Steem (STEEM) Price Today & Live Chart

What is Steem?

Steem is a community-focused blockchain launched in March 2016 that powers social media and content platforms through incentivized rewards. Built by Ned Scott and Daniel Larimer (the creator of BitShares and later EOS) under the company Steemit Inc., it was one of the first blockchains designed specifically for social applications rather than pure financial transactions. Users earn STEEM tokens by creating and upvoting high-quality content across the ecosystem, with rewards funded by token inflation rather than advertising revenue. The flagship application, Steemit.com, launched alongside the chain and quickly became one of the most-used dApps in crypto during the 2017 bull cycle, spawning a wave of related platforms such as DTube (video), DSound (audio), Busy, and Splinterlands (blockchain gaming), which later migrated to its own chain. Steem uses a Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus model with 21 active witnesses producing blocks, enabling three-second block times and fee-less transactions for end users — a critical feature for social media scale. The project experienced a major governance controversy in early 2020 when Justin Sun (founder of Tron) acquired Steemit Inc. and, in coordination with several major exchanges, used customer-deposited STEEM to vote in new witnesses, overriding the existing community. This event triggered a hard fork led by long-standing community members, creating the Hive blockchain as a direct fork of Steem's state at block 41,818,752, with most core developers, dApps, and active users migrating to Hive. Steem continued to operate under new leadership aligned with the Tron/Steemit Inc. camp, and in 2021 STEEM tokens were integrated more closely with the Tron ecosystem, including airdrops and cross-chain support. Today the Steem ecosystem is significantly smaller than at its 2017-2018 peak, but it still maintains active witnesses, a functioning reward pool, and a core group of content-focused dApps. STEEM remains listed on major exchanges including Binance, Upbit, HTX, and others, and the chain continues to process content transactions daily. The three-token model — STEEM (liquid), Steem Power (staked influence), and Steem Dollars or SBD (a USD-pegged token) — remains one of the more ambitious experiments in aligning content incentives with token economics, and the project's history is frequently cited in discussions about blockchain governance, exchange custody risk, and the challenges of decentralized social media. For real-time price action, market capitalization, and live trading volume, traders typically monitor CoinGecko, CoinMarketCap, and the STEEM/USDT and STEEM/BTC pairs on Binance.

Key Features of Steem

• Content Monetization Engine: Steem's reward pool distributes newly minted STEEM to authors and curators based on stake-weighted upvotes, allowing users to earn cryptocurrency directly for posts, comments, and curation activity. Unlike ad-supported platforms, creator income comes from protocol-level inflation rather than third-party advertisers.
• Fee-less DPoS Throughput: The chain uses Delegated Proof of Stake with 21 elected witnesses producing 3-second blocks, enabling high transaction throughput suitable for social media workloads. Users pay no direct transaction fees; bandwidth is instead allocated proportionally based on Steem Power holdings.
• Three-Token Economy: Steem operates with STEEM (the liquid, tradable token), Steem Power (staked STEEM that grants voting influence and rewards), and Steem Dollars (SBD, a token designed to track approximately one US dollar in value). This separation lets users hold speculative, governance, or stable positions within one native system.
• Built-in On-Chain Social Data: All posts, comments, votes, and follows are stored directly on the Steem blockchain rather than in off-chain databases, making content portable and censorship-resistant at the protocol layer. Multiple independent front-ends can read the same underlying social graph.
• Stake-Weighted Governance: Holders of Steem Power vote directly for the 21 witnesses who produce blocks and set chain parameters, giving stakeholders real on-chain influence over protocol upgrades. This model delivers fast governance decisions but also concentrates power in large holders, as demonstrated during the 2020 Steem/Hive split.

Steem Use Cases

• Creator Rewards on Social dApps: Bloggers, photographers, and commentators post content on Steemit-style front-ends and earn STEEM and SBD when their work receives upvotes within the seven-day reward window. This creates a direct, transparent alternative to ad-revenue-sharing models used by Web2 platforms.
• Decentralized Application Hosting: Developers build social, publishing, and community dApps on top of Steem's account system and on-chain storage, reusing the existing user base and reputation graph. Historical examples include video platforms, podcast sites, and community forums that share authentication with the base chain.
• Fee-Free Micro-Transactions: Because transfers cost no gas fees, STEEM and SBD can be used for tipping, small donations, and reward distributions that would be uneconomical on fee-based chains. Communities use this for contests, bounties, and peer-to-peer support.
• On-Chain Community Governance: DAO-style communities use Steem Power voting to elect witnesses, fund proposals through the Steem Proposal System (SPS), and steer chain-level decisions. Stake delegation further allows larger holders to empower active curators without transferring ownership.
• USD-Denominated Payments with SBD: Steem Dollars provide a relatively stable unit of account inside the ecosystem for pricing services, paying freelancers, or settling bounties without volatility exposure to STEEM itself. Though the peg is imperfect and depends on witness-set feed prices, SBD remains in active use for in-ecosystem commerce.

Steem Tokenomics

Total Supply

Steem has no hard cap. Supply expands continuously via a decreasing annual inflation rate that started near 9.5% after hard fork 16 and decreases by roughly 0.5% per year until it reaches a long-term floor of around 0.95%.

Circulating

A significant portion of supply is locked as Steem Power, which requires a 13-week powerdown to convert back into liquid STEEM. Dynamic — see CoinGecko for live circulating and total supply figures.

Utility

STEEM is used to transfer value, to power up into Steem Power for voting influence and curation rewards, and to pay for premium resources such as account creation. SBD provides a USD-denominated unit within the ecosystem, while Steem Power governs witness elections and proposal funding.

Emission

Of newly issued STEEM, roughly 65% funds the content reward pool (split between authors and curators), about 15% goes to Steem Power holders as interest, 10% rewards witnesses for block production, and 10% funds the Steem Proposal System worker pool.

How to Buy Steem

1. 1

   1. Create a Binance Account

   Go to binance.com or open the Binance mobile app and register with your email or phone number, then set a strong password and enable two-factor authentication via Google Authenticator. Complete identity verification (KYC) from the Dashboard under 'Identification' by uploading a government ID and completing facial verification.

2. 2

   2. Deposit Funds

   From the Binance homepage click 'Wallet' → 'Fiat and Spot' → 'Deposit' to fund your account with USD, EUR, or another supported fiat via bank transfer or card, or choose 'Crypto Deposit' to send USDT, BTC, or BNB from an external wallet. Wait for the required confirmations before funds show as available for trading.

3. 3

   3. Navigate to the STEEM Market

   Click 'Trade' → 'Spot' in the top navigation and type 'STEEM' into the pair search box on the right side of the trading interface. Select the STEEM/USDT or STEEM/BTC pair depending on which asset you deposited; the full order book and chart will load.

4. 4

   4. Place Your Order

   In the order panel choose 'Market' for an immediate fill at the best available price, or 'Limit' to set your own buy price. Enter the amount of USDT you want to spend or the quantity of STEEM you want to receive, then click the green 'Buy STEEM' button and confirm.

5. 5

   5. Withdraw or Hold

   Your STEEM will appear under 'Wallet' → 'Spot'. To move tokens to the native Steem blockchain, click 'Withdraw', paste your Steem account name, and include the memo exactly as shown — Steem uses account-name addresses with required memos, so any mistake can cause permanent loss of funds.

Frequently Asked Questions