Quote from: smooth on October 25, 2016, 06:00:45 AM

Anyway, we agree that crypto investors don't like it and very few want to invest in it (though apparently some do and are). I don't think anyone ever suggested otherwise. I know I pointed that out as one of the biggest challenges early in this thread (or maybe another one like it).

One thing though -- this has been a constant as has never changed. It was always structurally unfriendly to crypto investors, so this can't explain a declining valuation. What has changed is that people have observed and are observing that the onboarding/growth strategy has failed and are looking for he developers to offer some improvements to the platform (or perhaps some organic growth coming from an unexpected source). As time goes on without any such improvements (or newly apparent growth), confidence that it will ever happen declines, and with that, the valuation declines too.

1. Perhaps the current (just a one-time blip so far) slowing of the market cap decline relative to the price decline may be due to (investment buying due to) expectations about the coming slew of ecosystem developments, e.g. SteemStays.

2. The pump was caused as usual by hype, rash emotions and a lack of understanding. As time has gone on, those who were fooled into rushing in, have since learned more. The second round of hope has perhaps ignited with #1, but because of the crazy stupid inflation design, I don't expect it to have much legs (but I hope so, so I can get more $ out of Steem).

I believe there is value in the concept of onboarding with money supply dilution (if done at sufficient scale of adoption), but this has to be more objective (i.e. what others refer to as "fair"), not under control of whales, and there must be a viable strategy for overcoming the hen-vs-egg coming first dilemma.

One of the key issues to solve is how to excite wide array of demographics to adopt and remain sticky.

I can assure you that paying them with fiat from money supply dilution is not it. This can't be done in a way that is both enticing enough for multitudes of users and realistic for investors. Whereas, creating an ecosystem where tokens move around the economy could pay them to work without any more dilution (and with burned tx fees could actually be reduce the money supply).

You have to ask the question of what do people want and what can you provide for them and how does a blockchain and crypto-tokens play into that in some compelling way that hits all the major demographics in some K.I.S.S. non-technobabble way.

I believe I have an answer.

Note that other projects such a PeerTracks are more focused on targeting users as investors than users as consumers+workers. I am more focused on the latter, because most people are not investors by nature. Think about content producers/managers are the ecosystem investors (distinguished from the speculative investors) and the bulk of the population as consumers and workers. That is how the real economy works.

Edit: @complexring may be astute enough to realize he isn't making SteemStays as a realistic ecosystem win, but perhaps as a means of hooking some more Chinese investment to keep the market cap more stable so he can cash out? I don't know. Probably not. Probably he really believes SteemStays is viable. Perhaps he even got some investor to fund the development of SteemStays, pitching the escrow revenue model.