( edit below)
i'm not saying it doesn't have potential but as to mass adoption ... i doubt your local proverbial masses will be enticed by a network that requires payment to post more than one puppy a day , at the risk of being downvoted by anyone at any time ...

and the price ... as long as its hyperinflated it can simply mathematically not be bitcoin
so if the masses wont come there will be no advertisers and if the inflation wont stop i dont how the price can rise, theres a vast pool thats been mined at the very beginning, not vested in SP , just waiting to be sold of

in almost three years now, every single time i bought steem i saw the price drop a week after or so ... its euh
im gonna need to see it first ... but i'm sticking around , its like a pair of old shoes by now :)

(edit:) + plus

i have said these things more than once, its not just the inflation and the ninjamined pool , the few people i have actually asked (telling them i would give them a free account myself , where they didnt have to give their phonenumber, and id put some sp in it to start like the normal 15) were not interested after asking "can i just do like facebook" (talk to everyone at any time about anything for as much as i want whenever i want)
so the answer to that is "no you can't , that depends on how much SteemPower you have .." 
"so how do i get it"
"well people can vote, but at the moment that takes a llooong time unless you get lucky" (im not about to lie to friends or family)
"or you can buy it"

so that was the end then for that, pretty normal people really ... 
there's issues all around, the witness system is vulnerable te exploitation on all sides, there's plenty here who will sell off the moment they get : give 1000 CCC they sell for steem, give 100 steem they sell for ltc or something (these are facts, right, being positive about it does not make it go away)
the army of 15sp downvoters as i just found out seems to revolve around one witness vote :

https://steemit.com/report/@rudyardcatling/trollhunter20191219-201912190200134711

(work in progress but it already shows and the original camillesteemr no longer has delegated sp and has 94 instead of 15 by now (nothing can be done about that but counter-vote)

thats WAY too complicated and the interest of Alice and Bob in what is defined as 'good' content by the happy few who are in charge is highly over-estimated

you have the splinterlands flagship but (and thats no offense because i think they do sound business the way they do it) they don't rely on the value of steem, they just got started on the chain and they act as the main exposure for it at this time, but in the end they work with dollars, not steem, they sell for dollar, not steem AND
correct me if i'm wrong, yabapmatt himself literally stated "Steem is a business expense for us" (which is awesomely correct thinking there, since i assume that means tax deduction on top , its BUSINESS, right, not charity) so if i read correctly the steemmonsters whale is mainly for promotion, AND to delegate SP to potential players so they dont miss out on anyone who would get an account otherwise (means those people dont have to buy steem, but they DO have to play splinterlands ... if you scrape off the salespitch and the cardonomics and whatnot (inflation in game items and devaluation on a new expansion for games is just a fact ... im not sure if cards can be lost other than losing your steemkey) if you scrape that off they come out with the most sane business plan available here
so they are GOOD for steemIT but not necessarily for steem ... no one who comes to play splinterland has a vested intrest in buying steem, not if they come for the game

so

at the risk of being mister negative .. i think someone needs to hold the candle to the facts because people seem to get high on dopamine jackpots all the time

if they went it would be a disaster but what WOULD be great is if they kicked a side-project that revolves around the currency STEEM itself (ofcourse ... why WOULD YOU do THAT if its going nowhere but down and you have your hands full with what must be their life's work at the moment, the masterpiece de resistance)

i try to keep it real , even if im supposed to go YAY, FREE DOWNVOTES will bring my grandma to the table to buy steem to post pictures of me when i was little (i just cant see that happening ...) as an exaggerated example

potential to the chain ? pretty HUGE , probably mostly untapped but it

i dont know it should maybe un-hinge from steem-it , get REALLY decentralized and first of all make sure witness votes can only be cast once
that requires a registered account ... 
so the right to vote witness will require proof of id ... nothing abnormal there, and no obligations you dont HAVE to vote on witnesses, a bit like the states, right ?

there's nothing
to prevent any witness from having 10k accounts whales claim accounts all the time and vote witness for themselves , NOTHING to prevent that

so , unless you assume they're all like total Elliott Ness and superhuman ..?

and i got lost more but im out of RC and tired

that and the removal of negative voteweight

i had a worse idea where the reward pool comes from the pockets of the whales actually ...

good thing im not interested in politics hey, it doesn leave room for creativity, my stuff has been under attack several times by downvote trolls or cartels who dont even bother checking what it is and what it does

the way things are now ... and read a bit on the steem-engine tokens btw ... the draft on CATS make KITTENS mentions numbers like 10 STEEM and 50 STEEM so i assume they lost the illusion too already

i eagerly await the first proposal that doesn't spell 'save the whale' :)

in the mean time i'll just be doing what i do ... at current rates just voting and stuff i calculated it would take like 100+ years if i started withdrawing the revenue to get my money back

is that you mean by longterm :D 

gtg

have a nice day, keep on going for it, but pro-active, okay, not re-gurgitating what the top 5 witnesses and emperor stInc dictates
disruption ... was the magic word ...
but in the age of disruption now conformity the norm
anyway ... you have a nice day, keep going at it, i will do the same lol (but if i have a business model ever i will take after splinterlands and make sure it doesnt rely on steem value there)