The reaction that the market is having toward Hard Fork 16 is pretty positive! For a week now, STEEM has been gaining very steadily to the tune of about 10% per day... it hasn't experienced pump and dumps like you would observe with zombie coins or other altcoins that have very little volume or value.
The market approves of the hard fork because STEEM's inflation is now a nominal 9.5% instead of 100-150+%. STEEM's value as an investment is now possible, and those who bought in at the 15k satoshi floor will probably see their investment return 10x's or more as the price stabilizes to it's true value.
What is that true value? Nobody can predict it, but if this last summer was any indication, it could be $1-2 or even $5. With the large selection of STEEM apps already available (around one hundred so far), then this indicates we might be entering into the Early Adopters stage of product innovation as more people jump in, which I described in a post:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@professorx/the-product-adoption-curve-tells-us-more-steemers-to-come-this-is-just-the-beginning
Etherium showed similiar steady increases last spring prior to and during the ICO phase of the DAO. But, unlike the DAO which was untested and an unreliable business model with unreliable (non-immutable) code, STEEMIT has tens of thousands of users and real utility. Did anyone ever try to vote on the DAO? User experience on STEEMIT is far superior and user friendly, and this will add much to pulling in and keeping users.
So as the saying goes, STEEM ON! (And buy up more STEEM while it's still under 100k. It won't be for long.)
Image: Screenshot taken by me at Poloniex