That makes sense, i'll have to read the HF 20 / velocity proposal again to make sure I understand it.

The more I think about it though maybe having it be harder to get an account is a good thing. I think the fact that Facebook was a closed service initially (you had to have an email address from an approved college to join) helped it to take off like it did.

I was in college in the Boston area when Facebook first came out of Harvard and it was a big deal when our school got added and we were able to join. Scarcity creates value and the same could potentially be applied to Steem accounts.

If Steem does have a spike in popularity and accounts are hard to come by it could actually create even more buzz and demand to get in. Of course I imagine in the future we'll have to deal with people creating and selling high reputation accounts, but that's a different story.

A lot to think about here! It makes you realize how very very new Steem still is and how much it still has left to grow. Hopefully it will take the STEEM token price with it :-)