RE: Summarized Explanation for the Falling Price of Steem
Nesting limit reached. Replying to:
Btw, the payouts are in SBD, which is then split as 50% SP/50 % (SBD and Steem).
Check your author rewards in the history section:
Author reward of 0.003 SD, 0.114 STEEM and 0.132 STEEM POWER for dek/no-more-steem-margin-trading-on-poloniex
You were paid in all 3 currencies. 50% STEEM Power (SP) and the other 50% was split between SBD and STEEM. The proportion of SBD and STEEM varies according to some formula that I don't know, but it always seems to be 50% SP.
I don't understand how the daily reward pool is generated (its size and in what currency)?
The whitepaper is vague on that. As far as I can find, it only gives annual numbers. Basically, total numbers of STEEM are inflated at 100% per year, 90% of the new STEEM is distributed to existing SP holders. The remaining 10% "...is distributed to users submitting, voting on, and discussing content.... the actual distribution will depend upon the voting patterns of users..."
That annual reward distribution is described here: https://steem.io/SteemWhitePaper.pdf#page=35, but I don't know exactly how that maps back to the available pool for any particular post.
We are both saying the same thing - it's 50% in SP and 50% in Steem and SBD (the latter two's proportion keeps changing according to the economic logic of the developers - it's not just a formula, they change it by hand, from what I've seen).
The White Paper is written as vaguely as possible. This suggests to me and any investors, that the developers had no idea whether their project was economically sound or not, and they intentionally did not specify certain aspects clearly, which would allow them to tweak things as the system develops. This, however, makes the system rather vulnerable to market speculation - traders are not investing in the system itself, but are speculating on the economic knowledge and whim of the developers. Since modern day trading is all about analyzing widely available data and not the private thought process of a couple of people, this makes Steem rather unattractive (or rather - attractive for bearish trading).
That said, according to page 35 in the White Paper (which you've linked), it seems that the daily pool is generated in Steem. There's also a mechanism for reducing the incentive for mining Steem after a certain block number.
Think about this - either the developers had a perfect vision for the future of Steem and knew at which exact point in its development significant inflation (or oversupply of Steem) would kick in (it's now obvious they overestimated the popularity of their project and actually didn't have a good idea), or they have very bad ideas about programming (hard setting variables is a no no for most programmers) and economics (which no one on this planet fully comprehends; what they've did is put a flag in the middle of a river, over which they now have little control).
Anyway, it's a long topic and I'm grateful for your comment!