When you vote for a post or comment, the payout doesn't come from your wallet. It comes from the daily reward pool which is created out of thin air by the approximately 8% annual inflation in the number of Steem in existence. Creating new tokens tends to lower it's price, but since Steemit is growing, that offsets the inflation and the price can go up. it all depends on what investors think Steem is worth, same as any other investment. It's worth what people are willing to pay for it.
Steem is the main token here, and is traded on exchanges at whatever price people are willing to pay on any given day. Steem Power is just Steem locked up for 13 weeks and is used to determine how much of the reward pool your vote allocates. It also earns interest by receiving some of the newly created Steem from inflation. Steem Backed Dollars (SBD) are a debt instrument backed by Steem tokens and their supply and interest are set by our elected witnesses in order to try to keep it at a stable price of around a dollar. But since it is also traded on markets, it has been worth up to $15 in the last few months.
Hope that helps a little. The Steem White Paper goes into all this in more depth. https://steem.io/SteemWhitePaper.pdf
Best wishes!
wow thanks so much for the info! I've read longer articles about the steem tokens and opened the white paper but my eyes glazed over every time haha and most of the articles i read were about powering up and all of it has been such unfamiliar terminology and explanations but this is the best, clearest description I've read so far and think I'm starting to get a handle on it ( finalllyyyyy!) haha. thanks so much for taking the time to answer and describe it in layman terms - i think the crypto world could use a lot more people like you breaking down the basics :)
I'm glad I was able to help a bit! :) I've been here almost 2 years so I kind of have an idea of how things work.
Bottom line is, if you believe in Steemit and think it will be even bigger in the future, try to accumulate as much Steem Power as you can. You could do this by risking some of your own money, but maybe it's more fun and less stress to just vote on posts and comments every day, along with posting and commenting yourself when you have something to say. :)
What is remarkable is that the value of Steem and SBD have grown relative to the USD, despite the inflation built in.
The US Federal Reserve has a 2.0 annual inflation rate target and has been diligent about maintaining that low, low rate of inflation, even if it throws people out of work. That makes the dollar appear strong, doesn't it? But the price of SBD and Steem have been on the rise for more than a year, relative to the prices seen early last year.
There is more to this than just the allure of cryptocurrency. The power of money can be seen when money circulates. That's why they call it currency. When money sits in a bank account, it has little power. But when it moves, it has far more power. (Oh no, I feel an article coming on...)
Another factor in the power of money is in accessibility. The more people that have a particular currency, the more they use it. Check out this article by @taskmaster. And this one by @scottsantens. Both of them make great points about how Manna will become a powerful currency by making it easy to get.
Same is true of Steem and SBD. Just create and post content. Do it consistently on a daily basis, and focus on quality. Be dedicated to your craft. The act of creation is the mining process. No GPUs required.
This is why I love Steemit. I can't even drag myself to post on FB or Google+ anymore. It's not worth the effort....unless I'm promoting my content on Steemit.
To be fair, I have some Ethereum I bought when it was relatively cheap. I have some Lightcoin that I use to send to other exchanges from Coinbase. Most of my investments have tanked for now, but I don't have to sell anything. I can wait. I'm incredibly patient.
So while I'm waiting, I'm curating, commenting and posting here. I sleep better at night when I do something every day on Steemit. It's a habit that serves me.