My personal opinion is that the price is currently just about where it should be at this time of development. Steem was overvalued at this early stage due to a pump and FOMO.

I do agree that the situation could have been handled much better, however I disagree on one aspect and others will probably disagree. Steem is in "beta", but still feels like an "alpha". They haven't really even settled on how the economics of the system should work (see Ned's recent comment and willingness to overhaul it) and it wasn't set up properly in the beginning IMHO.

The part I think people will disagree with me on is that I feel they brought on the "regular" user far too soon, before they had time to fully work the kinks out of the system. This is why we see people saying things like, "I'm going back to Facebook" after a few weeks of participating on Steem.

It's too soon for that crowd and the damage done by those types of users going back on FB and posting negative comments about their experience here (during this very early stage) may be hard to overcome. It's like games on Steam that sell early copies of their game and then get hammered in the review area. It drives away a lot of potential customers later. Luckily Steam now shows that these reviews were based upon pre-release versions or some reviewers will indicate this in their review and later update their review when the game is released.

The problem that is coming up for Steem is competition and how long they have had to watch Steem make mistakes by releasing their code into the wild so early to so many people who have no clue what cryptocurrency is or how the ecosystem works.

These other projects will likely have a much more polished product upon release, gain far more favorable reviews for this reason and could end up attracting the crowd that Steem is currently losing. They've had time to see what works and what doesn't and perfect their system to do right what Steem is currently doing wrong.

Originally I was interested in Akasha, but when I learned about the issues they will face by building on the Ethereum platform I was a bit turned off by it. However, seeing what has transpired with Steem has given me an opportunity to rethink Akasha and whether or not I would support such a project, if for nothing more than investing.

I think Akasha and the other competitors will be a good investment initially, simply because they will claim to do what Steem doesn't and will claim to get right what Steem got wrong. This should bring the FOMO levels up and beyond anything Steem saw early on and I plan on taking advantage of it early and getting out before the inevitable let down bubble pops it back to reality, much like what you see here with Steem.

Blaming investors for maximizing their profits is like blaming any sports athlete for doing whatever it takes to win within the rules of the game. Yet most people worship these athletes for being the best the games have to offer, while the best investors seem to draw the ire of these same people. And that's likely because those people have no money invested in sports, but do in the platform where they see investors taking their profits. ;)

The price is fine where it is and could possibly still be a little high for where development of Steem is at this point. Until the developers of Steem figure out a working model that makes the majority of it's users happy by making the system and it's voting more balanced, then it's unlikely many new investors will want to come on board.

What we currently have here at Steem is what appears to be 75%-90% of the user base unhappy with the current system, until they get a big payout. When that happens they quiet down for a while. But unless those users continue getting a big payout, the complaining seems to start back up again a few weeks later.

Most users will resort to #circle-jerk to get that big payday and I will admit I use that method to my advantage as well. It's silly not to at this point. Even as a blogger who has put no money into the system, if you're not maximizing your payout potential, you are going to fall behind the herd ... and the herd is circle-jerking their way to the big payouts at this early stage.