Feels like competition is harder at a given rating now.

Probably the more important point is that at a low blitz rating of 400, one is nonetheless playing better than 15% of the site's users. I'm almost up that far. I'm in the 300s, and I'm playing better than 13% of blitz players.

True, there can be a lot of variance, but remember that 66% winning streak I mentioned above was over 39 games (my 7-day record at the time I checked it), which is enough to average out a lot of variance in opposing players' strength.  Over a lifetime record of 875 games on this account, I haven't ever had a streak like that before, which suggests strongly that it's signal, not noise.

I have had the exact same problem.  Previously rated close to 2000.  I'm now fighting to stay in mid-900s.  It seems the mid or low 900 players I'm playing against are either the less advanced players I would expect at that level, against whom I usually win or recently about 60% of the time they almost play perfect and I find myself in time trouble if not losing outright.  I'm wondering if we are often playing against bots.  I agree with an earlier player who posted that the rating is not that important.  Bots or real players, this Is a great tool to learn chess.  Still, the lower rating is a bit discouraging because maybe it is just as simple as that for whatever reason I'm just not playing as well.  Still, it does seem like the players I'm playing against with lower ratings are much more challenging.  For whatever reason.