![decision-2698883_1280.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQJ77iVXaGqt7LTBaDptVnbs2KCgp5hKRFzGoRy9siAbw/decision-2698883_1280.jpg)

If you are like me you have been waiting very patiently for the steem price to get some steam.

While most cryptocurrencies have rallied this year and had 10x or more increases steem has been consolidating for a while after it's run-up earlier this year.

Overall my performance of steem is one of the worst relative to other coins in my portfolio, yet I still believe in it more than other coins. Because it is real. Proven. It makes money for its users.

# Steem is different and special
Steem is very different from other coins. While most coins are speculative, steem has a real economy behind it, and when I say most coins I cannot come up with any other example, that has a working economy already.

# The power of speculation
Other coins and projects in the crypto land are still a work in progress, that is true for bitcoin, ethereum, eos, bitshares etc.
The power of this for the markets is that people are betting on the future, which is very unclear. This creates big volatility because it is very difficult to come up with a tangible evaluation. This leads to bubbles and crashes, which is why we have so many of them.

This is great in times like these where we are running up a market in the current bubble.

# Steem is caught in between
Steem is also a crypto currency and in fact a monetary system. As such it also has the speculative power and is also a work in progress. We can see this by looking at SBD which is currently trading at a really weird price. If designed correctly this could not happen. So steem also has a speculative aspect to it. And unleashed potential.

# But there is a real economy
However steem is a social network and application and as such has a working product and users. This can be compared with existing solutions. And as such there are real metrics that investors can look at when buying the asset such as number of active [users](https://steemit.com/steemit/@penguinpablo/daily-steem-stats-report-friday-december-08-2017). https://steemitimages.com/DQmWTqZEVN83egJfjkm2CK56DhBcZi56kj15sFtRfJ7B2V8/image.png 

Again this is special as these are much harder metrics that what we have with other projects.

# Price reflects
This is reflected in the price. We will not see huge price runs that are removed from activity metrics at steem but at the same time we are part of the crypto currency space and prices are volatile and run and crash.

# Price is a feature
The steem price is also different from a facbook stock price. If the Facebook stock price change my experience as users does not change. But for steem the price is part of the user experience. As such a low price will make us lose users and a high price will attract new users.

As such an increase in price is even more exciting because it creates real value. This is somewhat of a self fulfilling prophecy.

# Decision point
Currently the price of steem is fighting with itself.

![Screen Shot 2017-12-08 at 3.40.16 PM.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmaktqyMDj7wDyLkCcuyck9g2qiACGze35nrKShTyEDZgZ/Screen%20Shot%202017-12-08%20at%203.40.16%20PM.png)

The red line in the chart above forms a downtrend between all the high's over it's entire life cycle.

If this is breached there is little resistance left. I hope steem will make it above this line and the price will move up. I have [predicted](https://steemit.com/steemit/@knircky/the-value-of-steem-and-its-users-1-steem-user-10-facebook-users)  5 months ago that I think steem price will be $10 next year in the summer.  This could be the first run towards this number. 

We do need to hit a few million users before we get there and an initial price run will help get more users.

# We can also fall back
The risk however is that the price won't make it as we can see with the wild back and forth currently along this red line. So be ware of that.

# I am optimistic
I am overall optimistic for the price. I think latest energy of the price the Mayer multiple is very low and everything is pointing to steem still being good value.

We will see if steem can finally make it to a good performer in our portfolio.

Good luck to you