Steemit is the most popular interface to the Steem blockchain and has thousands of users using it. However, given the recent bearish market and Steem price crashing down from its ATH $8.40+ to $1.50, in your opinion, what do you think will bring Steem and Steemit its value in 2018? 

>### It's hard to pretend that things are great and sometimes a doze of reality is necessary. 

Let's face it. Content creation alone doesn't give value to the Steem currency. It's new money coming in from investors and trading activity that makes a real world difference. 

Are people still interested in investing in Steem and powering up? I don't know about you, but in a few secret crypto groups on FB with thousands of users I hardly ever see Steem getting mentioned without doing it first myself and the conversation doesnt go anywhere. 

In private conversations, bigger investors continue to remain skeptical about the huge ninja-mined Steem worth hundreds of millions that Inc own and feel the platform is centralised in certain ways inspite of how it is marketed or portrayed.  

>### We're closing in on a million signups but how many active users do we have today? Someone feel free to drop the current data in the comments below for an upvote.  

6 meetups in 2 countries and hundred of users. Everyone I've interacted with recently is tired of waiting for new features.  No one has an answer or knows anything better. The questions continue to pile up, and there aren't many answers. 

Hardfork, communities and SMT are expected from several months and Steem/it isn't in the news as often as it could've been. In light of these things how many of our active users here feel compelled to regularly power up their earnings instead of cashing out? 

Things have also changed a lot in the past 6 months. It's somewhat ironic: how the community looks down upon large scale self-voting by small or large stakeholders but has accepted large scale bid-bot use in the name of promotional services. 

<center>![Screen Shot 2018-03-31 at 4.29.17 PM.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmYQzjbhBhsHZh74yNXiPnkGfY3qSTu3ogAjNtfMSReMyT/Screen%20Shot%202018-03-31%20at%204.29.17%20PM.png)</center>

For most, delegation to such services and use of such services seems to be the way forward these days. Everyone is doing it so it must be okay, No? 

>### It's a free market at work—is the winning argument. 

Truth be told, there aren't many better ways to earn a decent return on your SP investment. Not everyone has the time, skill or patience to write content and wait around to make a few dollars on it. For a content producer: Payout on posts isn't guaranteed here, so if earning a regular income is important to you, what keeps you here?

>Voters are limited in their ability to evenly distribute stake. Frankly, it's foolish to assume that it's anyone's job or moral responsibility here as stakeholders to distribute Steem evenly. 

>### Stake gives you power. Power gives you influence and control. Why would anyone want that to be spread evenly? 

There is no exact method and ergo its impossible, and exactly for these and other reasons most of the whales now probably prefer delegating to bid bots instead of curating as they did before or have done it already—assuming there were any reasons beyond profit. 

>### But let's be honest. Delegating to bid bots is just so profitable! 

It doesn't consume precious time that is often spent curating or appointing a curator and monitoring progress. You will probably make less than 0.5% of your total SP holdings per month as curation rewards from voting around manually. That's less than peanuts for most.

The incentive for curating good content is often very low for most small-stake manual voters. Most people will not want to look beyond themselves and their own sustainability. Why should they? People generally will reserve the little influence they have on the reward pool on their own posts and comments. Unless you a hold a stick threatening to flag them down if they do so. 

>### But one can choose to delegate to bid bots and earn a profit without their activity being questioned. 

Apparently this is great for the platform. But you are supposed to be able to decide what you can do with your SP right?  

>### This is just the free market in motion.

But what about community building and supporting new users you ask? 

Well, they can use a promotional bot if they can't find themselves a regular voter—seems to be the general sentiment now. It doesn't matter if a few work to onboard new users-investors, educate new prospective users and investors, support existing users, and bring people and communities together. As long as someone is doing it, footing the bill themselves, it's all good. 

Some community builders lacking support around here are struggling to proceed with their initiatives. Eventually most will grind down to a halt without appropriate resources and support on the platform. Moral support only goes so far but does nothing to assist in the real world.  

>### But how long are our actions sustainable?  

Our cryptocurrency platform needs new users to sign up and use. It needs new investors to pump-in fresh money and buy into its tokens in order to increase demand for our favourite cryptocurrency. We need more community builders who can go out and bring new small, medium and large scale investors into the platform. Just building a platform with a bunch of features won't get everyone to use it. 

>How do you expect these new investors to behave when you onboard them?
>How long before they change their mind and adopt practices to maximise profit over community growth and benefit?
>How many mid-large size investors you've spoken to have shown interest in Steem but ultimately shied away from it? 

How can these new big investors benefit from the platform other than delegating to bid bots, self-voting or delegating to their own projects? Most people wouldn't touch cryptocurrencies if they didn't offer good returns. That's the fact. Most community builders will give up eventually as big support continues to drop in favour of promotional services, this is bound to happen.

#### Do you think a change in the attitude of users and/or changes to the system itself will revive the positivity around here? Will that be enough?

>As a community of users we have some real challenges ahead of us. 

Writing content that drives some traffic isn't going to be enough. Or expecting someone to simply vote for you because you write a ton of "quality posts" isn't going to get you any money either! But we're here for profit no? You'd be naive to think if whales are altruists or for that matter anyone else here is!

If you are butthurt about not making enough $$$$, then go buy some Steem and power up. If you are butthurt about being flagged, just get some SP and use it! It's not that simple in either cases for the majority, but that's just how it is and will be whether we like it or not. Free Market fellas, remember that every time you log-in here! You have to work your arse off for it, and no one's working for your benefit. Keep this in mind and proceed. 

>### Not everyone is going to be successful here. Just like in the real world nothing lasts forever. Some people make it where others fail. That's harsh, yet true!

We'll cross a million users and the developers have their work cut out for them. 

People ask me in meetups <sup>(please email Inc instead of asking each other)</sup> why basic things like resteem separation isn't there ([see Github PR](https://github.com/steemit/condenser/pull/819)) or why the reputation number continues to remain buggy on the wallet page sometimes? It does make one wonder about bigger updates such as HF20—originally proposed over 9 months ago and especially if investing into Steem cryptocurrency is going to be "worth it"—who knows? 

Personally speaking, I'm just going with the flow of things. Observing the current situation and adapting to it.

>### You're an early adopter, you don't have a lot to lose! What about us new guys?—I get this a lot!

Maybe it's true, maybe it's not. 

It's not all that bad though. When there's hope, there's a possibility that some good things might come your way. Hopefully, things will change for the better and we'll get the features we've been waiting for. I'd love to see how these new changes shapes up our community. I'm sure it will also improve the general sentiment and make it worthy for everyone HODLing their Steem to stay powered up and remain participative.  

But, for the sake of discussion <sup>(that's all we can do really)</sup> where do you foresee things going in the months to come? 


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**If you like my work kindly resteem it to your friends. You may also continue reading my recent posts which might interest you:**
1. [Building A List Of Users From India—Please Fill This Form ASAP!](https://steemit.com/india/@firepower/building-a-list-of-users-from-india-please-fill-this-form-asap)
2. [Why You Should Vote For @firepower As Witness—Witness Campaign Post From India!](https://steemit.com/witness-category/@firepower/why-you-should-firepower-as-witness-witness-campaign-post-from-india)
3. [India Steem Meetup #5—An AWESOME Meetup In Tezpur, Assam and 30+ Attended!](https://steemit.com/steemit/@firepower/india-steem-meetup-5-an-awesome-meetup-in-tezpur-assam-and-30-attended)

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