So, at present STEEM is trading at a very low price, a very steep reduction in asset value over the last few days, so what is going on?

Here are my thoughts.

Firstly Bitcoin has crashed, this will always affect altcoins, however during the day prior to the Bitcoin crash there was a VERY large volume increase on Bittrex, close to quadruple, and clear patterns of shake-outs were occurring.

Now we have this recent drop which looks catastrophic but has not broken support even when volume dropped to below 50 BTC buy orders.

Do NOT panic, make a little money sure, take a small portion of your STEEM and buy low, then sell higher to increase your STEEM holdings but do not go all in when doing this, especially if you have over 5 BTC or so of STEEM.

I noticed on Bittrex that every time there were large panic sells with short distances between their values they were immediately bought up en mass and then the price was allowed to drop back down to support to shake out more STEEM.

So why is this happening. Well to understand that, we need to look at the one day chart for STEEM:

Look at that chart and you can clearly see where STEEM is expected to go very soon.

So, given that STEEM is due it's rise, I think its pretty clear that this manipulation is just the big players attempting to shake STEEM out of your hand into theirs before said rise.

So, I say this, stay strong STEEMites (if you believe in STEEM), hold your STEEM and wait for the rise, I am targeting end of August for the rise, I suspect earlier, so a good buy opportunity right now if you are low on STEEM.

We have been through these crashes a lot in crypto, it's nothing to be concerned about and is arguably healthy for the market, weak hands = instability, it's better we get rid of them so that STEEM can move toward it's next leg up.

I wanted to post this as there has been a lot of panic lately and in my opinion it's unwarranted.

ATB - Mantrid