Competition from Facebook is coming
As much as I appreciate Steem, the community, the ecosystem, I think it is time we accept that Steem no longer has the competitive technological advantage. Steem started in 2016 and I was one of the first bloggers on Steem during that time. At the time Steem was state of the art and had the best technology in the space. Now it is 2019 and many other technologies can scale or are stronger than Steem. On top of that there is now competition from Kik, from Facebook, which could literally reduce demand for Steem.
Facebook has over a billion users. If Facebook integrates Facebook coin and it's a true stablecoin then it's essentially a competitor to the Steem dollar. This might explain why Steem price has been so ridiculously low and falling. The news of Facebook releasing Project Libra? It is possible Facebook could literally remove the use case for Steem.
It is true Facebook does censor, but doesn't Steem also have community standards? It is true that Steem had a head start in technology but doesn't Facebook have the money to hire as many programmers as they need and potentially even try to hire Dan Larimer himself (not saying he would accept it).
On the one hand if Facebook does produce a competitor to Steem it means crypto is finally mainstream. The problem is does it also mean all of our Steem tokens will become worthless overnight? Does the Steem community even have a plan to hold itself together against the threat of Facebook? I think @ned and others should address this question and the SteemBlog should announce something in response to the Facebook news.