I don't think any change to the economics of steem distribution will have that much of an effect in a positive or negative way on the demand for SP.
The only way to further increase the demand for SP (IMO) is to build out a much more mature and investment worthy ecosystem which surrounds STEEM. There are a variety of projects who are attempting to do that, however it remains to be seen if they will be successful or not.
The only comfort one can take is that the crypto space for as "fast" as it moves. Has proven to actually move at a snails pace when it comes to overall adoption.
At this current stage, I do not see too many reasons to buy steem. The coming HF won't change that, but it also won't really make it any worse overall (IMO of course).
I could go along with that overall.
More specifically though, I think if they really wanted to address "the self voting problem" they needed to go something like 90/10% split for curation/author rewards. Something to incentivize people to not self vote. Policing them with downvotes will cause more damage than good.
I mean the only reason people buy steem right now is to get their ROI via self votes etc, they will be removing this demand driver with the coming hard fork.
Something that might help would be changing the 3 month window to like a 2 week power down window, that might help some in regards to SP demand as well.
With the option of an immediate power down costing 5% of your stake or something like that...
No hedge fund can currently hold SP because they cannot get out in a market crash...
Self voting is less profitable than vote selling though (and a lot more work!).
This is actually a really interesting thought. Immediate powerdown for a price where the lost steem are send to null. Even if the loss was set to 0.5% the idea is kinda brilliant (it would result in a downward pressure on the steem "float" and definitely encourage outside investment and large powerups).
People buy stocks because they can sell them quickly. The 13 week vesting period for holding SP makes it a poor choice for someone who wants to have even moderate liquidity to their capital. If people were locked into a company for 13 weeks after purchasing a security... the stock markets of the world would go nowhere.
Correct.
Regarding vote selling being more profitable than self voting, how do you figure? You can capture 100% of your 10 votes each day by self voting... I haven't seen any vote selling service that gets you above 100% of your 10 votes each day?
I was under the impression that with curation rewards total returns exceed self voting. Perhaps I am wrong.
I think you make more self voting because you get the author reward plus the curation. I think there are some vote selling services that get you very close to that return though, just slightly under I think. I could be wrong as well though because I haven't investigated them all.
In the end, I am sticking with the convenience of vote selling out weighs self voting anyway. As it requires the investor to not do anything to achieve ROI.
However, this is neither here nor there really. The focus should be on building steem value and vote selling/self voting etc still (IMO) don't play a role in that (for benefit or negative).
I wish people would spend more of their time raging at the lack of push toward really building value, than yelling about how people vote. Give people a reason to delegate and invest that can really return value, and you will see self voting disappear.
(also I really like your sentiment that powerdown needs to be able to be instant for a fee, that would really encourage investment)
Perhaps we can start pushing for that with Inc and the next HF, or the next one?