Speculation and greed
While packing my bags for my travels to India I was reading a post by @ats-david and it articulated a sentiment I've long since got over in crypto. That is; when presented with a cryptocurrency that ticks the boxes in terms of free and fast transactions, scaling and on-boarding why doesn't the crypto market get behind it?
While I agree that marketing and network effects are part of it, the reason in my experience is more simple. The cryptocurrency market is (currently) driven by speculation/ greed not utility of the technology.
I put together this quick video before my trip however only got time to upload and post it this morning:
Divorcing tech from the market
I learned a couple of years back to divorce the technology/ innovation on one hand from the market/ price on the other. Much in the same way we can now easily divorce "the internet" from "the dot com bubble".
In a bubble it is easier to sell a promise; than to sell reality.
Steem is delivering on the decentralised peer-to-peer network, at scale. People commit censorship resistant transactions to each other every day; financial, social and 'gifting' transactions. Steem is living and breathing the essence of blockchain technology.
Most other cryptos are what I would call a "peer-to-Exchange" network. By this I mean the majority of transactions on those networks are from individuals to centralised Exchanges. The closest people get to large scale transactions with each other are trades, off chain, on a centralised Exchange. Other cryptos are trading the 'promise' of a decentralised peer-to-peer network at scale.
It is what it is.
We are deep in crypto-bubble land. Pumps happen in bubbles. Even Litecoin pumped. It was written off for dead less than 18 months ago. Steem no doubt will get it's turn.
However I'd invite people to look beyond the pumps and the euthoria of today. Just like in the birth of the internet real use cases will emerge after this bubble. I believe Steem and DPOS has a good chance of standing the test of time and that for me is the real focus. In the meantime I'll need to be content with Steem "only" going 15x in a year!