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Your disappointment is caused by the fact that you are expecting to be rewarded at the same level you were in the very beginning in 2016 when there was a huge speculative pump of STEEM price while the inflation rate was much higher than now. I doubt very much that your content has ever been consistently of a level similar to professional writers get published and paid for like professionals in mainstream publications. You just got a lucky break by discovering Steem at just the right moment.

I noticed you have very little stake for being around since 2016 and, according to you, enjoying very high rewards at one time. You must have been constantly selling. As the number of Steemians has gone up while the inflation rate has gone down, it is the expected thing for the average post getting progressively lower rewards even in terms of STEEM. You haven't been building your stake. That may not have gone unnoticed by some of the higher stake holders that have upvoted your content in the past. Also, you are not taking into account that the share of bloggers of the reward pool has gone down as apps for other purposes have been created and have been increasingly drawing from the (diminishing) reward pool.

Now you're blaming your low current rewards on bid bots - or even the fact that decentralization is a failed idea. Before bid bots people were complaining about whales circle voting.

Even I got rewarded to the tune of €400 worth of SBD and SP for by best rewarded post ever when the price of STEEM abd SBD were simultaneously extremely in January last year - without using bid bots. That was a for a very simple and modest "walk with me" type of photography post that a couple of whales dumped big upvotes on. However, I was never deluded enough to think of that as a normal for me. The truth of the matter is that nearly all of us have been grotesquely overpaid here - and still are. Even the rewards we are enjoying now are a side effect of cryptocurrency valuations being justified by little else but vague promises.

Oh, absolutely. No one here "deserves" anything, per se. I was just pointing out that this place used to be a money tree that existed outside of the boundaries of the "real world" and "real world logic".

But then people fucked it.

And I'm glad I sold at the peak. Obviously - looking at the prices now - it was the right move to make.

There's nothing admirable about being a dumb bagholder.

Oh, absolutely. No one here "deserves" anything, per se. I was just pointing out that this place used to be a money tree that existed outside of the boundaries of the "real world" and "real world logic".

But then people fucked it.

Nobody fucked it.

Money trees that exist outside of the boundaries of the real world cannot last for very long. We have seen a couple of huge speculative pumps allowing some people have made a killing by selling at the top. That's all. The only whose who fucked anything were those who bought at the top. But that's how speculation works.

Speculation and the monetary storms in the glass of water notwithstanding, if you look at the actual value of the Steem ecosystem, it has gone up tremendously with all the new apps and Steemit Inc having got stuff done, too.

STEEM is ranked at #48 at Coinmarketcap. Down from the top 10 spot it once had.

Even Dogecoin is higher.

Sure, but that's all stupid money talking.

Take a look at this:

https://www.stateofthedapps.com/rankings

The most used decentralized app of the world is Steemit. DrugWars is second (a Steem app, released a couple of days ago). Half of the ten most used dapps are Steem-based. Those valuations are clearly bullshit and, in my opinion, it's a matter of time before the cryptosphere will wise up to that fact that Steem is the chain to go to if you want to build apps with actual use. The valuation will, in time, reflect that, too. Steemians are not content sitting around bitching about Steemit Inc. When SMT's weren't forthcoming, people started working on SMT implementations of their own. Now we have that exact functionality on SteemEngine. The tokens are on a ledger on the Steem blockchain but validated by other servers. There are determined people working hard to build the infrastructure and more apps. The cryptocurrency market is still dominated by stupid money. If you think otherwise, take a look at what some of the billion dollar projects actually do, and think again.

So what?

Many things. Most importantly, I think Steem is undervalued relative to most other projects and will go up. Steem is easy to earn now because many who think like you are posting much less than they used to. The number of dapps is increasing. I suggest you find an app that rewards you for doing something you enjoy and use that app. Lots of people are using Actifit, for example. They would exercise anyway but they use Actifit because they can get an upvote with one push of a button. Follow the app space and take up using one that you love to use and integrate it into your lifestyle. For example, I use SteemPeak for posting my photography. Photography is a hobby of mine. I make about 10-15 STEEM per day by posting a few photos of mine and about 3/4 of that is what I net from using @ocdb. That's currently worth about €3 per day. I could just photograph. But why would not publish my photos on Steem and get nothing? That €1000 is per year (at the current rate) is a nice sum of money and one day the stake that I'm accumulating could be worth a lot more.

When you say that you cannot muster the motivation to post about the ideas that you have, I think the problem is that you don't really want to say those things. You only want the money. Now. Crypto is notoriously volatile. You build and accumulate during a bear market. But you have to do it. Your stake will not accumulate by itself.