Let's Talk—Just a Reality Check! What's Your Prediction for Steemit in 2018?

A few years ago, in "perceived" difficult times like this, I made a "reality check" post that got to the top of the front page. The past few years were incredibly good for Bitcoin, as predicted, and I now feel it is time for an updated version.
It's time to get over the price bubble noise. Again.
Bitcoin is STRONGER than ever and I'll tell you why:

Bitcoin is a solid technology. It's a worldwide, decentralized technology already 9 years old and counting doing what it does without any major interruptions.
Bitcoin is resilient. It has been attacked multiple times, on multiple fronts, and it has not only continued existing, but it has thrived.
Bitcoin has a scaling roadmap and, so far, it is working pretty well.
Bitcoin is one of the least correlated assets in the world. A very attractive feature in economic turmoil times like the ones that are probably approaching.
Bitcoin has attracted initial attention of traditional finance institutions and individuals. Many of them are starting to dip their toes in it.
Bitcoin has MUCH LESS regulatory uncertainty than a few years ago. Several countries have passed, or are in the process of passing, regulations that legalize crypto or have made clear statements that an outright ban/criminalization is out of the question.

Bitcoin is still and for the foreseeable future will be the king of crypto. There are some people that say maybe Bitcoin is like the MySpace of crypto that will be replaced by a better competitor. While it is not impossible in the long term, it is clear that it is a bad comparison. The adoption barriers of crypto are much higher than the signup process for a new social network. There is simply no other crypto with as wide and geographically distributed user base as Bitcoin has today, and that is a position that is difficult to alter (even if there is a momentarily market cap inversion, which I doubt there will be anytime soon and in case it happened it would be caused entirely by price speculators/gamblers).
Last but not least: Bitcoin is a great STORE OF VALUE. The Demand is constantly rising (at times even exponentially) and supply Are is decreasing and capped to a known quantity. The only thing that Bitcoin has to do to maintain, if not increase it's value, is survive. And the more time it survives, the more difficult it becomes to dethrone the king of crypto.
(Yes, I know it is down about 70% from the ATH but anyone buying BTC for the past 9 years, with the exception of the past 4 months in which an obvious bubble formed in the charts, has maintained or increased the value of their holdings) Etc
So, just a little perspective for this apparently uncertain times...fuck........

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.

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.