Hey everyone!

As you know I've been a member here since May 2016! I wanted to make this short post as part of motivation to newcomers and also part of showing how being consistent paid off at the end.

I've been here grinding for over a year now, started out with nothing but a lot of time on my hands. I was lucky to stumble on the site before the big pump of last year up to $4/Steem and stayed around during the whole decline in price. While many were leaving and giving up on the platform because of it, I myself knew that it was only a matter of time until the price would pick up again.

I had seen this happen before in so many other cryptocurrency communities.

The volatility and constant decline in price are a big factor for people losing interest, but its not the biggest one. As many of you nowadays are aware of fake-news and propaganda, this didn't exclude crypto communities, I'd say it was even worse here because of the anonymous nature of payments. I saw it happening with Ethereum, the worst was after and before the DAO where a surge of often newly created accounts, but not limited to them, were spreading FUD (fear uncertainty and doubts) all around the platforms. Even before the crowdsale I was getting spammed with PM's on Reddit not to invest any of my precious bitcoins on it. The price during the crowdsale was 2000 ETH per BTC if you got in as early as possible, at this time 1 BTC was worth around $600 which means that 1 ETH would've cost you $0.30.

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Yes, you read that right, 1 ETH that is currently valued at $330 only cost $0.30 back then. That's currently an increase of 1100x. The main reason people spread FUD is either because they are heavily invested in one currency and see others as huge competitors of their market cap and another could be that they wanted to hoard as many as possible of this new one themselves.
People are easily influenced, they listen to what the majority say on Media outlets. Either they don't have the time to re-search stuff on their own or its just not that important to them to care enough about it, I am sure that these fake-news spreads affected many readers who today are biting their hat that they didn't invest in ETH as early as they could have.
Combine these big impacts fake-news have with added censorship and at the end of the day even very experienced users in cryptocurrency won't know what to believe.

It was around this time when I noticed what was going on, combined with the creation of r/BTC just because of the censorship on r/bitcoin was when I started to distance myself from it and began diversifying into other currencies. Looking back at it now it was one of the best decisions of my life. Sure, bitcoin has seen huge growth since then but it is nothing compared to how other currencies have performed.

This is a chart that probably makes bitcoin-maximalists scream in agony.

It shows the marketcap of Bitcoin relative to the other big ones since 2014. I think this is only the beginning in this change we are seeing and that the current "big" alternative currencies won't be the only ones eating up on Bitcoins marketcap in the future.

Notice how Steem isn't even listed there yet?

It took Ethereum over 3 years to get where it is today and many argue its only around 5 times better than BTC. Mainly due to its programming languages but also the faster transaction speed. Bitcoin is known to be able to handle around 7 transactions per second compared to Ethereums ~25. If you would look at one of the previous big service providers VISA, they can handle around 2,000 transactions per second. Although its not fair to compare a centralized system vs. a decentralized blockchain since the technology is fairly new, but it gives you an overview on where it stands today.

I'd recommend reading "How agile is your Chain?" by the user @steempower where he compares all these blockchains and places Steem in a hypothetical transaction speed of 180,000 tx/s. Yes, you heard that right - Steem is able to handle more transactions than one of the biggest centralized systems Visa can. This is mainly due to how our blockchain is built and doesn't use a proof-of-work mining algorithm like Bitcoin and Ethereum do.

The mining part is also a big reason to Bitcoin and Ethereum having a difficult entry point for newcomers - they know they have to invest to be able to be a part of it. Either invest in mining equipment or just buy the currency and speculate on its price movement. This to me is one of the biggest advantages of the Steem blockchain. As you might have noticed here you can earn Steem by being an author, a commenter or an active voter. 90% of the newly printed Steem go to these users and 10% go to witnesses that keep the network safe through delegated proof-of-stake. This is also a huge factor why we will be seeing a big increase in users and how Steem is one of the best ones to introduce the newcomers to blockchain technology.

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To summarize this post a bit. I usually get sidetracked really bad when I get into writing these.

I left the Bitcoin scene because of the huge manipulation of news and censorship, was a big believer that Ethereum would at one point pass it because of its technological advantage and have now found a new home on the Steem blockchain which in my opinion surpasses all of the previous ones. The best part is that here I can express my opinions freely without worrying that someone will delete or edit my posts.

It's censorship resistant, very advanced and makes it easy for everyone to be a part of.

This is what blockchain is all about.

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I finally got around to edit one of my spreadsheets that I used to update my Steem journey on, been pretty lazy in general with it but felt really great to see the difference in value and motivated me even more to do a better job at curating in the future.

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Hope you enjoyed the read and that it motivated you somewhat. Here's to the future of blockchain and its awaiting revolution in pretty much everything we know and use today.