Disclaimer: This post is gonna be 50 % rant and 50 % shilling
Today's post is inspired by recent online and real life discussions I have had with some people and also by taking a peek to the wallets of some steemians (I have a lot of free time!) I have been curating as part of my "job" over @SteemStem.
So, what I have noticed is that a good percentage of small fish here on the platform send the little sbd/steem they make on bittrex or other exchanges right away to sell them or trade. Some do that to buy everyday stuff like shoes, some to buy other shitty coins hoping to make millions, some to day trade or whatever. I have even noticed some people powering down to squeeze even the last penny out of their accounts. Often, these are the same people that complain of not buying BTC back in 2010 because they would be millionaires today, although their actions clearly show they would be among the first to sell when BTC hit the price of 1 $.
Look, don't get me wrong. It's your money, feel free to do whatever you want. But if you have an every day job and cover all your daily expenses, will cashing out the 20 $ you made last week make any real difference to your everyday life? I understand somebody who makes hundreds of dollars every week on the platform to cash a small %, or even a whale that has invested thousands and thousands to take a profit (or cut back down losses).
But if you are a small fish, I don't really see the point. Steemit has the potential to moon and what you just sold for 20$ to get some crap you don't really need could easily be 200$ and maybe even thousands in a couple of years. Congratulations, you just missed a very good chance to have HUGE profits in the future AND ACTUALLY CHANGE YOUR LIFE while putting downwards pressure on the price.
And no, daytrading the 50 $ you just cashed (if you are one of those guys) will probably lead you nowhere. Statistically speaking, you might make 1-2 % in gains, after spending hours and hours in front of a monitor looking at boring numbers and stupid graphs and having one mini heart attack after the other. Alternatively, you could engage in the platform, write some good posts or even leave a 3 second comment to one of those generous whales that upvote everything (I am guilty) and get SOME guaranteed profits that will probably be A LOT more than the shitty 1-2 % you make by day trading.
So, I said before there is a good chance STEEM will moon in the months and years to come. Why? Let me give you some reasons like the good little shiller I am. You can decide for yourselves if I talk BS or not:
1# Steem Is One of the Few Coins With an Actual Product That Works TODAY And Can Be Used By Anyone With Access To A Computer With Internet
Please first go over https://coinmarketcap.com and tell me out of the TOP-100 coins, how many actually have a real product, that ALREADY works. Not speculation mumbo jumbo of things to come. Something that works NOW. I doubt you will find more than 10 coins.
In case you don't know which product I am talking about, the product is Steemit.com. And what is so great about this product is that it can be used by everyone, even your grandpa that barely knows how to operate a pc. A product that has the potential to reach millions and millions of users just from mouth to mouth marketing.
As we speak, Steemit.com is the 876 most visited site in the USA. Last month it was 1010 or something. This number is not taken out of my ass but based on Alexa, the most respectable source when it comes to traffic statistics. Here's a graph showing the growth of Steemit.com over time:
As you can see there was a period of huge traffic growth, things stabilized for a while and it appears we are getting ready for another traffic explosion. When steemit.com becomes a top-100 site shit will get REALLY REALLY serious and all shorts of investors will start pouring money to buy their share of STEEM.
2 # Steemit.com Isn't the Only Site Using The Steem Blockchain
There are so many others platforms currently running or about to be launched based on STEEM. The most promising one I think is Utopian-IO, which rewards Open Source contributors for their hard work.
In simple words, somebody who has made an open source application or whatever can make easy money just by submitting his work on Utopian-IO. And guess what? This guy (or gal) will most probably tell his other geeky programming friends about Utopian-IO and so on and so forth. This project has the potential to bring thousands if not millions of users to Utopian-IO and essentially STEEM. Don't believe me? Here's a graph, again from Alexa Rank:
Utopian-IO isn't of course the only promising project based on the steem block-chain. Others you may have heard include DTUBE, Zapple and DLive. I need at least 2-3 posts to talk about all these projects in full detail so I will move to the next reason. I think you got the main idea..
3 # Youtubers Finally Start To Take Notice And Will Soon Start Using Steemit.com To Raise Funds
In the past months, youtube has started to censor all kinds of things. By censoring, I mean excluding people from the YouTube Partner Program or shutting their channels all-together. People who used to make hundreds or thousands of $ per month have suddenly found themselves making a big fat 0. And this number increases by the day.
Actually, one of my youtube channels got de-monetized like a week ago and it was not related in no-way to politics or other "sensitive" subjects. And yeah, my content was original!
This is why you may have noticed more and more youtubers start asking for direct donations, to subscribe on their Patreon, kickstarters or whatever shit they come up like t-shirts or whatever.
Imagine now, a big youtuber with millions of subscribers giving a shoutout to Steemit.com, asking their subscribers to register on the platform and upvote their shit here! Most youtubers already have accounts on tumblr, facebook, twitter and other places where they make 0 money from the likes they get so they have every reason to also make an account on STEEMIT where they can actually make some easy money And if one big youtuber embraces steemit, it's just a matter of time for the rest to follow. The only reason this hasn't happened yet is because they haven't noticed.
If I was to take a bet, this will happen sometime in 2018. Already small youtubers like 
4# A paradise of un-censorship
Speaking of censorship, steemit is a paradise of free speech. Every day that passes the mainstream media restricts free speech more and more. Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Reddit have turned into censorship shitholes and even posts that are even only remotely "questionable" (like trump memes) get deleted for the stupidest of reasons like hate speech or whatever. Soon, only cute kittens will be allowed...Hmm.. Actuallly that wouldn't be so bad!
None of this applies to steemit. Take for example 
5# Communities
Let's be honest, steemit is often advertised as a social media site but in reality it's more like a blogging platform. A platform that makes it very difficult to find the stuff you enjoy! But sometime in 2018 the Communities feature is expected to come and EVERYTHING will change. Steemit will probably become more like reddit, increasing the engagement and the final experience for the visitor. Did I mention by the way how many redditors look for a new place to come since reddit has turned into a censorship shithole? I am actually one of them!
6# Steemit Is The Easiest Way To Enter The Crypto World
Cryptos get more popular by the day. 5 years ago almost nobody knew about bitcoin. Today, even my grandma on the mountain with no TV has heard about bitcoin and a good percentage of the population even knows about Etherium.
It won't be long till the average joe starts to get interested in cryptos and want to have his share of the pie. When that happens, Steemit is and will be the easiest way to enter the crypto world. Heck, they won't even have to spend money, just register an account, write a good post, get a few likes and kaboom, they have their share of crypto! And if they decide to spend some money, rumors say that in the coming forks an added feature will be to buy steem directly with your credit card. Fuck exchanges ;)
7# All The CryptoGurus/ICO Starters/CryptoCompanies/Whatever Will Want To Have A Voice On Steemit
Doesn't matter if you are a newbie or an old timer. Once you register on steemit, you get an idea of cryptocurrencies and you start to get more interested in them, looking into stuff like icos, alt-coins, daytrading, long term-holding etc
This means that a good part of Steemit's demographics are interested in cryptos. And once Steemit grows huge all these crypto-gurus, ico-starters, companies offering crypto-related products (e.g. TenX debit card) will want to have a strong voice here on Steemit to sell their "wisdom", products, or just to show off. And if you want to have a strong voice you need to buy and power-up Steem. :)
8 # Tech: Fast Transactions, Zero Fees
I left the best for the last. Steemit simply has one of the best and most efficient techs. Let's be honest, BTC is getting old and as is, it's slow and fees are high. Minor improvements like Bcash are definitely not the solution (don't get me started on this) and would face the exact same problems (just on a lesser degree) while sacrificing decentralization if they had the adoption of BTC. BTC is only good for storing wealth imo. Things like segwit and lighting network help but still don't solve the problem at its...core. As for ETH, let's just remember how it was brought to it's knees by cryptokitties. Same is true for litecoin and many other big cryptto names.
Meanwhile, STEEMIT offers TODAY 3 seconds transaction with zero-fees and minimal load on the network. From a technological aspect, for everyday zero-cost transactions Steemit is light years ahead of most of the competion:
One of those was the Steem blockchain which processed 1,022,251 transactions. The other was Ethereum which also broke the 1 million barrier, but struggled to handle the load, using over 60% of its network capacity. Meanwhile, Steem didn’t even come close to cracking a sweat, using only 1% of its overall capacity. [source]
In other words, steemit is already ready for mainstream mass- adoption and if not ready, definitely more ready than other coins ;)
The End
So, that's pretty much all the stuff I felt like writing today about Steem. There are many other benefits to mention but you probably got my message if you read the wall of text above.
And for those that were expecting a strange animal post, my apologies. Here, have an alien-like caterpillar:
(credit)
TL;DR; If you are a minnow or a small fish selling the little money you make probably won't make a substantial change to your life. But HODLING and being patient for a few years probably will. Remember, all those BTC millionaires weren't always millionaires. There was a time when 10.000 BTC could barely get you a pizza. Now you need 10.000 pizzas to get a BTC. Prices will go up, prices will go down, daytraders and whales will play their games, but if all things go the way they go now, STEEM will sooner or later reach the moon and become mainstream for the reasons I mentioned in the post (although I excluded some because I was getting tired, like SMART tokens). The question is... Will you be part of the mission?