Over the course of Steem's existance and rule changes to the blockchain there has been a lot more backroom door deals such as "vote my account and I'll send you the post rewards through an exchange". Basically many attempting to max out and take as much value off of the platform from speculative money and investors being the ones getting rekt if they didn't hold for long term or sell in time. Might be a reason why many don't like Steem and haven't looked back at what's going on here. Anyway, nowadays most ways to maximize your ROI are out there in the open, we're starting to hit max "shady money being generated" but there will always be some that are invested and at the same time constantly taking a bite from the rewardpool which ends up on exchanges. Steem still has a long runway though and over the cycles it will filter itself out, there's always a price for people who aren't planning on being long term. If there is interest, they will find ways to get even the biggest steem fans to sell. :P

Anyway, due to not a lot of natural curation happening anymore I think this means that there's a lot less "easy" steem to be earned like there's been in the past. I imagine if the next bull run for BTC goes beyond past ATH's and Steem is still going strong we will see numbers in our ATH we haven't thought be possible so soon. Oh well, time will tell. This comment got sidetracked quite a lot already. :P