Optimistic view on STEEM's journey to top 5 cryptocurrency (Re-journey!).

Those who don't know STEEM once ranked top three cryptocureency just after BTC and ETH, above XRP and LTC two years back. ETH had marketcap less than $1B, now $20B. XRP had marketcap $231M, now $18B marketcap. LTC has marketcap of $300M, now $3B. These top cryptocurrency has gained 7700% to 1000% while STEEM lost its markecap by $70M ($296M vs $226M). Worse is that STEEM was $3.46 then, now it is mere 80 cents.

What happened to STEEM is not simple as pump and dump. It was pioneered as the killer blockchain similar to ETH. @dan was still CTO and active promoter. Later @dan left Steem to form EOS, now holding top 5 rank with $5B marketcap. You can think @dan took Steem's marketcap along with him. To some extent its true. Also, misstep with STEEM's inflation and continuous derogatory remarks from crypto-fundamentalists (BTC, LTC hodlers), made its journey worse. Add to that, handsome income with 5-50K SP ($1-10K per month) made it unsustainable to keep its marketcap at $2 to $1B. Moreover, bear market had its toll on STEEM more than other cryptos due to continuous FUD by its own users. Finally, STINC's leadership's unexplainable apathy towards marketing make it more invisible to potential new investors. In the meantime, lesser developed crypto such as Cardano and TRON ranked above 10 based on sheer hyper-marketing.

However, Steem is now its own entity by its own merit. It holds record for hosting the most popular DApps- Steemit, Dtube, Steemmonster etc.. It has the second most DApps counts just after ETH on its blockchain. Steem is faster, more scalable and has more transactions than ETH. Then why is STEEM so far behind ETH. The missing link is probably the Smart Media Token (SMT). The same technology @dan implemented in EOS. Though STEEM has more popular DApps than ETH or EOS, it can't monetize on it, since there is no token economy to support it. SMT will solve the issue with a token economy similar to ERC20 token from ETH.

SMT may also have another big issue related to Steem's downfall (Rank 3 to 40)- contributor's anguish on reward distribution and low user retention rate (e.g. big drop in Alexa ranking for Steemit). It is very hard or next to impossible to make a perfect algorithm to reward the contributors- developers, writers, stakeholders. The disagreements and discontent spread FUD and keep new investors at bay. SMT can solve this problem by launching DApps that can reward any contributor according to the community's choice. Upcoming ORACLE and COMMUNITY can only help further.

Here is my optimistic roadmap for STEEM's (re)journey to top 5 Cryptocurrency:

SMT release: Top 25.

Community and Oracle release: Top 20

Coinbase and other bigger exchange's adoption of STEEM: Top 15

100s of successful SMTs, MEGA marketing campaign similar to EOS/Cardano/TRON, and more mature leadership from STINC: Top 10

1000s of successful SMTs: Top 5

It is not wishful thinking and quite a possible scenario. Steem's leadership is also evolving to take the charge. We may miss the charismatic leader in @dan, but Steem has passed the @dan hangover. We have large number of community leaderships to guide us. STINC and DApp devs have solid plans. It has already a better technology than ETH, Cardano or TRON. Therefore, Steem's re-journey to top 5 cryptocurrency is quite a possibility.

Cheers!

Disclaimer: This opinion is not a financial advice, it my personal perspective and opinion. Please seek professionals for financial decisions.

Image sources: Most images are open sourced (e.g. Pixabay, Wikimedia etc.) with Creative common license. Some images are used with due courtesy to respected owners.

Thanks for reading.
@riseofth
Cryptominer since 2013, occasional trader and tech blogger

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