RE: STEEM PRICE TO GO UP IN 2018 - I know users of steem are maturing. That is helping everything!
You said your "investments have been taking higher priority", but isn't your Steem you bought to blog here also an investment? I'm confused. Or I suppose you meant the straight up "trading"type of cryptos, like when you buy an ICO and hope to double /triple that within a day, then sell it for some quick cash? (Or buy and holds, either way).
Steemit and its very core is easy to use, but when you want to do some other things like un-delegate (not sure if that's a word?) Steem Power, it's really tough to figure out! After trying everything I finally wrote a "Help!" post about that yesterday and got the answer.
Using fancy markup, while it isn't "hard", also isn't exactly dead simple to do - like posting on FB or Reddit - and takes some practice as well.
I'll stop rambling... my point is that while it's easy to jump in and start swimming in the Steemit pool, there is a bit of a learning curve to truly master the platform.
Yes it is an investment in Steem. I expect the value of my Steem to go up in time whether or not I post. The value of all my other investments will not go up if I don't work on them.
I invest in ICO's, have some long term holds in undervalued coins and also do some scalping.
I know the fancy mark up in annoying, takes a while to figure out. When this learning curve is made smaller for newcomers, as in a LOT smaller as it should be, then I foresee that to be a big step forward.
For sure, agree re the learning curve. The trend seems to be the simpler, the greater the mass adoption. I hope that day comes sooner than later.
Best of luck to you and your ICO/long term holds!