STEEM is the native currency of Steem, a blockchain that powers a decentralized social network called Steemit.

STEEM launched in April 2016 at 77 cents. It briefly soared to $4.66 in July of that year before falling to 16 cents later that autumn.

The coin hit its all-time high of $8.19 during the 2017/2018 initial coin offering (ICO) boom. STEEM had flatlined by the crypto winter of 2019, cruising along at about 10 cents to 20 cents.

The token again rose in the crypto bull market of 2021, hitting $1.41 in the second quarter, crashing to 23 cents in the summer, and briefly rising to 75 cents in the fourth quarter. When the crypto market crashed even harder in May 2022, STEEM fell as low as 18 cents, a 97% retreat from its all-time high in January 2018.

STEEM started with a supply of 0, but the founders, Dan Larimer and Ned Scott, “ninjamined” (covertly mined) 80% of the coins. These funds became the subject of controversy when Justin Sun, the founder of Tron and CEO of BitTorrent, acquired the network in 2020. The debacle ultimately derailed trust in the network and spawned a hard fork, Hive.

STEEM is an inflationary asset. In 2016, new STEEM was issued at a rate of 9.5% a year. The rate of inflation decreases by 0.01% after every 250,000 blocks, an approximate reduction of about 0.5% a year. The network will continue decreasing its inflation rate until it reaches 0.95%, which should take about 20 years, according to data network provider Messari.

Ten percent of new STEEM coins are awarded to block producers that validate transactions through the blockchain’s consensus mechanism, delegated-proof-of-stake (DPoS). Fifteen percent of the coins go to STEEM stakers (who receive governance tokens steem power, or SP tokens, proportionate to their stake). The remaining 75% of new tokens go to those who post or comment on Steemit, the social network associated with the blockchain.

Steem is the blockchain that powers Steemit, a decentralized social network that looks and functions like Reddit. The major difference is that high-performing posts earn cryptocurrencies. Payouts are split across four tokens – steem dollars (the network’s quasi-stablecoin), STEEM, steem power and tron (TRX).

According to web traffic analytics platform Similarweb, Steemit is the 22,723rd most popular website in the world.

Steem was started by Dan Larimer and Ned Scott. When Larimer left to work on EOS, Scott stayed on as Steemit’s CEO. In 2020, Justin Sun, the founder of Tron, offered Scott close to $8 million to buy the company that ran the network, Steemit, Inc., as well as his ninjamined stake, according to Decrypt.

While Sun’s acquisition bought him a massive voting stake on the network, community members considered it a hostile takeover and voted to freeze Sun’s tokens until they had worked out his intentions for the site. This blocked Sun from exerting power over the network and using his tokens.

Sun responded to the coup by threatening legal action against what he called “hackers” and calling on his allies at exchanges to reinstate his power. It worked, until the community rallied against him once again, and convinced STEEM whales to kick Sun out.

The conflict continued, but Sun, a billionaire, was able to amass enough STEEM tokens to tighten his grip. The community responded by forking the blockchain into Hive on March 20, 2020. Hive is a replica of the Steem blockchain, and Steemit banned Sun and excluded the ninjamined stake.

Hive emerged as the clear victor of the Pyrrhic war. As of June 2022, Hive’s token has a market cap of $215 million, while STEEM is far smaller at $100 million. Plus, Hive is home to one of crypto’s largest video games: the popular non-fungible token (NFT) game, Splinterlands.