Steem bounced back into the top 10 rankings on CoinMarketCap again on Tuesday, after losing some of its glory and having been wandering in the wilderness of crypto rankings for some months now.
Rise and fall
The Blockchain social media startup entered the market two years ago with the concept of sharing revenues with its users.
The monetary incentive it was offering propelled it to higher heights, and in July 2016, Steem rose by more than 2,000 percent to reach more than $400 mln in market cap within two weeks. At the same time, its price also grew from $0.24 to $4.63.
It was one of the top contenders in the crypto space until it started declining late last year, and finally, was pushed back to the lower echelons.
In fact, at the advent of Steem, it had a lot of critics who branded it as a pump and dump and Ponzi scheme to reward early adopters. Going down so drastically might have left those detractors smiling.
It actually gave out a lot of revenues to early adopters who had a good number of followers and could share popular content. It was believed by many that it was going to change the face of social media and make the likes of Facebook and Twitter obsolete if they do not adjust.
New match
In the early hours of Tuesday, it rose grandly by 66 percent to enter the top 10 ranks. Even later in the day when other altcoins were sinking, it stood still and was up by 6.12 percent.
Currently, Steem has accumulated a market cap of more than $200 mln and a market price of $0.88.
Despite occupying the number 10 spot, the Ethereum computer storage utility token Golem is pursuing it aggressively and if it is to remain at the top, it must up its game.
At the moment, the struggle for the top places is as hot as ever with currencies like Augur, Dogecoin and MaidSafe struggling to make it there. But looking at the gap between Steem and all these cryptocurrencies, anything can happen anytime soon.
Has Steem come back to the top to stay forever? Staying afloat is very important for them since it may prove their critics wrong. We are waiting to see if it could conjure the magic it did in the summer of 2016.