Steem is about the same price as I started to invest in it 1 year ago. I enjoyed the ride from 1 dollar a Steem to reaching 8 dollars and yet I didn't sell anything. Why is that? I guess looking back at it something in me had wished I sold at this point, being able to buy much more now when seeing Steem at the price of under 1 dollar again.
Value the product for what it is, and not what it is worth
Surely I could not look into the future, if I could I would have predicted this fall and of course sold everything I had to be able to buy much more today. But without these superpowers and little to no knowledge on reading a market, I believe I made the right choice back then.
I might not have the skills to read the market, but I sure do know when I see potential in a product that has not been unfolded just yet
Sometimes it is easy to get influenced by others opinions or just by looking at the market and think: it will never happen. But deep inside myself, I know steem will be much more worth than 8 dollars one day. It simply has too much potential and if we should fail to ever see this happen, I would claim the world was wrong and I was right and then happily lose the money I invested. (Please world, be clever)
You don't buy after, you buy before!
The big gains come from patience and predictability. I did put some money other coins and some of them I caught before they exploded. But I also did the mistake of seeing something that already took off where I sold merely weeks before.
For example, I brought Iota for something like 40 cents and sold it for the same because it seemed like it never got anywhere and I got influenced by same shitty article telling me Iota will fail for certain.. 2 weeks later it flew to 1 dollar and eventually 4 dollars. God did I hate myself for missing out on that one. Surely I did not directly lose money, but I did lose a great opportunity for an investment I just needed a little more patient for.
But it did teach me that sometimes you have to be patient and when nobody is interested in the product is where you maybe should start to look into it and see if it has reason to get interesting once again?
This "Iota" mistake is something I keep in mind when I look at Steem. I guess you could say my loose of Iota investment back then might earn me more in the future of Steem.
Steem will eventually reveal it's true value: The question is how much is that?
The bear market we are in is for all coins and not just Steem(although I have a feeling this bear market are reaching its end soon). Also contrary I believe the "bull run" we had a while back to 8 dollars was more because of the overall market than just something about Steem. I doubt we have had our own "solo climb" just yet. The one where Steem through some great updates flies to the skies independent of the rest of the crypto-market. Did this bring any specific term to your mind? Yes, I am talking about SMT'S coming in early 2019. I think this might be the point where we will see if we make it or break it for Steem.
When SMT is coming close and (hopefully) getting released on the announced date(s), Steem will be put in another league and with that, it is going to be interesting to see if we can compete with the others that try to offer the same. I usually call this league the "shovel league". Since basically, we don't dig for the gold anymore, we just sell the shovels for those who believe there's gold to be found. For example, will investors and other people find more reason to build their product on the Steem blockchain instead of, for example, Ethereum? I have not a clear answer for this but I am hopeful that the answer is a big fat: