Attention Sharks - There is blood in the water. Are you ready to invest?

A good investor knows to buy low and sell high. Emotional traders will panic and sell, right when it is the most opportune time to buy.

There is a lot of fear, discord and panic in the Steemit community right now.

• The price has been steadily dropping since the July spike, and there is no bottom in sight.
• User retention has been horrible. Most of the users that joined during the big rush are now gone.
• Many users are convinced that Steemit was just an elaborate pump and dump campaign.
• Disgruntled members of the crytpo community who did not get in at the very beginning continue to insist that the Steem launch was a pre-mined scam.
• A lot of the content that is upvoted is done by bots that do not even look at the content before voting.
• Users often post quality content that receives hundreds of upvotes and comments, but then only receive a couple of cents worth of payout.
• Even though the community has been asking for one for months, the dev team has not released a public roadmap yet.
• There is massive tension between the regular users (minnows) and the power users (whales).
• Users feel a lack of control over the payouts, since most of the payout decisions are influenced by a only small handful of users who hold all the power.
• Users are fighting amongst themselves.
• Many are contesting Steemit's claim of being a "decentralized" block-chain, since most of the power is held by a small group of users who have been with the project since the beginning, and they have the majority of influence on the site.
• Most of the original investors and founders are powering down and dumping large amounts of Steem on the market, driving down the price.
• Users do not know what the founders/whales/witnesses are doing with the funds that they are cashing out. Most assume that they are lining their pockets with cash.
• Many of Steemit's competitors have started blacklisting Steemit.com links from their site.
• Flag wars have left people with battle scars and bitter memories.
• Trolls, harassers, and spammers have driven several members away.
• Users have given up hope that their desired list of features will ever being implemented.
• Some users are so upset with the way thing are, that they think any post that highlights positive things about Steemit is a fake post or scam.
• Even the core users are struggling to think of good reasons to give investors to invest.

Behind all of the discord and unhappiness though, is Steem's core. This is where you will find the true potential of Steem. These are the users who are hard at work to turn the community and site into what it has the potential to be. This is where you should look to see the future of Steem/Steemit.

• In less than 3 weeks, over 160 members of the Steemit community will be traveling to Amsterdam for a three day conference called Steem Fest. This will be a major event where many of the great minds of Steemit will get together and discuss their ideas for the future of Steem/Steemit, block-chain technology, and much more! A large portion of this conference, as well as the travel expenses of many attendees, have been paid for by STEEM/SBD distributions created by the block-chain! Many of the speakers that will be attending the event are listed here.
• Behind the scenes, the development team has been extremely engaged with members of the community. After publishing a community wish list, several of the lead developers replied to discuss the ideas. @dantheman even Resteemed the post to all his followers! Since then there has continued to be regular engagement between members of the dev team and the community regarding the features that are to be added. There is also a periodic Steemit Development Updates post to let the community know what they are up to, as well as an official announcements blog to explain any major changes to the site. The developers have also proposed several large changes to the community, but did not move forward on ones that had a lack of community support.
• One of the main reasons the price has been falling is because there is a lack of demand for Steem/SP/SBD. To address this, @ned has announced that they plan to form a non-profit corporation to run an "attention economy" based advertising program on Steemit.com. The non-profit corporation will charge advertisers STEEM/SBD to place ads on the site, and distribute the money earned from the ads back to the users and Steem Power holders. If Steemit can grow its user base to the same size as Facebook.com, this is potentially a billion dollar industry!
• One of the largest reasons that the site is having trouble retaining users, is because the site is missing many of the core features that most users expect to be there on a social media site. At the time when the site had its biggest wave of new users signup, there wasn't even a way to see what your friends were doing or share things with your followers. Many of those things have been added now, and several more are in the works, but the site is still in beta. There is a long list of features that will need to be added before the site is 100% "mainstream ready". The dev team is well aware of the things that need to be added though, and are working around the clock to turn Steemit.com into a full-blown social media site!
• The biggest gripe that most users have with the site has been the unfair distribution of rewards. Whenever money is involved, there is going to be strife regarding this. It is a well known problem too, that there are not enough users with high voting power ("whales") to review and upvote all of the good content that the users are posting. A lot of good content falls through the cracks. The community and dev team are well aware of the fact that this could make or break the site. Users will keep coming back if they feel that there is a good opportunity to be rewarded for their contribution. If they don't feel that they have a good chance to make money, or if the site is unfair - they will not come back. While the community and dev team have been discussing potential solutions, several community groups have formed to address the issue as best they can on their own. Two highly successful initiatives called "Curie" and "Robinhood Whale" have formed, which seek out undervalued quality content that users have posted, and attract a large number of "whales" to upvote the post, so that it receives a significant payout. In addition to this, the dev team is planning to implement a new feature called "curation guilds" which will allow groups of users to join together and upvote/reward content that meets the criteria set by their guild. The idea is that the guilds can band together to search out good content, and then collectively reward it with the combined voting power of their guild.
• There is an extremely active user based development community that has been creating Steem based applications to harness and use the power of the Steem block-chain. Piston is a command line interface to interact with the STEEM network, allowing developers to build their own applications that interface with the blockchain using API calls. Reprint allows anyone to create a website of their own design, populated with content from the Steem blockchain. SteemBux is a a stand-alone wallet for sending and receiving Steem dollars using a blocktrades based interface. There are also over 90 additional unique Steem based applications that users have developed at steemtools.com!
• Several large block-chain based projects for users to spend their Steem/SBD are in the works. SteemStays is a Steem based travel site for users to travel, blog, and meet. (Similar to AirBnB, but better!) PeerHub is a Steem based marketplace where users can buy/sell goods and services in exchange for SBD. Many more are being worked on as well!
• Even though many of the old users are powering down, lots of the new users are powering up. There is clear data showing that the distribution of power is shifting away from the original founders and early-adopters (whales), and into the hands of the new core users that have been joining the site (dolphins).
• Steemit, Inc. is hiring! There are currently job postings for Marketing Director, Blockchain Developer, Front End Developer, and Community & Social Media Manager.
• In addition to taking over the blogging/social media sphere, Steem based applications are being developed to compete in several other arenas as well. SteemQ is going to be a decentralized video platform similar to YouTube, where users can share their videos and be rewarded by the Steem blockchain, similar to how it is done on Steemit.com. Steemit.online is a live streaming site. Squeek.io is a Steem based version of Twitter. Many more variations are likely to come as well!
• Within Steemit, there are tons of micro-communities that are forming. Steem Sports is a fun way for users to guess which sports team they think will win, and be rewarded in Steem Power if they guess right. There is even no cost to play! The payouts are pulled directly from the Steem block-chain based on the rewards that the post receives from user upvotes. SteemCleaners is a group of users that have formed to combat SPAM, plagiarism, and abuse in the Steemit community. SteemPrentice is a group of users that help new members learn how to use the site, and become integrated into the community once they join. Steemit-Photo-Challenge is a weekly contest where photographers get to submit their photography to the community, following a specified theme. The entries are reviewed, and winners are selected. The users who submitted the best photos are paid STEEM! SteemTV is a decentralized media platform, screening exclusive productions, unseen anywhere else on the internet!
• There is tons more going on here too! This list is just the tip of the iceberg.
• The biggest value here in my opinion though is the community and relationships that are forming. Every day I come across tons of amazing content that is being produced by our many talented writers, artists, musicians, thinkers, athletes, activists, developers, photographers, dreamers, and more! I have gotten to know many people very well, and consider a lot of the users here my friends. When I share parts of myself through my posts, I get an extreme amount of engagement and feedback from the people on the site, many of whom I have never even talked to before. It is definitely a lot of fun, and the main reason I keep coming back!

So while to many it looks like a time of turmoil and abandoning ship, if you look beneath the surface, it is a very exciting time to be involved in Steemit. What I see is that things are just getting started. For those who know how to look for it, it is pretty clear that the best times are ahead!

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(Disclaimer) This post does not constitute investment advise, and everything here is just my own personal opinions and observations. Anything that could be considered a prediction of the future has no guarantee of coming true.