Usage graphs got from
https://steemle.com/charts.php
New Accounts
As you can see the number of new accounts opening daily is falling from the highs of the initial breakout, but it must be remembered that it is new users and not total users.
Active use
Votes
Potentially the best indicator of active use, the daily number of votes seems to be on a fairly steady uptrend. I will be closely looking at this in coming days to see if the last few days signal an end to this trend or just noise.
Replies
Similar to votes, general uptrend
Posts
While a definite slump in the number of new posts made each day can be seen, it must be remembered that a penalty for more than 4 posts a day was introduced around this time.
STEEM Price
It this case we have a definite downward trend after the recent breakout
Conclusion
As primarily an investor I am looking at these charts and I feel the recent slump in STEEM prices is justified by the slowdown in new users but potentially it has overreacted. Yes account creation has fallen but active participation seems to be increasing, implying the new users we get are staying and using the platform.
A possible reason for STEEM's price to be down so much, and perhaps the slowdown in new account growth, could be that the new users are not getting to use Steemit like the early adopters or even the 2nd wave has. There could be because of a barrier to powering up that I perceive, new users are coming from non-cryptocurrency backgrounds and are not comfortable buying bitcoin to trade on an exchange for STEEM and then send to steemit to power up. It would help if there was a clear guide to all this on the side bar. So, new users are not powering up, while users are still earning payouts and cashing them out, therefore there is sell pressure and no buy pressure.
I can see this turning around shortly, steemit is new, it will get easier to buy STEEM via dollars and euros. In the meantime I am seeing a cryptocurrency platform that for the first time is having a strong appeal to no cryptocurrency people and that is exciting me, I have buys in the $2.00 -$1.50 range .