To address the frustration. Value and price are not related. Steem provides lots of value, but doesn't capture any of it in its price. It has a high inflation, and the company behind it selling, while not trying to implement sinks through advertising or power-downs, bidbots, whatever.
Value and price will only be related when mass adoption comes. When you get millions of user signing up and needing RCs, yes the price will go up. But we are so far from this day then it doesn't even matter.
Do you see blockchain becoming mainstream in the next 5 years? I don't. Let alone steem, the coin ranked 80. When we speak of value all I think about is 20 years down the line.
In the meantime, all that remains is marketing and hype (sadly), and sinks. We need a sink. RCs are a sink yes, but users will come whenever they want, we can't force them, and it's probably in a very long time.
I am confident that people will realize that, and if it's not Steemit, Inc that does it, a random guy with an SMT will have a good sink and show everyone the wonders.
We just need one example, one big break. One company reaching millions that uses Steem in a good way, and it's game over. I'll take that bet everyday.
Especially when you realize that competing with Steemit, Inc is almost impossible now.
blockchains are already becoming mainstream. Every big company in the world has blockchain plans. Public blockchains that offer immutability and censorship-resistant will be in higher and higher demand.
The thing is we don't have a choice, every company has been hacked on some level, pretty soon if you get hacked and aren't using blockchain, you can be sued. This revolution will happen because it is being forced to happen. I say in 5 years we won't recognize the web, and if Steem didnt make it big by then, some other blockchain stepped up and provided more value.
Rank has zero to do with anything, liquidity does, however. Liquidity is what Steem needs and that comes from demand.
I don't think we can talk of 20 year horizons with internal tech. And when change happens, it happens much faster. It's only just over 20 years since buying stuff online became mainstream (when did you first buy from Amazon, I ordered books in the UK from the USA in 1997 and Amazon will still show me that transaction in 3 clicks) but that involved huge and violent physical change in the real world... and look at all the malls going out of business now.
Something enabled by a pure computer tech change is going to be quite different.
I think you're exactly right about the big break: maybe it'll be a mobile game, maybe it'll be the #CryptoClassAction lawsuit I'm working on or some other Black Swan event and who knows which chain it'll be on. I'm with @theycallmedan here though, I haven't done his level of research, but what he's saying makes sense.