Hi @paulag thanks for your insights from both inside and outside the steempot. I was disheartened by the bear market, and gave up hope in steem when I saw all the conflict and psychological downtrend it went on. However, the bear market pulled all the tokens down, and as you say steemit has tremendous growth occurring, so it is a working blockchain with huge potential, as well as a powerful social media platform that pays, which is actually revolutionary to the outsider.

The inflationary model though and management of the pool and the system - with all its loopholes for whales - could be refined though, to be more egalitarian, but I am an amateur so don't know the details. Nevertheless, I will keep posting and growing my earnings to make a profit with my time and input. Now it just depends on if price will actually return to its original place, as is happening with Bitcoin.