Please be wary -- the meteoric value of this concurrency doesn't have legs..
Take a moment and look at the the volume of other cryptocurrencies here: http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/views/all/
Note that Steem has the lowest volume:price ratio of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by a huge margin.. It jumped by over 150% in value, or an appearent increase of well over $100,000,000 on a meager $770,000 of trading!!! It suddenly exploded in value because it's gained significant interest and for now there are more buyers than sellers on the markets, which has created an artificial supply shortfall.. As sellers start transferring funds and cashing out and interest wanes, and it'll implode.. Just look at the market depth (order book - set price range to 100% or all): https://bittrex.com/Market/Index?MarketName=BTC-STEEM
Be warned -- not a good time to buy!!!
Even though the price has skyrocketed and volume is very low, over 97% of Steem are locked up in Steem Power. Even if people power down, they get just a fraction of their Steem each week (1/104).
So yes, be very wary of huge price spikes. It just takes one person with a lot of Steem to tank the price with such low volume. However most Steem are locked up in the network as of right now.
1% of 100M is 1M, which could multiply the amount for sale.
Two key points to remember (especially for those that are non-financial and/or crypto-newbies);
1> This market surge is natural given the explosion of interest over the last days, but is unlikely to be sustainable (as @zachamo notes) and could conceivably crash quite hard again as it adjusts.
2> If the price crashes this is neither (a) particularly bad for steem (short-term or long-term) or (b) the viability of steemit.
Just power for the course with new currencies, there will be a lot of volatility with a platform this innovative.
My advice - if you like Steemit in principle, keep using whatever the price movements for the next months, will be irrelevant in 6 months.
If you are planning on trading Steem, ask someone else for advice :P
As @btcswag pointed out, the reason the volume is so low is that ~97% of all STEEM is frozen as STEEM Power. Difficult to have massive sell-offs if there is no assets available...
...plus demand isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
I'm confident that we're just in the foothills of a large mountain range right now.
it also depends if people are here for the long term or not, if they are and they care about the growth of all crypto currencies and steem then like me they are not thinking about dumping. In that case in a couple of years when there are 10's of millions using steem the $3 or $4 price might look so cheap and silly.....
Do you mean to say that the $3 or $4 will seem peanuts? And if so, can anybody explain to me how this would be any different than a pyramid scheme? Or is it exactly just that?
I don't think people's interest is going to die down anytime soon. People who are cashing out from their content will keep producing content which increases the attractiveness of the platform both for consumers and advertisers.
A cashout requires two years, not really encouraging for most people
People can cash out over one week. Only investors need to wait 2 years.
Financial and cyptonewbie here, I'm sorry but if you are not investing real money and just using the service what is the downside?
None at all! Just don't get your expectations too high.. What shows as $1000 now might be 10 by the time you can cash out.. That said, it's an innovative and super cool platform, so you never know. The main message is for people investing money right now / those thinking of cashing out.. Seen a few bubbles in my day to say the least!
Agreed, in the end I can appreciate the experience of using a supercool, innovative, and entertaining platform.
Damn, thas was what i tnink when hit $1, i wonder if tomorrow i will be crying again looking $5, $6 or even more... well, its a very dangerous invesment right now as you say.
And sorry for my bad english ;)
Congratulations @zachamo! You have received a personal award!
2 Years on Steemit
Click on the badge to view your Board of Honor.
Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard:
SteemitBoard World Cup Contest - Semi Finals - Day 1
Participate in the SteemitBoard World Cup Contest!
Collect World Cup badges and win free SBD
Support the Gold Sponsors of the contest: @good-karma and @lukestokes
Congratulations @zachamo! You received a personal award!
You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!