I've been busy lately and haven't gotten the chance to post in a while, but I wanted to take some time to discuss the value of STEEM in the midst of its recent poor price performance.
My reason for investing in STEEM is that it is the only platform that solves what I see as the three major problems with most other cryptocurrencies: scalability, utility, and ease of use.
1. Scalability
This is an obvious one. Bitcoin's scalability issues have been at the forefront of blockchain-related news for many months now and is the major reason behind all of the forks that are happening. The slow speed at which transactions are processed prevents it from being used for many applications which need quick confirmation times and it also leads to high fees for a transaction to go through.
Many other blockchain technologies have presented different solutions to the scaling issue. Ethereum blocks are created approximately every 15 seconds and gas prices are very low. But Steem is one of the best platforms I have seen in terms of scalability. Blocks are created approximately every 3 seconds and there are ZERO transaction fees, ever. The lack of transaction fees is a huge benefit over other cryptocurrencies in my opinion and should be valued very highly.
2. Utility
There are cryptocurrencies out there for almost every use case you can imagine at this point, including DentaCoin which is a cryptocurrency for dentists! But while all of these are meant to be used for some purpose, I have rarely seen any that are actually used for anything other than speculating that their value will increase.
Almost every coin is currently just speculation that "some day" the coin will gain mainstream use for its actual use case which will give it significant value. Some day businesses around the world will run on DApps built on Ethereum and will give ETH value since it's required to transact with the smart contracts. Some day Ripple will replace SWIFT for international money transfers and XRP will be token that fuels those transfers. I could go on but you get the point.
STEEM, on the other hand, is getting used actively, every day, by thousands of people, for its actual purpose! Every time someone upvotes a post, every time someone sends SBD to a voting bot, every time someone delegates SP - that is STEEM actually providing utility beyond just being a speculative investment. I cannot stress this enough.
STEEM is a cryptocurrency that can actually be used, profitably, right now, to promote yourself, your product, your brand, whatever! I have been using my STEEM to do exactly this since I created my account and I've been amazed by how good STEEM is for doing that. There is nowhere else that I could so easily and quickly get over 200 (mostly) real followers and make a profit in the process. All it took was some STEEM, and not all that much of it really.
I could go on about this for a while more, but I'll save that for another post and instead move on to...
3. Ease of Use
This is probably one of the biggest hurdles to mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies right now. It is very difficult to obtain, store, and transact with cryptocurrencies right now. It is far too complicated for the average person. Even many relatively tech-savvy people have gotten cryptocurrency stolen through various hacks. The Steem platform addresses all of these issues in some unique and user-friendly ways.
Obtaining STEEM could not be easier. You just sign up for an account on SteemIt.com or another site and you can start posting and earning STEEM right away. Yes it will be slow and take work to build up an audience, but it can be done with $0 investment and no tech skills required.
Storing STEEM is also much easier and safer than other cryptocurrencies. If you have any decent amount of cryptocurrency you become a target for hackers. There have been numerous incidents of cryptocurrency exchanges and prominent people in the field getting hacked and getting their currency stolen. And that's it, there's nothing you can do if that happens, no way to recover your funds - period.
With the Steem platform, all you need to do is not lose your password. If you power up your STEEM into Steem Power then it will take 13 weeks to power down. Additionally Steem offers an account recovery option. If someone gets access to your owner key and changes it to take over your account, you have the ability to recover the account using your previous password for up to 30 days. Between the account recovery option and the slow power down time as long as you check your account periodically for fraudulent activity you will be able to recover your account in the event it gets compromised without the attacker being able to steal much, if any, of your STEEM.
Again, this is a big deal for mainstream use and adoption of the currency.
Last, but not least, is transacting with STEEM. With most cryptocurrencies addresses are strings of seemingly random letters and numbers. They are not anything that normal people are able to remember, so realistically they must be copied and pasted. Take my word for it that this is difficult for many people, especially on a mobile device.
With STEEM, everyone can choose their own simple, easy to remember account name. I remember being very surprised when I first learned about this. I couldn't believe that this was possible and, if it was, why every blockchain platform didn't do this. But every other blockchain doesn't do this, and Steem does. Score one more for Steem.
What Am I Missing?
I value STEEM very highly based on all of the above, and I believe the upcoming release of SMTs will increase that value even more just like custom tokens have increased the value of ETH. But the recent price action has me wondering if I'm missing some bigger picture or reason why all of the above isn't really that big of a deal.
I definitely expected some profit-taking and a correction after the run up from the SMT announcement, but I admit that I'm very surprised that it went all the way back down to $1 and doesn't seem like it's moving much from there. I'm simultaneously happy for the opportunity to buy more STEEM cheap and worried that there's some larger reason that STEEM isn't really worth as much as most of here think it is.
Please let me know what you think in the comments, I would love to get a good discussion going about the value of Steem and when/if the price will reflect that!