Why Does STEEM Value Fluctuation Appear to be Seasonal?

in #steemit7 years ago

Granted, it's not been around that long so I only have two Summers to go by, but it does seem like the price of STEEM waxes during the Summer and wanes in the Winter. Not as severely this Winter as the last, thank goodness. Those were dark times. I'm talkin' $55 or so per week dark.

Is this going to be the standard going forward? Insane surges every Summer followed by gradual deflation? Isn't that quite like the activity pattern of a hibernating animal. STEEM may be like a living thing in this respect, as the market behavior is reflective of the opinions and behaviors of humans, who are endothermic.

It might make some sort of abstracted sense, then, that cold temperatures which down-regulate human physical activity could also down-regulate human economic activity. If I'm rediscovering the wheel here, by all means let me know.

The post-Summer decline is at least much less steep now that STEEM is a somewhat established currency, and Steemit continues to succeed. One can hope that the pattern will continue, with each year's post-Summer decline being more and more gradual until it evens out into the steady year-round fluctuation seen in other established cryptos.

I say that because the alternative is manic periods of sudden wealth when it's warm and sunny outside followed by several months of desperate scrounging, which is no way to make a living. Having apparently lost the support of a whale recently, who was keeping my earnings just above the threshold I need to make rent, I am going to have to take my belt in a couple notches.

This pattern doesn't mean much to those at the low end who do this purely as a hobby, nor to the whales who make more than they need to live all year round. The people who are somewhere between those two extremes are a different story.

The difference between $20 per post and $10 per post for me is the difference between being able to afford food (and putting away money in savings) or not. I can't get food stamps because I foolishly reported my first Summer's high earnings to them and they believed me without asking to see proof.

But later, when I tried to revise my earnings during the post-Summer decline they suddenly wanted proof my earnings had diminished, which I couldn't provide as Steemit doesn't supply pay stubs and they wouldn't believe my bank statements. This has also recently made it difficult and perhaps impossible to renew my Oregon healthcare coverage. (It remains to be seen)

So if there's anything to this apparent seasonal pattern, I'd love to know about it. STEEM, and moreso Steemit, are new beasts doing things never seen before in the crypto world. As such, especially for those who depend on Steemit earnings to live, any knowledge whatsoever about legitimate patterns in how its price fluctuates would be invaluable.


Stay cozy!

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I'm not sure there's enough data to draw the conclusion that there exists a seasonal pattern for the price of Steem.

That trough on the chart is when SP had very high inflation and everyone was dumping on exchanges, so I don't think we'll see a repeat of that ever again.

Boy do I hope you're right about that. Those were rough times.

There is not too much history to go by regarding many of the new cryptos. I think we need to accumulate a few years worth of data to see patterns regarding seasonal swings in prices. (Like commodities)

Did they say what kind of proof they would accept? When I was self-employed, the Denver food stamp people were happy with a print out from a financial program. Maybe a print-out of your Steemit transactions from the wallet would work? It's ridiculous for them to say that you have to prove you're not making much money, but there's no proof they'll accept.

I tried a printout of my bank statement and that wasn't good enough. Thanks for the suggestion though.

Btw have you been following the Little People trilogy? I don't recall if you've read it before.

Yes, I've been following it. I left a comment on one of them not too long ago. I've become very fond of the main character and keep hoping he'll survive school and somehow get his little people back.

Is that the last of your past writings? If so, I think I've read all of your stuff now, except for one story I skipped several months ago and didn't have the sense to note what it was called. I'll have to check on Inkitt to see if I can find it.

Not quite yet, but close. I am considering posting my published ebooks on here as the Amazon 1 month exclusivity requirement is long since expired.

@alexbeyman,
For me STEEM can reach atleast $400 compare to BTC supply capacity! So, I hope STEEM will rise in next couple of months time and we can enjoy our holding and stakes also!

Cheers~

What I have learned when dealing with authorities: Call the boss. Don't bother with trying it the "normal" way, you have to knock at the door on top. Usually, things happen quickly when they nod. After all you are honest enough reporting your Steem earnings which is not self-evident. In your case, I would start with the state and federal MP. They love helping out in such cases. If they don't , threaten them with negative PR.

On the price peaks: The first of the two drops happened when the payout was introduced for steem. A lot of whales got themselves a golden shower and that screwed up the price for a while. The second one is I believe a manipulation of the price to keep the Steem cheap and floating. The price is quite constant at around 1$ since a while although other successful crytos went up. My hunch is that would have happened to steem too if there weren't a couple of whales keeping the price down by selling off.

Steem (as opposed to Steem Power) is by definition highly inflationary. So for the purpose of technical analysis, wouldn't it be more accurate if we considered the market cap value instead of the price of the token? With the Steem printing press turned on, the price can be in a downtrend while the market cap is actually rising.

Also there's a relationship between SBD, Steem, SP, and I suppose SMT if it's introduced yet. Cryptocurrency in general follows BTC, so there's that.

I don't know exactly either @alexbeyman but that is a great find. Interesting to see what other longer term Steemians have noticed.

Albeit I'm new around here and I don't fully understand the entire ecosystem that is steemit. This is interesting for a few reasons.

From what I gather from your post and what I've learned so far. Success on steemit is driven by a few things. (I'm measuring success by the amount of influence, or $$ a vote can give.) Good content and big whales who have the influence to create value on posts made by the community are the biggest contributors to someones success on the platform.

My concern with the whole model of this platform is that there is a ton of content, enough that thousands, maybe more posts will likely never get seen or voted on. There are definitely not thousands of big whales who can curate content on a daily basis, as a result we have curation bots. Honestly I tend to ignore automated curation as I prefer to have organic growth.

However I've sort of fallen into a recent routine where I'm investing SBD in hopes to power up my account. Eventually this wont be sustainable unless I choose to allocate 50% of SP to SBD. I think I'll continue to use this method and hopefully during the process I'll have enough data to go off whether this is an effective way for anyone knew to the platform to grow their page without the direct influence of a big whale.

The downside is that I'm not getting any human response, yet. Maybe this will change.

I only got bot replies for my first month too.

Cool analysis!!
I'm not sure there is enough data available to suggest this is a certain pattern but you never know.
If this was a thing then it would be too easy to make money knowing exactly when the price would rise and fall.
Will be keeping my eye out for next summer though haha.
Have a wonderful day to all!!

Hmm, interesting observations but as you said it, it hasn't been around that long, so we would only get answers with time. As for the cold temperatures down-regulate economic activity, you have to remember that steem and other crypto-currencies are becoming increasingly popular in other countries around the world so while it may be winter for you it's summer for me, so that should even things out in a few years if that theory is true.