Yesterday, I've been part of the Steem Witness Forum., which was really great.
We covered very important topics, which resulted in me brainstorming a bit afterwards. And before I get into that, let me first give you a summary, as it matters for the context.
Steem Witness Forum Recap
Again, the forum was very valuable and I especially appreciated 
For example, she was very honest in regards to admitting that it was a mistake to not leverage the incredible visibility of Steemit.com in 2016, e.g. via Ads. We need people who are honest and transparent, and I believe Elizabeth Powell can do that for Steemit Inc.
Besides that, for me one of the most important topics yesterday was the question: "How do we get back into the TOP 10 and how do we get our price back to above a dollar?" And while I've given my thoughts on that, I'm much better at writing than talking, so I decided to share my thoughts about this here, in written words. (as I also brainstormed about this question a bit)
Getting STEEM back into the TOP 10
Now, there are multiple ways we can achieve this vision, and I will not get into all of them here, but I believe we should start by looking at what keeps STEEM so low, instead of building on a broken fundament.
I mean honestly, just take a look at coins such as BTC Gold & BTC Diamond, which have a higher market cap and lost way less value over the last few months than STEEM, which has tremendous value due to it's many dApps and huge community. And I believe the answer to this question is quite simple:
We need to attract and retain investors
When I'm talking about investors, I don't necessarily mean people with big money, but rather people who are interested in buying and keeping STEEM. Currently, with roughly 350$+ you can buy yourself 1000 STEM, which is pretty darn cheap and makes me nearly cry (just kidding - or am I?).
But if it's so cheap and Steem has gotten more and more use cases & d/Apps over the time, why aren't more people buying STEEM?
Well, because STEEM (the currency) is very investor unfriendly.
Currently: Userbase first - Investors last
Every person who buys into STEEM, should know that their investment loses roughly 8% every year ( which is reduced by 0.5% per year), which might not sound much - but would you simply throw away 80k of your 1M investment? I don't think so.
Now, the way to go against this inflation is to:
- A.) power it up into Steempower, so it's only a 7% loss every year (-0.5% per year) and
- B.) self-vote/ sell-votes / delegate Steempower away for a profit ( which is not officially supported and very much in the grey zone)
- C.) Curation (but honestly: do you think people with big money have time to wait 10 minutes to vote on a post?)
Also, all of those options require the stake to be powered up (which is a good thing, as it reduces liquidity and sell-pressure), but it also keeps investors away.
And since the biggest part of earning with Steempower is in the grey-zone and is not actively promoted or supported, there is no way for investors to learn about STEEM as an investor-friendly coin (which actually is one of the less riskiest on the crypto market, due to the powerup time)
You would need to have huge faith in STEEM. But can we honestly expect people to have faith in a currency, where people are encouraged to dump their stake?
Make posts, get STEEM, power down, sell it. Repeat.
We need a change: Investor first - Userbase second
Steem is a big game. People should be encouraged to buy into the currency (whales) and keep it, so they have huge advantages and the small players (minnows) need to work as much as possible to get something from the whales and keep it so they gain also advantages.
But that's not how the current system works. With the inception of bid-bots & delegations, you need a few hundred STEEM and you can get nearly everything that in the past only big players could do.
And since big players are automatically losing money, without the currency having a boost - it's a losing game.
However, I'm still here, with way too much Steempower, than I probably should have. And I'm powering up more every day since I'm not selling anything. Maybe I'm crazy - maybe I'm stupid - maybe I'm a genius. I don't know. But what I do know is that Steem has a huge potential.
But outside people don't know this and the risk of a guaranteed loss due to inflation is usually not worth the risk.
Now, to change this and to get STEEM back into the top 10, we have to attract way more investors.
- We have to show them: invest in STEEM because it's lucrative.
- And not: invest in STEEM and support people all around the world
Please don't get me wrong, this can be a very nice supplemental offering, but it shouldn't be the MVP to hook people for investing in STEEM.
How can we change this?
Okay, but how do we fix this?
Well, first off - feel free to think about this question and let me know in the comments below. Two and more brains are better than one. Usually.
Now, in my opinion, we should change the system to bring people into STEEM to power it up and keep it as long as possible and give huge disincentives to selling.
For example: I personally am keeping all of my STEEM as Steempower and powering everything up, because regardless of the price-fall, 1 STEEM is still 1 STEEM. If I have 50k STEEM I might make 50 STEEM (very rough calculation) per day passively via vote-selling, curation & co. And if I have 100k STEEM, I probably will make double of that. And I can only do all of this if my STEEM is powered up.
However, even without power down, these options (vote-selling & co.) aren't anywhere visible for outsiders, for example on Steem.com. Everything there is about communities, the social side and other fluffy things (of course also a few data points). I mean, I think that's also very important, but people who are expected to invest cold-hard cash into STEEM, have to see their ROI out of this investment.
So, what we could do, for example, is the following:
Before, you read further, please keep in mind that those are just crazy ideas, that would change STEEM towards an investor friendly cryptocurrency and change the Status Quo. I'm very much open for discussions and constructive criticism and I don't believe that these ideas are already polished enough for implementation.
1.) Change the inflation
We could do something along the lines of:
- 30+% for vested stakeholders
- 20-50% for voting to distribute the currency
- 10% for witnesses/block-producers
Whether the number is 70%, 60%, 50% or 40% (it could even be dynamic based on the stakeholder) those are all just numbers. What I'm trying to focus here is that this would show the focus on investors - those who want to keep their stake in STEEM in powered up status.
Also, before you're just arguing that this will massively reduce the author rewards, I understand - but what is more:
75% of 5$ or 20% of 20$?
2.) Change the inflation revenue model
Currently, the inflation is directly added towards the vesting-shares, which nobody is actually tracking. What I'd like to see is a way similar to how NEO is distributing their GAS (https://neotogas.com), where people actually have to claim it. So we could have a similar claim-system as we currently have with other rewards.
Imagine the videos popping up on youtube where people show how much they made with their Steempower. And I wouldn't even mind creating a website similar to the above for STEEM.
3.) Disincentivize Powerdown
On top of the two changes before, we could also reduce the amount of passively generated STEEM/Steempower (which has to be claimed), if the account is currently powering down - similar how the vote-value is reduced in a power down due to the voting-mana.
That way, people will try to keep their STEEM powered up as long as possible.
4.) Promote STEEM as the blockchain for SMTs, where you'll get paid simply for hodling
Last but not least, once all other steps are integrated, we could leverage our huge community to promote STEEM as the perfect blockchain for every investor.
In addition with tools to showcase this, we would be able to push the price of STEEM higher, due to more people interested in buying STEEM.
All right, this post got very long, very quickly, so let me write a quick outro statement:
I want to repeat that these are simply ideas (probably very radical), but I believe we need to be willing to re-think everything, since I don't want STEEM to drop even further than TOP 50, instead I want it to get back into the TOP 10.
There are a lot more dynamic things as in better downvotes, etc. that are also going to play a big role. But that's not part of this post.
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
All the best,
Wolf
Do you believe that my work is valuable for Steem? Then please vote for me as witness.