We'll see where things go from here, how are you feeling about the current prices and state of things?
First off, I will be here for a few more years if steem block chain is still around. Opinion wise and personal feeling wise, (meaning not backed by facts, just my opinion/thoughts), HF 20/21 was a fail.
EIP:
Is the economic stability of steem any better off with the EIP as of today? If the answer is well of course not but all crypto is in the tank, then the EIP is still a miserable failure because it has done nothing to separate STEEM from any of the other crypto-coins. EIP ='d Economic Improvement Plan. So far I have not seen any improvement in the economic stability of Steem.
SPS:
Is it attracting outside coders and programmers, or is it just a burn 10% of the steem pool system. When you have the large accounts, and the steemit accounts all rejecting proposals because the coders/developers do not want to go open source, then that is a fail. Asking for everything from the coders and then pulling the rug out from under them when they "FORK" over there code for the SPS bribe price, a failure.
Free Down Vote:
"First they came for....then they came for me and there was no one left...." Sorry the down vote system was broke, is broke and looks like it will remain broke because the folks that can fix it like it being broke. Bid bots first, then so called circle voters, then just because you needed a down vote, then SBI. Who or what application is next on the down vote list.
Where do I see it going from here:
With the above, and with the massive advertising of a McCarthy era style of Blacklist, I honestly do not see any current drive to on-board new users working. I give it about 2 weeks 3 weeks at the most before the APPICs's post are routinely down voted. People are right now hopeful that the new Hive-Communities are going to right a few wrongs, I don't see that happening at all. Not in the environment of down vote this down vote that for this or for that reason.What is different about a small community of people writing and posting on topics and things they like and voting for each others post than what are currently termed circle jerk accounts?
But I will be here through all the ups, (if there ever are any more to come), and all the downs for at least the next couple of years.
When stinc kneecapped us with linear rewards and went on walkabout it was bad press the whole way.
It's been three years of 'steem bad economics'.
I think that has been fixed.
My rewards are the same as before the fork.
It has been a couple months of newsteem, I say it will get better.
We just have to wait for the bad press to turn to good press.
Good, bad, Ugly, or indifferent, I will still be here for a couple more years, I do hope to see things turn more for the good, but I am still leaning toward the indifferent side of things.
My Rewards have increased, but that does not mean the EIP has been a success. The EIP was supposed to help stabilize, (or so I thought) the over-all value of Steem, and I have yet to see any evidence of that.
We need to stop voting rewards to dumpers,....
100% - nice to see you so positive @freebornangel
It's been a drag, for sure.
Now I'm anxiously optimistic that this investment of my time payoff.
I got my first payment for a @nextcolony delivery,...20 steem!
I am not to sure on that. If everyone just held on to steem, then it is completely meaningless as a currency. For something to be usable as a currency, there has to be those that value it enough to want to earn, beg, borrow, or steal it, and those that want to use it to get things. What would the price of steem be if no one ever sold another steem? Would it then be worth saving it for a rainy day? If no one wants to buy your steem would it have been worth saving it for a rainy day? There needs to be both, those that want it for a rainy day, and those that want to be able to use it today. Commerce is a two way street.
How many people would go to work if they were told here is what we are going to pay you, but you can never use this money for anything outside of our company store, and that company store only sold one worthless widget that no one else in the world wanted.
Ok, we keep the shopkeepers and their customers and only dump those that dump to btc?
I try to buy stuff with steem, but it has been awhile since i got a deal to go through.
Books and seeds, so far.
Likewise if everybody sold. Both extremes are unrealistic. The important reality is a balance and where that balance lies.
Yes, and more people need to see the balance. Do I as an American know how much money is held in banks, and how much is in circulation? Am I going to base my spending or savings on that knowledge, or do I just go on living earning, saving some and spending some. Is someone a loser that works and spends their money with out saving any or very little, not really it is the life they have. To many post make those that want to use steem as a currency or a supplement to their income as steem thiefs. We need more steem circulating to build an economy, we need people to save it, and we need people to spend it, and we need people to accept it as a means of conducting commerce with one another and with outside interest.
I have no clue, nor do I feel as an average wage earner that I need to understand, how much money is in banks and how much money is in circulation. As long as I can go down to the store and buy a dozen eggs with money then I am fine with that lack of knowledge.
That's all true. The key challenge is how to get there.
Right now we have a lot of Steem being used simply for the purpose of getting paid by the blockchain for doing very little, cashing it out, and getting more bitcoin or dollars. It is undermining the currency by causing it to resemble bolivars more than dollars: something that you get and then, unless you are foolish, you get rid of as quickly as possible. There isn't much circulating, and there isn't much saving, nor even spending, except to the point 'spending' (i.e. selling) it to buy dollars or bitcoin.
The idea of distributing Steem to users is not a bad one, and also isn't entirely original (cryptocurrencies have had faucets, airdrops, etc. for as long as there have been cryptocurrencies), but on Steem it is WAY too much of the focus. It needs to be massively de-emphasized. If we can't manage to establish focus on doing more than the rewards (and so far we only barely have), we're screwed.
There's a lot to unwrap here, but since you took the time to lay it all out, I want to address it all.
So the main purpose of the EIP wasn't to increase the price of Steem, it was to stop abuse. Or at least what most people considered abuse. The major players being whales that delegate all their stake to bidbots, whales that break their stake into tons of smaller accounts and upvote themselves in a death by a thousand cuts sort of way, and farmers that that milk the reward pool by spamming thousands of worthless posts and upvoting them pennies for a macro large return. This sort of thing was also really difficult to track and stop in the old system.
The EIP combined with the separate downvote pool pretty much killed all of these. This doesn't change the fact that a large amount of Steem is on exchanges and is being traded as a mechanism to get a return like almost all cryptos. That's why everything moves w Bitcoin, it's just traders playing that game, it has nothing to do with what's going on here when we see these large total crypto market moves.
The money not being used in the SPS isn't going anywhere, if anything it has the opposite effect of what you're suggesting because whatever is locked up in the SPS isn't getting sold. Also the SPS is decentralized, if the stakeholders aren't excited by what they see, things won't get funded. Personally I've supported several but truth be told, nothing that's been proposed has me insanely excited, and I'm not outraged that the things that had their funding removed had it removed. I'd rather we had some stuff being worked on rather than nothing, but meh.
Whether people like them or not, downvotes are a critical part of the system. Without them, this entire thing would just be a cesspool of abuse. Period.
The reason Communities will make this situation better is because it will fracture the community, which needs to happen. No one person or even group of people will have the bandwidth to go through every single community and downvote people for no reason. Also, people will be able to launch their own tokens within their communities. You mentioned Appics, they have APX and it has value. As long as the project can maintain token value, the users don't need to be rewarded in Steem, they can just be rewarded in APX. If you use Appics much you can see quickly that a lot of those users will never cross over to the blogging/Steem side of things. They are exclusively using Appics. With the introduction of SMT's I think this will be the trend going forward.
Yes, but it is also the case that a lot of Steem GOES OUT to exchanges constantly. We killed the bidbots, yes, but there is a massive amount of activity that still goes on for no purposes other than for people to get paid Steem every day so they can dump it.
By my very, very, very rough estimation there is about twice as much Steem going out as there is interest from investors to buy in.
As long as that is going on, the price (and Steem with it) is in for continued pain.
EIP gave us the tools, but we need to be using those tools to direct those Steem rewards where they will do the most good. So far there is still only about 1% downvotes. That's not enough. Too many people are still content to see $10 or $20 or $50 getting milked out in various ways, albeit somewhat different ways than before EIP, and think that "it isn't my problem".
A few active downvoters can't take responsibility for everything. EIP was a step in the right direction, but without more participation, not enough of one.
Ugh. That will likely mean even more Steem being milked in hidden ways and places on the platform, and a harder time for the few people who actually care enough to act to actually find it. Maybe that will be good for a few of the various new tokens, but it won't be good for Steem.
Like I said I will still be here, I have always thought the down vote system is broken. If and when they make a comment a part of the down vote so that people and communities can rally around the wrongful seeming down vote, then I will see it as being fixed.
Offering someone funds for a guarantee from the fund seeker that they will not pull their project and will continue to support steem for one year, only to retain the right to pull that funding and still expect the project to maintain it's support of steem is wrong. the SPS will not work until they work the bugs out. I understand they do not want to go with more of a few well known here let us give you some steem support, only to have the projects jump out of steem abusing the support, cases. Abusing the developers in the same manner is wrong. Strictly just my opinion.
I will wait on the communities and see what happens. Steemit was a grand experiment, it was bringing people from all over the world and all walks of life, it was beginning to become it's own unique world society, it was uniting people. Communities or the concept that people are spreading, is more as you put it:
I hope communities do not lead to a fracturing of the steem block chain society, but it likely will. So all the artist can go to their little corner of the chain society, all the developers can have their little corner of the chain society, all the authors and the photographers can have their little corner of the chain society, meanwhile the people that like to read and look at content will now have a dozen or more channels to surf through, looking for something entertaining or something that catches their fancy all with out the usefulness of a Steem Chain version of TV Guide to see what is on.
A wait and see hold pattern for me, but I will still be here in two years, if steem block chain survives that long.