The Backstory

It all started late May of this year while I was on vacation in beautiful Ucluelet,BC. A friend of mine on skype told me to check out Steemit and out of curiosity I opened an account.

The price of a STEEM was about $0.25 and there were so few people writing that having a good payout was like hunting for fish in a bucket. But there was a catch. Nobody would get their payout before July 4th.

A lot of people just didn't believe that there would actually be REAL money coming out on the 4th. I know many people who said things like: "I'll wait to see that the money is real before starting to blog".

This would have been me on July 4th if I actually had that mindset:

Without FAITH, there can be no riches...of any form.

Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
-Book of Hebrews

Maybe you've seen it yourself that people who doesn't faith never end up very far...they stay on the sideline, find excuses, procrastinate and rationalize why they are not rising to the top. I had faith and this is why, back then, that I blogged like if there was no tomorrow. Me, @stellabelle and the amazing @donkeypong were the top authors by July 4th. The rest was history...

The Price per STEEM was ~0.30 back then.
2 weeks later: ~$3.00
Now: $0.72

I try to keep the same mindset as I move forward. I personally do not put too much attention on the price and just focus on what I have control over: my blogging and my voting. I'm not a big fan of commentating on all the problems and issues of Steemit. Some of it is valuable but it just doesn't put me in the right mindset to be productive.

3 Reasons Why I Have Faith

Some people tend to believe that faith has no reason. That's ridiculous. The real term for this is "Blind Faith". I have very good reasons to believe that STEEM technology is fundamentally different than any other projects out there and that the future is very very bright for it.

1. It's Social, Social, Social

One of the key insights of @dantheman is that what gives value to a cryptocurrency is the community backing it. The very nature of Steemit is that it brings people together and get them paid to discover each other ideas. No other cryptocurrency has the mechanism to literally grab people by their greed gland and make them come here...even though they may be against the project itself.

I believe the likelihood of the price going to zero is almost impossible. There is already so many people involved that the project will survive..even if the team was to disappear tomorrow.

2. Ever Increasing Value of the Domain

As a writer, marketer and website designer I can already tell you that I would blog on steemit just for the SEO value it has. Being able to freely write on a domain with an Alexa ranking of 11,392 is a straight ticket to be discovered by Google. Links on Steemit carries a lot of weight.

At this point, 3000 new articles are written...everyday!. As the Alexa ranking keeps climbing, at one point, the value of the domain will be so high that even mainstream journalist will want to write on it.

At that's what we are seeing right now, a steady climb in search engine traffic.

3. It's a Honey Pot for Developers and it's Open Source

If you are a dev and you've been working on bitcoin or ethereum, you either do in spare time after work or depend on donations from the community. With everyone asking for donation, the competition increase and getting a piece of the pie is increasing difficult.

Now, with Steemit, people like @jesta are able to create amazing tools and get handsomely rewarded for doing so. (Steemdb.com, Steemstats.com and Steempress.io are all amazing tools)

What other project can brag about being able to distribute thousands of dollars to developers with simply having people voting their software update post?

STEEM Low Price and You

Believe me, I was indeed pretty ecstatic when I saw the price climb like it did in July. But it quickly turned to an uneasy feeling when I realized that at that price, it would be almost impossible for more authors to catch up to the amount of SP I accumulated.

With the current price of STEEM, you may not get a ton of SteemDollars BUT the amount of Steem Power is much higher. More people are climbing the totem poll of power and I feel much better knowing that. In my opinion, this is the best turn of event for the long term viability of the platform.

How Much, Not Having Faith Now Could Cost You?

Many people who do not have faith would say something like:

Well you were here at the groundfloor and I'm a minnow that could never catch up with you because x, y, z.

That's complete rubbish. We are still in beta, only 2 months after the first payout and the price is only at $0.60.

I invite you to think about the opportunity cost of not giving your 100% to this project in the crucial time of beta. Think long term, how much do you think Steemit would have improved in a year? Do you think the number of users will be up or down? Do you really believe that in 2017, the price of Steem will be $0.60?

Here is my advice, act as if Steemit was already at $10 per Steem and give it all you've got. What have you got to lose? Some time and effort writing words on the internet?