Weiss rates cryptocurrencies for some time now. I never looked very deep at those ratings, but let's do today, shall we?
Here's how the summary page looks like for Steem:
You can consult the summary page of any crypto currency, by replacing steem in the address bar with the ticker for that particular coin. For example, the link for bitcoin should be:
https://weisscrypto.com/en/crypto/btc/summary
instead of
https://weisscrypto.com/en/crypto/steem/summary
Let's return to the Weiss ratings for Steem.
On the top left of the summary, you can see a category "Investment Risk / Reward". For that there is a rating, which is "D" (scale goes from D- to A+, I think). If you think this is low, you are right, but bitcoin, etherium, EOS, XRP and other top coins have the same rating here (with or without a plus or minus sign - etherium has D- for example), which to me it means this rating takes a lot into account the risk of investing in crypto in general, for a big investor, at this time.
There is also a breakdown for this rating, into risk and reward, each going from "very weak" to "excellent". Steem is "weak" at both (do not read 'weak risk' as 'low risk', it means Steem is not performing well on that criterion).
But the same breakdown shows up for the above mentioned coins, with the exception of XRP, for which the risk breakdown is "fair", probably due to their strong banking ties.
Let's see how we stand at the "Technology / Adoption" category.
Here we have a "B+", lower than any of the above mentioned coins.
Why does that happen? Because we only have a "good" adoption, whereas all the others have an "excellent" one. Now, that's an area where we need to and should be able to improve.
We still score perfectly at technology, even if Steem is older than other blockchains.The only one in the same category from the above mentioned coins is EOS, all the others are rated as "good".
Here's one other aspect we need to pay attention to.
On the Top exchanges chart, we have few of them which dominate the transactions with STEEM. All the above top coins have the "Other" exchanges at least 50%, which means a better distribution of the token, with less risks in case any of the big ones fails.
Also on the Top pairs chart, we need a higher percent of "Others" and a higher percent of STEEM/USDT or STEEM/USD (or other globally used fiat pair). You'll notice the discrepancies if you look at the other top coins.
I chose BTC, ETH, EOS, XRP for comparison because they are all from top 10, BTC and ETH kinda as references, EOS because we have similar technology, and XRP for their banking connections, to see how that affects ratings.