was thinking about this discussion yesterday night, and it occurred to me that there is actually a fourth option you didnt consider.
Power down and hold liquid steem. People doing this actually would have the same effect on price as those remaining powered up.
For a lot of people (like me for example), even if i deicded not to sell, i would rather have my money available to use if i wanted to.
With steem power no longer offering a significant amount of interest, and the inflation rate kept way down, holding liquid steem is no longer automatically a bad choice -- especially if you don't have the time or inclination to curate
agree! we might see some people holding steem and re-acting quickly to rising prices
Not only did you forget about those who may power down but not sell...you also forgot about those who previously wouldn't buy steem to begin with (due to hyper-inflation) but now will.
Also, much of your analysis seems to assume that everyone who begins powering down next week will continue to do so weekly. But with weekly powerdowns now 8X the size, I think many people will opt to power down 1 week at a time only periodically, perhaps once every 4 to 8 weeks.
My personal take on the people outside of steem who clutched their pearls and wrung their hands at the super high inflation rate was that they didnt like the idea of steem/steemit for a variety of reasons, and were hanging their hat on the inflation rate because inflation is sort of a weird crypto/btc fetish. (i once had a big BTC enthusiast earnestly tell me that BTC was better than gold as an investment, because the number of BTC that could be created was fixed, while new gold would be created forever inside of stars in space)
Which is to say, i don't believe that there are a significant number of people out there for whom the rate of inflation is the one singular thing thats keeping them away. I could be wrong though(i think the whole "inflation" issue is nonsense from top to bottom)...
Great point re: the pre-fork hyperinflation inhibiting buyers. Two things that concerned me the most as a STEEM investor:
I'm now uninhibitedly bullish STEEM :)