People overestimate what they can accomplish in one year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years.

I believe this quote was true for BITCOIN and that it is also true for STEEM.

Imagine when BITCOIN was first released...people, I am sure, had lofty goals. There was progress, but they were no way close to the goal of having a global currency. People work hard on the protocol with only marginal improvements from month to month. But people kept plugging along...even during the long bear market of 2014-2015.

Here we are, almost 10 years since the beginning of the experiment...and who would have thought that Bitcoin would be worth billions and that many of cryptocurrencies would have market cap over $100 Million Dollars?

Getting Blinded By Greed

It takes an above average capacity of self control to think long term. Especially when the ability for short term gains comes into play. Many people sold their bitcoin at $3.00 when they acquired them at $0.50. Only to realize that if they could have just hold on a few more years, they would be incredibly wealthy today.

Today, Steem is over a 100M market cap. I'm sorry to say but we shouldn't let greed make us blind to the reality. We haven't got there because Steem is better than any other crypto, we got here because of a grand swell that may not last.

It's important to keep perspective during these crazy times and to remain focus on the real end game rather than the price of STEEM today.

Where is STEEM Today?

It's been almost a year since I've joined steemit.com - Along with other authors, we've seen the changes, the ups and downs of the mood. We saw frustrations, spam, attacks, depressions as well as unbounded enthusiasm for the platform.

To be honest, I think we've all overestimated what could be accomplished within a year.

Some thought that we would be having millions of users and competing on par with reddit and the like. We, for a bit, thought that all the incentive mechanisms were just fine and that all we needed was users.

Well, we fell short of accomplishing this in the first year. But that's okay. We've overestimated.

Thoughts on the future

I think it's important, especially in crypto where volatility is insane, to have a 10 year plan. I can only see this space growing in the future. Who has the guts in here to hold on to those steem that burns a hole in your pocket?

The future is bright for STEEM but let's not overestimate what can be done in the year ahead.