I think we are here for very different reasons. I'm not here for any hopeful basis on price and trading of Steem. Personally I couldn't care less about it's price, or its adoption. What I care about is that this is a platform where I can blog and I won't be censored. That's priority #1 for me. I will do the same on my own website in 2019, and I can monetize that with Adwords, etc. and probably make 1000x more money doing that than here. But again, I don't need the money - I already have the money. I need exposure. If this provides a way to get it, great. But you know I'm not a long term believer here yet, and you probably won't change my mind on that. Until this platform matures, it isn't an option for those trying to be content creators (I'm talking those trying to truly compete with the YouTube creators). When YouTube demonetized content, censor creators and reduced earnings, it didn't represent a massive uptick in dTube or Steem content. I cited Jeff Berwick's hesitation to go all in on Steem after he was censored off Facebook. This is because this is low barrier to entry here - there are 7+ billion people on this planet and as more of them get Internet connections, there is a massive amount of low grade content spam here, which keeps the professional content creators away. They would prefer to gain audience on YouTube even though they are not making as much money doing it, because it is about vanity. They want exposure. They can cross post to Steem dApps, but I don't think they will make this their primary platform.

My initial thought was that it could be the primary platform. I still have some reduced expectations that with maturity it might. But I'm not seeing positive signs towards that, and I don't share your optimism based on both adoption rate and price. I do, however, agree with you that there is an enormous opportunity to create an uncensored platform that rewards subscribers and viewership based on quality and not bot fueled upvoting. Maybe they will change the economics and anatomy here to achieve that, and turn this around. There is still time. But I don't see myself posting as actively here if there are other, more suitable, platforms that I can publish to.

So that is why I'm here. I'm not sharing in the "Steem maximalist" vision that you have, and maybe you will be a wealthy man from it. But I am looking to the fundamentals and seeing a very different picture than your charts show. I know you would like me to agree with you on these things, but I can't and you'll have to accept that for what it is and move on.