I've spent the last few days really digging into the current state of Steem, and it appears that a fairly large divide has developed that is making a huge barrier to entry for anyone without a pre-existing audience to import (like you receive from your YT subs).

That's really a shame, as the original idea of Steem was groundbreaking. It makes it very difficult for anyone new to the platform to achieve any degree of notoriety, which in turn will keep the platform from growing in any appreciable way. I suppose this is the underlying reason for why STEEM has consistently fallen against BTC for six solid months. If this problem can't get worked out in the VERY near future, I think holding STEEM long term is a losing proposition. Without a thriving community STEEM becomes nothing, and current successful Steemians are leaving the platform because of drastically falling returns on their content.

I actually put together an idea for this platform that would be pretty cool, using community participation and the application of community intelligence to create something really special. However, without a pre-existing audience to import it appears that achieving any degree of success here is highly unlikely.

Even projects like Minnowbooster require that you have a solid track record of quality content creation before they will even consider backing you.

Thanks for what you're doing for the crypto community at large, even if STEEM has some serious issues.