As predicted weeks ago, Poloniex has finally pulled the trigger on Steem notifying users that it would be delisting the token. As I pointed out in my previous blog Steem trading volume isn't in a healthy place. The token price and the overall trend of the Steem market aren't attractive enough for exchanges to continue to provide a platform for price discovery, exchanges are cleaning up and its not about Steem blockchain but whats profitable and worth the risk. While this is a negative development things can get worse if the likes of Bithumb or Upbit makes similar announcement. Much of the discussion over the last couple weeks has centered around the recent hardfork, reward pool and flagging. Now is the time to start looking at trading volume on exchanges as we can see its not about how 'awesome' or 'good' or 'scalable' your blockchain is but what makes business sense for exchanges at the end of the day. It would be naive to make labels "shit exchanges" or "no one uses" while ignoring some troubling metrics around the Steem token. The time has come for more discussion to center around the 'trading health' of the token and engaging traders, investors or speculators as a way of driving energy into Steem.
For starters, investment is an important arm of any successful cryptocurrency project. It needs a financial 'warchest' to be competitive in an ever evolving and innovative space like the cryptocurrency industry. Steem needs to keep several variables happy, its not just the workers or developers on the protocol but the end users and exchanges. Having a comprehensive plan ensures that all areas are addressed. Quite frankly, the end users have been getting the sour end of this deal for some time and traders/ speculators has been left with massive losses (myself included). Its all great to support the vision of the project 'BUT' there comes a time when financial survival takes precedence. Steem with all that it entails and what it can achieve given the ever growing list of opportunities available in the cryptocurrency space isn't attractive anymore from a financial perspective. An I warn, it cannot continue to be a deal where one entity continues to dump or a select few continue to dump while the masses continue to labor reaping very little in the process. I have been on this platform for some time and I have had to scale back my commitment and emotionally detach myself as I have seen business as usual approach and like others who seen the writing on the wall, it just isn't worth the emotional turmoil.
At some point in time sacrifices have to be made and I am not saying Steemit Inc hasn't been making sacrifices, they cut staff and announced reduction of periodic sales. What is needed now is addressing the anemic trading volume across exchanges. The obvious reality right now, there isn't enough users or buyers of Steem to even maintain 25 cent USD price as the sellers come in drones when prices rises. I have speculated in the past how I think SBD can solve the Steem supply sellers dilemma but that has been ignored. Yet again I would share my 2 cents. Steem has an internal market where you can exchange Steem for SBD. SBD has one aspect of it that makes it a "maverick", its has 'scarcity'. A fairly priced SBD can absorb enough Steem on the internal market and indirectly reduce Steem supply on the external exchange. Its important that witnesses feed the price of SBD so that its value can have the intended impact. Lets say SBD price at 2 dollars, and Steem at 25 cents, it would mean that 1 SBD on the internal exchange can reduce the supply of Steem by 4. With hodling and overall money flow, this gives Steem enough buying pressure to catch up to SBD. An while some may say, its easier said than done, a coordinated effort given the fact that SBD is actually held by a few can easily achieve this. One of the drawbacks of this method is that folks who do hold a lot of SBD run to the exist to cash out but they would miss the overall objective as this would improve the money flow around Steem and actually create a floor that they can better realized the value of their Steem. This is a more attractive feature given that fact that Steem supply means there is a lot of sellers that the market simply at this stage cannot absorb without negatively impacting the price on every attempt as we have seen. This mechanism would also give traders a new perspective on the Steem token and ways of trading around it.
Again I have to reach out to the likes of @smooth, @freedom, @timcliff and @neoxian. This is my 2 cents, more importantly, we need to seriously address trading volume of Steem across exchanges as exchanges are in the process of getting lean and ensuring assets on their platform are profitable.
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Setting up the SBD feed price at an absurdly high level doesn't make sense. However, SBD does have scarcity and I do think the speculative rally of SBD beginning in November 2017 had to do with how high STEEM went a bit later.
Its not about setting some high number, its about reflecting the price feed on the exchange they are pulling it from. Some witness have a bias of taking the lower price or setting a default price whenever it goes above. I do hope folks realize its serious time. We lose Bithumb or Upbit, the ship goes with it. Something has to give.
You must be talking about how the feed price was kept at $1 during the SBD pump in Dec 2017 and the better part of 2018. Is that the case? How would it help to let the feed price of SBD to float with the spot price on the markets? Please walk me through that.
There was actually a small group of us who were actually using the internal market to absorb the Steem. This was actually post 2017, this was actually February 2018 once we realize the dumping is to much for the market to absorb but one witnesses in particular encourage witnesses to set a bias. The end result was precisely what we are experiencing now. The dump of Steem on the market cannot be absorb as there aren't enough buyers. The same thing was tried again in April but by then it was pointless as the dump was to intense and the Asians were effectively flag off the platform. Haejin actually start pump it in his group as he smell whats coming, folks actually think of him wrong as a selfish whale but he single handed has been pumping Steem and SBD in his group. Well we know the story with him, he basically got flagged out. Contrary the belief the guy resisted dumping, I am still puzzled with him. Well the burial was the increase SBD to 10%, so they haven't really learned anything. Even with these changes, its the same set of people making money and the useless flagging, you got to let minnows grow and feel part of the process rather than targeting folks with these flags. You can actually follow the charts and see what been taking place. I know folks want high Steem price but there is just to much Steem in circulation and the market cannot absorb the dump that's why the trend has been like that, the only time it jump ahead, SBD was the anchor but folks don't see it that way.
At that time, a lot of STEEM was bought by a large number of authors who chose to get 50% as SBD. Because SBD was between $2 and $4 the whole spring, that meant relatively cheap STEEM.
When STEEM went to > $8 in early January, of course it was going to be dumped! In the first half of 2018, there was still a lot of demand of STEEM, relatively speaking. It didn't go down in a crash but like a balloon that had a small hole in it.
From a TA perspective, the late April pump was a pretty commonplace thing after the huge January pump.
Haejin couldn't have pumped STEEM single handedly. SBD maybe but not STEEM.
The mad early 2018 pump was the very reason SBD was printed in excess. Burning those coins did a number on STEEM when the Debt Ratio was approaching 10%. STEEM was pushed even lower than it otherwise would've.
This is actually a beautiful response, now you understand how the difference shape out and everyone takes a different conclusion.
What is important now is to recognize this is crunch time, the reality Steem trading volume isn't attractive to exchanges to bear the risk and by all means we have to preserve the status on exchanges like Bithumb and Upbit. We lose those exchanges and the ship goes with it.
What can Steem do right now to kick a little energy into it? What tools does Steem platform has at its disposal to get things going. I also believe Steem needs a VC to back it and some additional source of investment. Folks need to see some sort of financial warchest being built. I see a lot of fancy proposal and blogs of ways forward but no one is talking about MONEY. Investment is vital for survival
I agree with you on this one. Investment is a huge part of the ability of a startup like Steemit, Inc to survive. Having a financial war chest is essential. Under Ned's watch, the finances of Steemit must have been badly neglected. A platform with some tens of thousands of weekly active users at best had a market cap of almost two billion dollars at best. Steemit, Inc must have wasted a shitload of money during the bull run. They've been making a lot of progress in the last year and managed to generate enough ad revenue to stop auto-selling for a month this year. What they should've done during the bull market when they were awash with money is to hire the best possible talent to work on the core blockchain software and do their best to prepare for the inevitable bear market. They have got much of the job done by now but now we have to pray that the new bull run we're at an early stage of will save our asses.