In an effort to make sense of what is happening with Steem and the overall blockchain market, I decided to take a look at Bitshares. My last post was about Dan Larimer, who created STEEM before moving on to Bitshares and EOS. So, it was important to see where those projects are going.
I have to say that I found Bitshares interesting. It borrows many of the features on STEEM, such as stake, voting, witnesses, and others. Bitshares looks like an exchange, they would have it called a DEX, decentralized exchange. However, it can also serve as a bank, in some respects, and more. It really is a general market. Some of what I learned goes into derivatives and other complex features. It's rather sophisticated.
I had some trouble getting started, however. I wasn't careful about putting money into my account to buy BTS. I used the wallet to deposit ETH, which used an exchange named Crypto Bridge, that would yield bridge.ETH on the Bitshares exchange. Had I known what I was doing, I would have checked to see if the asset exists on the exchange. It does not. So, I lost $20. It's out there somewhere. I emailed support to find out what is going to happen to my deposit.
So, I found a button in the wallet that lets me buy BTS directly with a few different options. It turns out that the BTS purchase can be done through Blocktrades. This means that it is possible to buy BTS with STEEM and SBD. Where I am going with this is that there is a path between STEEM and EOS through Bitshares.
I haven't the skills to find out if the reason STEEM has been on the decline is because people are cashing out STEEM to move their gains into BTS until EOS becomes a thing. There is a pending launch of BEOS which somehow will connect Bitshares with EOS. Besides the downward pressure of Steem members relying on income from the blockchain, I suspect that many members are moving into BTS and EOS in anticipation of the big summer announcement.
I think we are at a convergence of several conditions that are driving down the price of Steem, which is into the $0.29 range now. I have no evidence to support my idea that wealthy Steemians are cashing out to buy into Dan Larimer's newest projects. EOS has a big announcement in June, which is just around the corner. Fortunately, moving across the Larimer projects is relatively simple via Blocktrades. My only hangup is buying EOS, which is prohibited for US residents on Blocktrades. Yet, it is freely available on other exchanges. My wallets are ready and primed with some deposits. I don't expect much of a Steem recovery until mid to late summer if my suspicion is correct.