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First of all, I'm speculating that BTC's value will go higher. It's Bitcoin's second-coming, surpassing gold in price. Pretty sure today's world is quite right for a sustained buzz. All major news outlets are already publishing this fact, even more on social media now as there are significantly more awareness / experienced users this time around.

Perhaps there's not enough confidence in STEEM at this moment, but I don't think it can be disputed that this platform is playing its role in converting mainstream users into blockchain-believers. It has a network effect that way. This has actually helped increased adoption of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in quite significant ways - it's almost like STEEM / Steemit's the real cryptocurrency gateway that doesn't force anyone to part with anything to start getting their first taste. Just be social and get some cryptos!

Of course, this doesn't guarantee any allegiances to the currency. It comes with side-effects, being a shared, experiential social platform where *governance* is in the hands of all users, stake-weighted. Not everybody can take the fact that anything they do is up to the scrutiny of others - a simple fact that it's a free market of upvotes, downvotes, and discourse. These activities affect the continuous distribution of STEEM that happens 24/7, around the clock.

STEEM / Steemit is vastly different from most cryptocurrency where acquiring most newly minted coins isn't as anarchic and decentralised as individuals setting up a computer at home to do the mining. However, the output that comes from mining really depends on the actions of the network as a whole, similarly - just without all the concentrated, obvious politics of upvotes, downvotes, and discourse.

All said, I'm still confident about STEEM as its high-speed social affairs do stimulate creativity and activity. It's my hope that more people around the world find some form of unity through cryptocurrencies. After all, we're all here pretty much the same for the same reasons, and the many various cryptocurrencies would do better working together. Something like Steemit as a hub is quite the right place for people from all walks of life form real communities online, transcending national borders.

Bitcoin is currently in an obvious special market position with all the right ingredients for mainstream adoption - I'm not surprised that people are actually cashing out STEEM earnings for Bitcoins since 2016. Sooner or later, its accumulated value will seep and trickle over to other blockchains. When that happens, I hope this network and its learned-from-mistakes-butthurt-minimisation-design is matured enough to welcome a great diversity of people with open hands, sharing knowledge and funnies, learning together to build the best kind of social platform there is.

By the way, Bitcoin is still pretty geeky and encumbered - check the video out in this article: http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/03/investing/bitcoin-gold-price-value/

I think there's a huge use case for STEEM to bridge digital and legacy real world as mentioned by @furion's [recent post here](https://steemit.com/steem/@furion/steem-as-a-digital-currency). For example, it's rather easy for me to get people close to me to start accepting STEEM / SBD for their businesses or financial transactions. Still can't quite put my finger on it at the moment, but I think it has something to do with reputation, trust, interpersonal relationships, and meeting people IRL too (which really strengthens communities around here).