Navigating this Steem situation
This post might be somewhat controversial. Many Steem OG might not agree with how I intend to navigate the current situation. This post is not meant to spread any FUD or FOMO. Just my thoughts on how things might develop and what I am doing to protect my investments on Steem.
Source
First of all, I am an investor and like any normal investors, I look for profits. However, my Steem investment is a special one, because I fell in love with the platform. Hence, not only did I invest money, I also invested time. Till date, my financial investment on Steem is still in the red. However, the time I spent here made me a better writer, communicator and thinker (at least that is what I hope). And of course, I get to know many cool people here. Overall, I think I have gained more than I lost on this platform.
Crisis or Opportunity?
This recent development is in my opinion a crisis for some, but also an opportunity for many others. It all depends on your beliefs and how you see it. For the Steem OG and most of the witnesses, they are folks who do not bow down to centralized power. When push comes to shove, they will likely fork the blockchain and bring along the people who wish to follow them.
To the newer Steemians, having Justin Sun at helm may not be a bad thing. At least he has money and the backing of the Tron army. For the past 2 years, STINC had struggled due to financial difficulties. There was a constant selling pressure on STEEM because STINC simply had to make ends meet. With Justin Sun, things are different now.
Here is what I think is going to happen. With this recent development, I think a fork is inevitable. The community elected witnesses started out to contain the STINC ninja mined stakes as a precautionary move, but the retaliation from Justin Sun turned it into a war. The witnesses are technically gifted people with strong belief for decentralization. From what I see, at least several of them will never kowtow to Justin Sun. It just require a few of them to fork Steem and start a new blockchain. Let's call this the OriginalSteem.
The Justin Sun owned Steem, let's call this TronSteem, will not go away just like this. With money and influence in the crypto space, I am pretty sure TronSteem will continue to be among the top 100 projects in the cryptospace for at least the next few years.
The question now as a normal Steem user is, what should I do? As per my post yesterday, the first thing I did was to withdraw all my STEEM from centralized exchanges.
There are a couple of reasons for doing so, first the exchanges that supported Justin Sun on this "coup" (some might say is a counter-coup) will feel the pinch. Why? These exchanges powered up users' deposited STEEM to support this coup. If there is no further fork, the powering down period will remain as 13 weeks. The exchanges have an obligation to honor your withdrawal requests, hence by withdrawing, we create a liquidity crunch. This potentially forces those participating exchanges to have to buy STEEM from the market, thereby giving a boost to the price.
Next, if there is going to be a fork, you want all your STEEM to be in your account so that when the fork happens, you can claim your rightful share both on OriginalSteem and TronSteem. I don't have a crystal ball to predict what will be the price of the 2 different "STEEM" then, but I can tell you that you will certainly be worse off if you continue to leave them on centralized exchanges.
Why not sell your STEEM now?
In my opinion, this is not the best move. In the near future I actually expect STEEM price to get higher for a couple of reasons. First, there is now a power tussle between the community and Justin Sun + cronies. That means that there is a fight for more STEEM in order to gain control over the blockchain. Logically, since there is more demand and supply remains the same, there is going to be a short-term boost. Furthermore, Binance, Poloniex and Huobi, ironically, just participated in the biggest #SPUD by powering up huge amount of STEEM, which further reduces near-term circulating supply.
Next, Justin Sun still have many tricks up his sleeves. As a shrewd businessman, Justin is not going to see STEEM price collapse, there will be some kind of support and he is sure going to create some hype very soon. As I read somewhere, he is going to unveil the roadmap for Steem sometime mid March. I anticipate some kind of rah-rah event and some pump to STEEM price.
Longer Term
If you intend to stay on this platform for a longer while, you should still withdraw your STEEM from exchanges and power them up. Then pick your side. If you support the community elected witnesses, go vote for them now! Since Binance and Huobi has unvoted, the gap between community elected witnesses and the Tron puppets are closing.
Summary
In summary, withdraw your STEEM and wait for some kind of meaningful pump if you intend to sell. Withdraw your STEEM, power up and pick your side if you intend to stay. Regardless of your choice, the best thing to do now in my opinion is to withdraw your STEEM from those exchanges, especially Poloniex since it is fully controlled by Justin Sun.
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This article is created on the Steem blockchain. Check this series of posts to learn more about writing on an immutable and censorship-resistant content platform:
- What is Steem? - My Interpretation
- Steem Thoughts - Traditional Apps vs Steem Apps
- Steem Thoughts - A Fat or Thin Protocol?
- Steem Thoughts - There is Inequitable Value Between Users and Apps
- Make my votes count! Use Dustsweeper!
- What caused STEEM to get dumped? Why I think the worst might be over
- Steem 2020 is about having a "SMART U"
This is by far one of the best Post I've ever read here. In my opinion I'm really angry that all the project that's being built here might suffer because of the unfamiliarity with sun. In earnest I do believe that things might get better. We however need communication because the witness felt the soft fork was the best move. But that move by sun was checkmate. I don't know what I'll do currently I have a lot powered up and the fear is beginning to range
Indeed @josediccus. Very wise and solid read
I do hope it becomes better with time really. #steem
Thanks! As a normal Steemian, the best we can do is to protect our own interest. There is no shame in that. So when things really get out of hand, I will have my exit strategy ready. Thus far, I am in support of the community elected witnesses. What they have done so far after the Tron move is reasonable.
I am still very new to the system and this entire drama is one thing I do not understand properly, I have however been reading lots of posts and comment and from what I understand I feel the witnesses are just individuals who care about themselves, so even if there is going to be a fork and they create a new steemit, it is going to be a platform for only those who have the steem power to vote themselves (my opinion though).
Well, the community gets to follow which chain to go to. So even if there can be a dozen of forks, there will eventually be one "winner" that is chosen by the market.
Dear @culgin.
From your previous post, I was in the expectation of this other.
Thank you for sharing these valuable tips brother.
You have really put light in my eyes.
I agree.
Your friend, Juan.
Thanks my friend
My pleasure, dear friend.
The prognosis is not very encouraging. I think I read somewhere that TRON doesn't have a social network and I guess being a business person, it's not going to ruin a network with so many users. And if it offers a cost-effective alternative to becoming "Tronit" (Tron+Steemit), I'm sure we'll accept the change. Changes always have unpleasant, not to say disgusting, consequences.
Thanks for the heads up :)
Dear @culgin
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on current situation.
We clearly share similar "thinking process" :P
What is steem OG?
One thing that surprise me is the fact, that so many users are mentioning centralization/decentralization of steem blockchain. Previously to current situation this place wasn't decentralized at all. It was more like a democratic country, where almost all 20 major politicians know each other and collaborate and are part of one party. Only now we finally are witnessing some sort of decentralization. Wouldn't you agree?
So to wrap it up:some low blows coming from both sides has been exchanged. Some people think that soft fork was unnecessary provokation, most seem to believe that it was necessary and justified. Either way - soft fork and justin reaction escalated this conflict.
Right now it's hard to imagine that those 2 parties could get along. Level of hostility and narrative "us versus him" is just to strong. Even if witnesses (with their support) would "destroy and teach" Justin a lesson - where will it all take us?
From business point of view, I cannot imagine any project being succesful if establish community is fighting with major investor. It's hard not to think that things will only get so much worse.
Yours, Piotr
OG is a slang, it means original gangster. It basically represent the people who have been on Steem right from the start.
There are varying degrees of decentralization. Pure PoS > DPoS > Central control. Because of Tron's move, we shifted from DPoS to central control. Now with the rally on the community we shifted back to DPoS but there are quite a number of witnesses that are still controlled by one entity, Tron. So in a way, we took a step back in terms of decentralization.
Uncertainty is definitely not going to do us good. However, this fiasco also kind of brought more attention to Steem. The crypto space is watching now, and a lot of lessons can be learnt for DPoS chains from this incident.
As I recall, steem has approximately 1.3 million registered accounts, in the tron chain I read that there were just over 15 million registered accounts, comparing that, I thought it might be good for steem if tron users were added, but I didn't think that things would be so confusing and generate so many clashes.
I am sorry to think that the first social network on blockchain in which I participated may be in an implosion process, I liked the idea of this project and I would like it to continue, but seeing this fight between the great players I cannot help being worried.
Tron certainly has a bigger community. Steem and Tron can mutually benefit if we work together. But this should be done with mutual respect
I think the two things I've seen as the scarcer in this fight have been:
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 5/20 - need recharge?)
nice
Binance has just blocked all transactions based on STEEM.
You were absolutely right.