I'm here for the long term. I haven't had this much satisfaction posting articles in a long time. I'm using bots as an experiment in promotion and reward pool claims, and it's going OK.

I also know that bots are not sustainable on their own. As the programmers continue to tweak the system, they are continually leaning the system towards the producers of content and those who connect with others.

I can't say that I'm thrilled with the notion that there are many people here who will vote willy-nilly for someone they know and ignore perfectly good content elsewhere (I kid you not, I've seen this). But this is a "community" social media site. And with Hiveminds, that is only going to become more obvious.

The theme in the OP is that price volatility is going to shake people off the content trail. If they are thinking about rewards when they create content, they may not be motivated by the joy of content creation and sharing. That volatility will leave us with a greater concentration of people who are truly dedicated to the craft.

And those who are truly dedicated to the craft will find rich rewards in the following years as Steem and SBD appreciate. It's also worth noting that investing is not about the price, it's about the rate of return on investment. What I love about Steemit is that as I type these words, I'm "mining' new coins, assuming someone actually upvotes my post, of course. That kind of makes it a lottery, doesn't it?

Consistent effort over time, will yield prodigious results. Each time I use Steemit, I learn new tricks, new ideas, little shortcuts and I get better. That is how it is with any kind of work. As the name implies, Steemit is work.