When I first started it was a wild adventure immediately on steemit.  If you look at where the price of steem/sbd was going this place was a madhouse and there was no one to talk to on here, at least very many that wanted to comment back to a newbie everyone was freaking out chasing steem to the moon.  Here is a graphic from coinmarketcap.com to illustrate the craziness at the time and the outrageous jump in price in SBD (SBD was virtually the only thing used at the time, steem was much more of a long term investment and everyone was only interested in the wildcat speculation of SBDs at the time, which came at the detriment for steem to capture long term value in my opinion now looking at it in hindsight).  ![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmNb4FMHuSsk4AJzHyaFsjcn5J8k9S6BGV7hU6No2GpVJm/image.png)

Ironically there was another user on here that was commenting on nearly every single post that I was and it was "the bot named @davemccoy."  I remember thinking there is no way this guy can be everywhere I am.  As I came to find out, that was not a bot but (was indeed very much) another person that started within 12 hours of the exact same time I did and has become a fixture here on the steemit community helping develop many groups over his time on here at an exhaustive pace I still cannot fathom.  Actually the furthest thing from a robot which I would find out having visited with him countless times here on steemit and in chat rooms ever since.

At that time it was virtually impossible to grow here on steemit.  The value was so inflated that I think my first payout was like 0.005 sbd, something like that, and I was absolutely jacked about the payout, also getting like 0.015sp on top of that or something like that I am not even sure.

The rambling I am going on with is that over time I got involved in some great communities, won a delegation from @abh1234 engagement league (which for my money is the best indicator of real human engagement here on the platform) of 75sp.  @abh1234 pulled numbers later on to find the top commenters on all of steemit and of course @davemccoy was way up on the list, and I came in last of his top 201 commenters on all of steemit...***that list included the bots which were exponentially bigger and more used than they are now of course.***  @abh1234 was also kind enough to add 1 to the top 200 to include yours truly, which was a shocker two fold for me at the time in a pleasant way.  Winning a 75sp delegation from that contest was like winning the lottery at that point and had an awful lot to do with keeping me on the platform even up to this day getting that kind of recognition and positive reinforcement among that group I really grew to respect.

Now of course we look at the prices of steem/sbd and those levels are almost inconceivable to the most hardcore bull for steem.  But there is a major upside to this catastrophic drop in steem and the crypto market as a whole.  The weak "day trippers" are gone, long gone and the people who even thought they were holders of this have left or become so cynical to anything new they have turned themselves rotten to much of the new dapps and other neat new things that are popping of immense value on top of the online community that was built at that time and is currently being rebuilt in front of your very eyes.

My point and revelation that has hit me like a ton of bricks is simple, lease SP if you like the place and want to stay.  Buying steem is great and powering it up, it is actually the most pure signal of confidence and voting with your pocketbook.  But it's also slower moving and gets less impact immediately and what this community, my community needs is an instant charge of enthusiasm to start rattling cages and getting attention.  The SP rental of delegations right now is garbage in my opinion with laughable attempts to make it look there is any interest by some people trying to rent scores of delegations at 15sp (or whatever the minimum is) on minnowbooster for example.  I like to buy houses when they are on fire but still salvageable, and I think that is where the crypto market is as a whole and especially steem at the moment.  It is beyond able to return to relevance and is actually working harder than ever to make it happen at the moment right in front of you.  

If you are unaware of the many nuances of curation rewards and how to maximize message me on here I will be happy to visit with you on discord about it, as I have been lucky to surround myself with a few stalwart forward thinkers on this platform that find ways to make the curation system better work for the user.  Those of you that know me personally also can get in touch with me on how I can send a bigger percentage vote your way by bypassing some of the curation "hogs" that are up and making it needlessly hard to curate despite their claim of service in auto upvoting.  

Best of luck to all, I hope this was laid out well enough to get my point across, if not feel welcome of course to ask questions or leave comments this is a blog site after all.