It's better to be prepared and $5 Steem will be possible over the next few days to weeks
Steem and Bitshares are already on a massive rise. This massive rise is partly due to anticipation from what EOS will offer but also as a result of massive amounts of money coming into the crypto space. Steem is critical for the adoption phase of the crypto community. As far as I know, Steemit is the only way that ordinary people can acquire cryptocurrency without having to buy it, but by earning it. You don't have to be a programmer, you don't have to be a scientist, all you have to do is blog your ass off and upload quality content. Additionally Steem will someday soon support video, because the technology to make this possible will be enabled possibly by EOS. I also hope that EOS provides for Oracles or the equivalent to connect Steemit users to Bitshares, but also to Ethereum and any other network as necessary for specific services, and in situations where porting over to EOS is possible it might be a good idea to simply ask developers to port their smart contracts over. It is common in software that cross platform support is ideal for the user.
What is EOS?
The running rumor is that EOS stands for "Ethereum on Steem". Of course we cannot know for certain what EOS stands for but if it has anything at all to do with Steem this this connection to Steem will drive both EOS and Steem to high prices. In addition it would provide a giant advantage over Ethereum because Steem is for ordinary people while Ethereum for the most part works great for developers, hackers, and people really into this stuff, but it's not something the average Youtuber can figure out how to earn and acquire. Steem is the only mainstream focused crypto technology and platform, while Ethereum, Bitcoin, and all others, are supposed to be working on social network tech like Synereo, or Yours (now on Litecoin), but none of these have the technology anywhere near where Steemit is, or the performance capability of Graphene. EOS only has to be moderately successful and functional for Steem to truly reach a market cap in the billions. A market cap which would actually be justifiable, not a bubble, based on transaction volume, content production, all which can be tracked transparently.
I do see some problems which will come with this excessive transparency. The accounts which are modest today could be worth millions later this year. This lack of privacy will likely have many negative security implications as the price rises and it's something Ethereum developers should consider changing. Also, if there is support for Oracles then perhaps Steem could connect to smart contracts on other platforms to increase utility (Golem, iExec), but preferably we need to reach the stage of cross platform compatibility. In software it is well known that it is best for users to have cross platform support and for an app to truly take over the world it has to work on any platform and not just be on one platform.