, they will divert their resources to more marketing. Moreover, when STEEM will be added to more top exchanges and more users signups, network-effect will take place. It will get more publicity than currently it receives.
Thanks for reading.
Cryptominer since 2013, occasional trader and tech blogger
