I believe Steem's present low price boils down to 2 main factors.
Propensity of market to sell Steem without large buyers, down to lower levels than most other crypto.
BTC market crash in this instance is more severe than the last time Steem crashed.
Concerning #1
One of the reasons Steem does not have large buyer support, I believe, is how it treated investors in the past. It had huge inflation, while its launch was a massive pump and dump situation. After which, inflation created a massive attrition against the price of Steem. The market itself still does not trust the coin in how it trades Steem.
Steem is also a niche coin which people effectively view as linked with Steemit.com ... This means that investors often view it as a blogging project, rather than viewing it as the future of some great new technology, like IOTA is viewed. IOTA is junk technology, but it sells to a fantasy investor about a possible future that could play out. There is a lot of allure to the selling of a coin like IOTA. Steem's sell is a blog, which is boring to the risky investor who is looking for brand new concepts.
Steem has more meat and potatoes, but 90% of crypto investing is about hype and sales gimmicks, not meat and potatoes.
Concerning #2
The normal brutal decline of Steem has been combined with the tanking of the BTC market and whole crypto market. Steem crashes are ugly enough on their own during a crypto bull market. Experiencing them alongside a crypto market crash is going to exacerbate the issue.
Changes to Consider
- SMT's will effect price when they are completed and operational. Eventually, they will weigh-in on the market trading of Steem, and I believe it has already in anticipation of the technology.
- Steem should better incentive investors to own and hold Steem. On paper, investors are incentived against holding Steem because it has relatively high inflation for a number of years (9%+) and pays very little back against the inflation. In other words, the funding of Steem bloggers is really paid on the back of investors who are treated as bag holders for the currency. Therefore, investors bail and let the prices tank.
- Non-Community driven secondary applications utilizing Steem. Many other blockchain projects have an on-going developer budget. Steemit.com is setup to develop (afaik) mainly just for Steem and Steemit.com. It could be useful to implement another well-funded project besides Steemit.com with an assigned budget for them without increasing inflation.
Bold Ideas
Link SMT creation to Steem ownership. Must own 1000 Steem (ect.) to even launch an SMT. This would make blocks of 1k steem valuable, like a masternode concept.
Secondary Token to Steem (using SMT), A token which is supported by the Steem blockchain developers / community, and is airdropped to Steem holders. The point of such a token could be to handle advertising transactions. Implemented along with advertising revenue for Steem blog posts. A cool project creates market appeal and new functionality, by making it an air-drop to Steem holders, it incentives the market to hold steem leading up to the drop. Then the people who are able to hold the most advertising sway are those who got the air-drop. Yes, a bidding market where they pay in Steem/SBD gets the job done, but it does almost nothing towards marketing to the crypto investor community. It's just a new feature. An air-drop gets traders/investors excited about Steem.
In the future, create a protected lending market for Steem/SBD so that people are able to margin trade on an SMT DAX. Such a lending market attracts margin traders and margin lenders, which creates an on-going demand for more Steem. With adequate safeguards and volume, lenders should not lose funds as it works with poloniex. For now, I doubt such an exchange would have the volume needed to bother with doing this.
Private Steem, steem in the future, should consider implementing privacy features. Privacy makes some investors more comfortable holding large sums, without others knowing their holdings.