I was having a think about the 4 week powerdown period and I am slightly warming to the idea. If there was a way to make the process more secure than it would be by just changing a variable, I would probably support it. While I don't think that it will make a significant difference for bring in in investor money, I do think that it would likely shake some coins loose from those looking to take advantage of the swings and rather than lose 1/13th of their holdings, they might lose 25% at a time. In the short term this will put downward pressure on price, but long term it could be that those looking long will end up with more as t is easier to sell than buy.

I wonder if it is possible to do an analysis of all account Steem holdings prior to the pump of 2017/18 and then after. I wonder if for example the accounts that are here from 2016 and benefited from early adoption and a small community hold more o less than earlier. Thinking that if someone sold one Steem at the high of $8.30, they would have been able to buy 83 Steem at the lowest point. Even if they sold 1 Steem at 2 dollars, they would be able to buy 11 Steem today. However, most of the accounts that I have seen grow over the last two years are not the old accounts that were large prior to the spike.

The reason is probably a few things including that it is easier to sell Steem than buy Steem and the easier it comes, the easier to release. I find it interesting that the people who are often the most negative on Steem are also the ones who have benefited the most early on and used their earnings to buy land, into BTC, other projects or whatever else they might have bought along the way. Once the price starts to drop, it is hard to buy back because after having benefited, one can have the think it will not reach those heights again and it is lucky they got out when they did.

Perhaps they are right, but perhaps they aren't. What this means is that the more price starts to increase the more fomo they might have, but they will be able to buy less Steem. At the end of November 100 dollars would have bought 1000 Steem, whereas today it will buy about 570. That is quite a difference and if it goes to 25 cents it will buy 400, 50 cents 200. at what point will they bite the bullet and buy? Probably never.

What they will do is try to earn and all of those old accounts will arrive back on Steem hoping that their autos are still in place so they can take all they can as they did before. However, what they might find is that they are no longer as popular as they once were as the community will not only be larger, many of those with stake do not even know who they are were. And to be honest, most of them didn't create the most engaging content back then anyway.

Participation is important in an attention economy and those who made their gains and ran could find themselves struggling on Steem in the future, and they will complain about how broken the system is now and how much better it was when they were earning active and then run again. The reality is that this is a stake-based system when it comes to voting, but that is not the only value that is important as social capital has its place too. And, the attention span is short online, especially when there is more of value out there.

What I am guessing and hoping is that due to the EIP, a lot of people changed their stake and removed their autos from people who have chosen to cash out both their Steem and their relationships, rather than adding to the community during the bear market. I hope this because in my opinion, those who deserve to gain the most from a bullrun should be those who have worked through the hard times to improve Steem or at the very least, staying active. In my opinion, earning is one side of the equation that draws value to an account, but pushing value out from the account is also an important factor and like it or not, in order to do that requires having some Steem power and spreading it.

I was looking at a stat from someone the other day that has earned over 200,000 Steem all told, yet only has earned 4000 in curation. Of course, they do not hold anywhere near that amount in Steem Power. High curation doesn't mean spreading of course though as there are many who have voted nearly exclusively on themselves and their alt accounts to maximize their earnings - no matter how much they earn on their main.

But, getting back to the start to get to the end. I think that if the 4 week powerdown period is introduced there will be many who will take advantage and sell, which will likely dump the price in the next bullrun faster than in the last, but the bullrun after... there might be a lot of holders and in that space in between they will have created an even more valuable floor price which could be higher than the price that the sellers are willing to pay. The question for them is, will they still be able to earn.

When the prices increase they will come a calling, but will someone answer?

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]