I still remember my very early days on Steem as if it was yesterday.
Lost...a stranger among thousands of users who knew about this place long before I did.
It was the 10th of January 2018 when I received that confirmation email that I could finally start integrating with the chain. Note that I applied almost 30 days prior to the arrival of that email...
I had almost forgot that I had applied till that very moment
You do even remember how overcrowded Steem was back then?
Chaos
Right in the middle of the previous bull-run.
Prices kept going up and up every single day...every hour...
Steem was sitting at $4.5 if my memory serves me well, while a few days back it had climbed all the way up to $8+...
Do you even remember the upvote values back in the day? And I ain't talking about those who had just joined Steem and the only thing in their wallets was those 15 SP delegated by Steemit, but for those that had already invested in Steem when price was as low as 7 cents during March 17'
A 100K SP holder could cast 10 x $45 per day.
A 1 mill SP holder...10 x $450 per day.
And that's with Steem sitting at $4.5....
That's some serious money right there...
Posts with potential payouts at the range of $500 or even higher was something very common...
But
Even if your post earned 100 dollars, and despite the fact that the reward system back then was 75% - 25% (author rewards - curators) what would end up in one's wallet -SP wise- was...
$75 / 2 = $37.5 SBD and $37.5 worth of STEEM aka --> $37.5 / $4.5 = 8.33 SP
So a $100 post would earn to the author 37.5 SBD and 8.33 SP.
WTF? How am I supposed to grow my account like that...? Not a chance...
But this party didn't last long enough...the bear market was right at our doorstep...
Prices starting declining...slowly...steadily...and painfully, for some.
For me and for everyone that was looking for a second chance to grow their accounts that bear market was more like a gift...a blessing if you will.
And so it started...
Showing up every single day...reading a lot...commenting a lot more...trying to be noticed..."Hey, I am here too ya know...check out my work..."
First milestone...500SP and I was officially a...minnow.
A few weeks later and my SP had 4 digits...
A little buying every now and then and a few months later I was a happy dolphin.
I had set a goal for 2020. To reach "orca status" before the end of the year.
But then...Justin arrived...and suddenly all hell broke loose...
No signs of communication between him and the community...
Misunderstandings...threats...and BANG! A Soft fork...
The rest is history...Steem was taken over in the most hostile way...and things are getting worse by the day...
That's how Hive came to life...and the moment of the snapshot I was holding ~35K SP.
I knew from the very first moment that Hive is the right path. Who wants a rich dictator to decide what is right and wrong after all? None that I can think of...well, a few maybe...
...Hive launched and price wise, it even outperformed the "original" chain. That was unheard of in the crypto world....But Justin wouldn't let us go away with it, right?
So he started dumping HIVE tokens left and right to drive HIVE's price down while at the same time he keeps purchasing STEEM just to keep STEEM above HIVE on the rankings...foolish...(I'll make a special post about it)
Besides, everyone was eligible for the HIVE airdrop (there are a few exceptions of course) as long as they had STEEM in their wallets on the exchanges that would honor the airdrop.
Nah..I wouldn't miss a 10 cents bargain this time. So...a couple of hours ago I powered up all the HIVE tokens I bought the last 2 days and I am officially a happy orca :P
You couldn't care less, I know, still, I enjoy it and it's also a proof that I am here for the long haul...
Besides...that was the Steem plan all along.
But you know what? Without Justin attacking Steem you wouldn't be holding HIVE right now...and I definitely wouldn't have reached my goal.
Who knows...if he keeps doing this he might be the reason that new HIVE whales will pop up...
All it takes is him, keep dumping his HIVE and us, keep killing our STEEM to purchase more HIVE.
Next stop...whale status(?) Meh...kinda hard to get there...but you never know...
Have a good one peeps...and stay safe.
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Cheers.