Solid post @piedpiper good to have you back. Yeah I do believe anything is possible. Hosting our own video/image content is not out of the question.

I know what it takes to host videos, only youtube can do it, and even youtube bombards you with advertising if you don't pay $9 per month, steem free video hosting is impossible

Would you like to discuss it in a video interview?

it takes time to develop steemit, all gripes, concerns , and criticisms will get solved in time, so I agree with them for filtering out the negativity from those who don't have patience

I think mid feb 2017 will be a big watershed.  Its when the HF16 powerdowns will finish up, and its also when busy goes to open beta.  

Its possible that well see a turnaround then, especially if the whales who decided to wait then have the option to cash out and elect not to.  I think its more likely that well just see a decrease in the rate of decline.  One of the realities of having a larger money supply is that by then, we're there is going to be a lot more inertia to overcome  to change the direction price is moving.

Personally, i don't see the "roadmap" as really relevant, and i don't see user retention and growth as something that can happen in this organization from the top down.  Ned and Dan are very smart people, but theyre not perfect, or in the bible.  Everyone is bad at something, and bringing people on board is something that seems to be a weak suit of the management here.

>That's definitely a more reasonable-sounding prediction. I'm always the shameless optimist so it's good to have people like you around as a counter-balance. :)

I've been very bearish on steem since around $2 (and i have a post history to back that up).  TBH, i always cringe a little when i see a well-known poster like you come in with a bullish prediction.  Because  even though it might not be your intention, or even fair that people take it that way, a highly visible "bullish on steem" post, if the bullish predictions turn out to be wrong, will be viewed by many as steem's mouth writing a check that its ass can't cash.

Back in the day, when you rok and andrarchy always seemed to be at the top of trending, i actually believed that you guys got talking points from the management.   It was only later that i realized that you were all just  honest-to-goodness glass-if-half-full optimists and thats why you were getting upvoted.

>If it does go as low as you say, I'll definitely be buying more. I'm sure most of us here would agree that that would be a pretty sweet opportunity... 

I agree.  @razvanelulmarin had a post a while back:
https://steemit.com/article/@razvanelulmarin/this-hard-fork-asks-one-big-question-money-or-power

My answer to him in chat was that its about both.  RIght now, steemit simply doesn't offer a good enough deal on power.  Yeah, i could spend a half a million dollars to have smooth's level of influence, but there are other places where a half a million dollars would buy me far more power and influence.

I'll tell you how you can know when the rally is ready to happen.

Think of demand like a guy pushing a car up a hill.  The car is the market depth -- the amount of liquid steem on the market.  The car is growing and getting bigger, heavier, and harder to push up the hill (because of the increased size of the power downs).

Right now, the guy is pushing, but the car is still sliding down the hill, because demand is not strong enough to move the market upwards.

If things go as we hope, demand will get stronger more quickly than the market depth will get harder to move.  Eventually demand will be able to push the car up the hill, but before that happens, something else will happen first.

For some amount of time before demand becomes strong enough to overcome the market depth, the growing strength of demand and the growing market depth will be evenly matched.  Demand will fight the sliding car to a standstill, for somewhere between 4 days and a couple of weeks youre going to see:

1.  A price thats not really moving anywhere, but with big frequent spikes in either direction.  
2.  A  prolonged increase in volume.
3.  An order book that starts out relatively even, but gradually moves to far more "bid" depth than ask depth for the same price range.

When that happens, youll know its time to buy.

>This is a misconception. The distribution problem is a perpetual one, even if we had a perfectly even distribution today , the issue still wouldn't be solved as the power would concentrated as price rises.

No, its not.  It isn't about more "even" distribution, its about having a sufficient number of major stake holders so that 3 or 4 people aren't deciding rewards by themselves, and we can actually benefit from the wisdom of the crowd.  Until there's actually an opportunity for real investors, and not just ninjas, to have a real stake for a not insane amount of money, steemit, and the price of steem  will founder.

>Regarding your price prediction, I doubt many whales would sell under 10 cents, unless they really need the money now or believe the price will not be higher than 10 cents in the future ( which is extremely unlikely)

And because steem is just so super awesome, when the whales decide that they want the price to be more than 10 cents, everyone will just line up to buy from them at whatever price they want.

Or, people won't be willing to pay, and we'll see exactly what were seeing now.  Sluggish volume, low demand  and steadily declining market price.  Spoiler alert.  Its the second one.

You seem to have the notion in your head that this is a sellers market.  It isn't.  What price the whales are willing to sell at is irrelevant.

>They can't force volume, but they can maintain price. If people don't see the point of selling below 0.05, then the price just won't get to the 0.01 that might be attractive to many buyers. It will stagnate at 0.05 with few sellers and few buyers. i.e. low volume. That's actually what we've been seeing for a long time, but with a more or less steady declining trend.

If _no one_ sees the point of selling below 5 cents or 10 cents or whatever, then the price won't go lower than that and you can absolutely hold the line and maintain price.

If _almost no one_ sees the point, then you'll see precisely what you are describing.  Sluggish volume and a relatively gradual downward trend.

That is to say, whales can build a dam of 10 cent asks or 5 cent asks or whatever, and refuse to sell below that level.  But the dam will leak when as  little guys pop up and want cash now and just accept the highest available bid (or pop up on the ask side and front run the whales).  My gut tells me the system is too big to do anything about that leak.  I don't see it being feasible to convince everyone to stop selling, or even almost everyone.

There are enough people on the platform that need the money (or are just willing to take the highest price they can get regardless) so that the volume that trickles past is what is going to move the price point.  IN a low demand environment where 95% of the money isnt moving because the major holders don't want to sell, the market price is going to be set by the 5 percent who are selling.

You have a point though that there comes a point where its no longer worthwhile for the little guys  to sell  either, at a certain price point  what they would get from selling their relatively small powerdowns and rewards is too trivial to be worth the effort.  Or, to phrase it a little more positively, the upside potential of a rally far outweighs the immediate rewards of cashing out.

>ll told I think you get much better redistribution at high prices with high demand than low prices with low demand. Of course, that isn't something you can choose.

Its kind of chicken and egg.  To get high prices and high demand, there needs to be a significant level of growth.  And to get significant growth there has to be better distribution.  Though, both of the previous two statements are purely my subjective opinion.  Im sure there are many who would argue that we can have high prices and high demand with the current size of the ecosystem just due to market speculation.

>It is more than a little managed that ned and dan stopped powering down. They are the largest stakeholders. Others in the dev team are very large stakeholders and have stopped powering down to (I don't know how 'managed' that is, but ned and dan are plenty to describe the situation as managed).

I articulated my point poorly.  The point i was trying to make was that the powerdowns really don't have that much of an effect on price.  I think its laudable for ned, dan and other major stakeholders to hold off (especially since it would avoid the perception that they changed the rules for their own benefit)  but ultimately, i don't think it would make a ton of difference from a price perspective, unless they powered down and immediately dumped the power downs on the market for whatever chunk of the bid book they could get (and i take it as a given that none of them are reckless enough to do that).