2018 is going to be a big year for STEEM and Steemit. We all know it.
The first thing that we need to survive is the governments. China is putting up barriers against crypto. India is making noises and South Korea is issuing some worrying statements. There is so much money involved in crypto and related technologies that it is only a matter of time before all major governments bring in legislation to police or prevent crypto and exchanges.
I don't believe that the result will be a ban, but far more regulations and transparency around the markets. The main fears are it's use for illegal activities and that the government isn't getting its cut from the money. We all know that governments don't like anybody operating outside their control.
Since the next wave of technological advances will more than likely involve blockchain technology it's only natural to assume that big companies are going to start moving some money that way once the markets are more settled and regulated.
So where does that leave us?
In a very strong position in my opinion. I think that the STEEM blockchain is one of the most useful and multi functional blockchains, which can be integrated with existing technology and also for the transfer of money. Since paper money is becoming more and more obsolete it is only natural that technology which can move money instantly at no cost will be of huge interest to people.
With the integration of other STEEM systems like DTube and Utopian plus many more there is huge scope for expansion in multiple areas of social media attracting large numbers of people. Once you join one of them it's only natural that you link in to the others as well.
If anybody has looked into the coming release of SMT's then they can see where the future is.
Looking at the whitepaper it makes me very excited to see the creation of the Smart Media Tokens.
(https://smt.steem.io/) This technology will let people set up their own token for a site so that they can operate on a system like steemit and share the money created between the people who create it. It's worth taking a read.
Something that has recently come to my attention is multiple airdrops scheduled for holders of the STEEM token. Airdrops are a release of free tokens for new crypto based on certain criteria. In the case here it will be divided based on how much STEEM that you hold.
From reading articles by 
From reading the Vice whitepaper it all seems to be true. This is an exert from it.
Hopefully just the first of many.
All these factor convince me that there is still huge value in STEEM at the moment and that we will see massive gains over the next two years. Personally I will be trying to build up as much STEEM as possible before the reward pool becomes diluted from the extra people linking to the blockchain and hope to see the price rise to $100 sometime in the future.
Exciting times.
To anybody reading this, feel free to comment, follow, advise or challenge. I hope to meet many more interesting people on the site as it grows over the next months.