How, exactly, will STEEM go to $10+?
I often see posts here talking about how undervalued STEEM is and how it will go to $10+ within the next 6 months to a year. But I never really see any clear explanation as to WHY or HOW that will happen. It won’t just happen because we all want it to.
The market cap of STEEM is currently about $250M, so to get to $10 / STEEM the market cap would need to go to $2.5B. It will take a LOT of money coming in to make that happen. Money is flooding into Bitcoin and a lot of altcoins at this point due simply to speculation and FOMO of future price increases. There may be some of that in STEEM but I don’t think we should count on that to bring us to a $2.5B market cap.
Steem is the World's Advertising Network
The primary way that money will come into STEEM will be from advertising. Yes, you heard me right - advertising. You may think that Steem is supposed to be an ad-free zone, but that’s not at all the case. Steem is built and meant to be the world’s advertising network! Don’t take my word for it though, take @ned’s word for it. Check out the below video starting at around the 5:30 minute mark:
Why do we want ads on Steem?
The thing that differentiates Steem from other content publishing services is not that it will have no ads, it’s that the money spent on the ads don’t go to a central company - they go to the content publishers and STEEM holders through increase in the value of the STEEM token. That is, they go to us!
So what’s going on, where is all the ad money coming in? Right now the only money coming in is small people like me buying some SP and SBD to promote our posts, but to get to $2.5B we will need a lot more than that. I think the biggest thing holding the Steem platform back from starting to bring in serious advertising dollars is that Steem is currently synonymous with SteemIt.com.
No serious advertisers that I know of would want to advertise on SteemIt.com. Advertisers are usually very, very conscious about their brand and would never put it up alongside all of the questionable content here. This is where the SMTs and communities will come in.
SMTs and Communities to the Rescue!
SMTs will allow new sites to be built on top of Steem with their own token and focus on specific topics or communities, vs SteemIt which is just a hodgepodge of anything and everything. This way advertisers who want to target that specific audience can buy the SMTs, which brings money into the Steem platform, and know that their ads will only show alongside the content that they want for their brand.
One good example that’s live right now and which I’m very excited about is Utopian.io. Utopian is a steem-based site which focuses specifically on open-source project contributions. If this becomes successful and attracts a large group of open source devs, then it will be a great place for advertisers who want to target that demographic.
For STEEM to go to $10+ we’re going to need a lot more sites like Utopian for a lot of other topics and communities and they’re going to need to be popular and bring in advertising. So if you have any ideas for such a site - build it, and then go after advertising dollars!
We will get there...
The SteemIt, Inc. team is definitely going in the right direction with SMTs and community features. They also need to focus on the development side of things - making it as easy as possible for developers to launch new sites on top of the Steem blockchain. SteemConnect is a good start, but I’ve been trying to use it recently for some projects I’m working on and it has a long way to go in terms of developer-friendliness, polish, and documentation.
But I think we will get there, that’s why I’ve invested so much of my own money in STEEM and plan to invest more in the future. Let me know your thoughts in the comments!
it has to be more than SMTs , Dtube is a great addition as well that it doesn't look to be covering as much ground as I'd like.
One big concern to me that might lead to steem not getting to 10+ that fast is current users and authors cashing in early . Is that not a valid concern ?
being steemians its our responsibility to give our helping hand in the rise of steem value... one way can be good meaningful and interesting posts too i guess...
Yeah like Jerry Banfield who makes facebook ads about it I think. Thanks how do you get your comment in bold?
It's markdown put text between asterisks
Nice thanks for that. My cool trick is pulling images to the left or right.
I could also imagine that advertiser will sponsor popular bloggers if they decide to let them place any advertisement on there blogs.
That sounds like the way to do it!
This comment is a test. Just now on another post I clicked (on busy.org) the "reply" icon, posted the reply, and it was top-posted, rather than a reply.
Just now I figured I'd try opening this post in a new tab, and see if my comment would remain under the comment I was replying to. It did!
So, I went back to the original tab and clicked the post again, and am responding to the same comment. Let's see what happens...
Huh. Perhaps busy.org had a temporary glitch, or temporary code change... Looks like replies are working again. Cheers!
People say it will go to $10 because they want it to do so. Its confirmation bias. The only way it will get that high is if a lot more people buy in. People seem to think it depends on number of posters on Steemit but that is almost irrelevant. If the crypto sphere suddenly decided Steem was a good bet, it could rocket without any increase in number of accounts. IN fact, in the 3 months or so since I joined, the price has dropped from approx. $2.5 to under $1 and we have more accounts now than before.
Yes, I absolutely agree it is not correlated with the number of accounts. Obviously if there is some huge surge of accounts signing up it will increase the price, but like I said in the post, we need some serious money coming in. I think that will likely come from advertising on other sites outside of SteemIt.com.
Got your advertising point...
For making people to invest in steem, we have to launch services that support ads, it will be anything like advertising network that advertise on all steem smt sites.
Advertising of products is mandatory in this goods and services oriented world. But not on the sake of someone's privacy.
If such services will be launched on this platform then I am sure it will definitely increase the steem price.
Good point. SMT should help. I think the really cool for me about this platform is that it is crawling with entrepreneurs.
Not many post shed light on the hocus pocus of Steem's ability to jump beyond $1.0. I think, universally, steem has had an issue with advertising its own service. steemit.com is the face of steem, but most have not heard of steemit.com because it isn't heavily advertise.
Does the 1 week waiting period still exist for steemit registration? Id think
if it was still in place, there is a scalability issue, which is why advertising it now isn't in the works.
Busy.org is now up and running, which is an alternative service to access the same blockchain as steemit.com does. Its only a matter of time before more people come out with more stuff. utopian.io will help launch much of that forward, so as long as they can fish enough developers.
Busy.org looks pretty cool I checked it out the other day. Basically the same. Maybe we should pay the witnesses in a more incentivised way - although maybe we do already I don't know how it works.
I agree. advertising dollars = higher cap for steem, which is a win for every steem holder. Also, Google has been increasingly favoring niche sites vs huge content sites. Just look at about.com, they used to show up for most searches but not anymore. This advertising network doesn't even have to be outside of steem. It can be developed inside just like facebook and pinterest.
I think you are absolutely right @yabapmatt
Another project recently announced. APPIC. Made it clear that there was going to be no porn, no bots, and moderators for every category. That's the kind of thing that is going to attract big name advertisers if they can build a decent user base.
With @ned as advisor 😎 and a more skilled marketing team behind.
I signed on for steemit and feel let down but it all makes sense what you wrote.
Do you feel let down because of the price drop?
@yabapmatt You are absolutely right, we need money from other activities to flow in, if we want to see a STEEm price of 10$. Other activities could, like you say be advertising. Remember, we are still in a very early fase, these things take time to build. If they can continue to develop the next years, STEEM could be a very profitable investment!
Interesting article and video. I appreciate people trying to develop the community and that explains why they think something, and not only say it without anything factual. Thank you !
Content discovery needs to be addressed. Tags are great but I wish they were organized and archived more similar to the way subreddits and hashtags on twitter operate. I really don't think people are using the tags to find content that much, especially the "new" segment. If I post a tweet with a trending tag on twitter I get 200-800 views on average. Steemit needs to adapt or it will die
That's again where SMTs and communities come into play. SteemIt contains EVERYTHING, so it's obviously going to be hard to find things. If there is a site built on Steem but specific to one topic (like photography, for example) then content discovery will be much easier.
Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldnt that spread the user base even thinner. It seems contrary to what every other sucessful socail network does to retain users by making content localized. Steemit it is already confusing with its 3 different tokens SBD,Steem,SP adding smt tokens will likely really confuse the public.
I think you got a good point there. Discovery mechanisms are key. Incentive based probably the best but maybe we need to do something about the bots.