None of us really know where the chips will fall with all this but with steem I am optimistic that we will be in a better place 3 years from now. Everything that I have seen in the past 12 months points that way for me.
Obviously you have put massive time and effort into the site, far more than myself so it would be very disappointing if it came to nothing but failure is relative. Losing the money you have right now would be a huge blow but might not equate to total failure. From my time on steemit so far I have learned new skills, met interesting people and enjoyed my experience on here which for me would be called a success. ( I would still like to keep my money).
As I said I fully expect steem to do well but it's very rare that any project is either a fully qualified success or failure but has aspects of both.
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Complete failure here is only if one hasn't learned anything whilst here. The financial blow would be enormous but as you said, there is more to it than that. There is a great deal of opportunity in the industry and hopefully even in failure, I would be able to take advantage and leverage what I have learned somehow.
I think there is going to be successes across the network and a lot of individual failures as it decentralizes.