A lot of times I tell you what I'm doing in the crypto world and my thoughts even if it isn't positive towards STEEM. This one is sort of neutral towards STEEM and I don't really know how it will play out in the next couple of days but we will see soon enough.

The situation has been very dismal for a lot of us here. Back in 2018 I powered back up to 10,000 STEEM Power in the October / November time frame. My cost basis basically being $0.60 which seemed to be fairly low but everything kept dropping. Even if we just go by STEEM metrics I only earned 726 STEEM in the last 4 months which even with today's pump only equates to around. $305. That is honestly pretty sad. "But what about when it goes 10X???" Well that would be $3,000 which is still not good and there are a lot of reason for me to believe that even if STEEM can 10X that other projects could 15X or 20X in that same time frame.

Even if you just take the inflation rate alone as an indicator and say that STEEM has between 7-8% inflation compared to Bitcoin's current 4% inflation, EOS' 1% inflation, or IOTA's 0% inflation that is cause for concern in itself.

"BUT, BUT, BUT STEEM is amazing and has all these ways to connect to it.....etc."

That is true. It is actually the most developed blockchain and the one with the most cohesive community actually communicating on chain. That doesn't mean it is a good investment with the current economics and everything going on here.

Is Snapchat a good investment? It has a lot of users?

Continued quarterly losses for yet another unprofitable tech company where retail investors are the bag holders. You have to ask yourself if we are all bag holders for an unprofitable tech company called STINC and a handful of people who have been selected to "witness" that 8% inflation stack up in their wallets? It's an honest question.

Since July 2016 being on STEEM has been far more painful than any other crypto project I have invested in. Mainly because it had so much potential and is so close but continues to disappoint and slip down the ranks of CoinMarketCap. It is like a star athlete that decided to do meth and rot its brain out.

Let's do a slow clap for @elipowell who was announced as the "Head of Communications & Advocacy" after @ned bitched out of being in the public eye over a month ago. Of course both of them are never really heard from. Why is it someone like myself is more visible than these "Leaders"? @ned is probably paying @elipowell like $190,000 or some sickening amount to basically be worthless.

The weird thing is that @ned had the looks, the extensive vocabulary, the hair, and other positive attributes to really get out there and really promote this chain and get others on board but for some reason he didn't really have the magic sauce. What I'm talking about are those hard to put your finger on qualities that makes people popular and magnetic. Have you ever seen a YouTuber that you weren't really sure why they were popular but they garnered a very large following. It is because they have some hard to determine mixture of traits that made them popular. Actually @trevonjb has the magic sauce whether we want to admit it or not. Despite all his transgressions that made us look at the ground and shake our heads he has garnered a following of people who actually believe what he is saying for better or for worse and all the haters can't stop watching either to get themselves triggered.

That is one thing that has impressed me with Electroneum this entire time. Despite making moves that I didn't agree with they keep pushing forward and despite technical incompetence several times they actually have a leader that keeps pounding the pavement and being front and center. They just came out with a smartphone with the Electroneum branding as a way to get crypto in the hands of people. They are at least trying new things and making moves.

I don't know how the distribution of crypto to so many people without paying will play out but they can probably mask it in the cost of the phones. Plus airdrops worked well for TRON and Stellar. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

What I Bought

I actually bought TrueUSD after I converted the 4100 STEEM. The reason is because I feel there is still a lot of downward pressure overtime on this chain unless there is something around the corner that I don't know about. What is more likely is a combination of it getting added to a few new exchanges and some crypto ballers trying to make a move by increasing their power on this chain. It is a dangerous play unless they at least bought $250,000 worth of STEEM in my opinion and they probably will be unlikely to make up the difference between if they would have just invested in EOS and collected coins from airdrops and got distributions on the EOSIO sister chains passively.

My Plan

Again my plan might blow up in my face but I have a feeling that STEEM won't be able to sustain this pump and we will have others taking this opportunity to convert liquid STEEM to other projects. Let's say the price falls back to $0.32 that could be a chance to quickly retake the same position in STEEM for less and have additional funds to buy other coins.

It all depends on where the market goes but maybe some cryptos get smashed tomorrow and I get an entry point I can feel good about.

Do I Still Think STEEM Has A Chance?

Well it will likely surge again and go parabolic in the next boom like every other speculative crypto but you have to be worried about devaluing your time here unless you are one of the 50 or 60 people really draining this system.

I have thought long and hard and did a lot of calculations and have explored trying to become a whale on WhaleShares or Scorum but there are always question marks. I have also thought about trying to become a whale on Telos but my worry is it won't fare well during this bear market and developers will go with the safer route of launching on EOS.

At the end of the day we are all playing a weird game that has nothing to do with quality or engaging content and ultimately equates to trying not to get dumped on by our fellow community members. Another description of it would be that we are trying to be nice enough yet greedy enough to come out ahead in a speculation game. It appears way more profitable here to be greedy as fuck. I see so many sock puppet accounts / content mills it is insane here. None of this stuff can go viral anywhere else on the Internet. It is sad to say but we already knew that.

The fact of the matter is I have lost money compared to if I would have used that money to go deeper into EOS and collected even more for the airdrops there. We will see what happens with the trade which will determine if I bring much of that money back here. It doesn't really do me much good here. If I power it up then it isn't liquid so if there is a spike it is likely I can't get it out fast enough and if it is powered up it isn't really earning much of anything.

There is too much down pressure on the price partly because the majority of us are spam farmers including myself. Let's be honest. You guys don't care that I can dunk or what fucking smoothy I drank tonight or that I made a clay alien in 8th grade. Sometimes the truth hurts