It is the New Age Y2K Modern World so everyone has an opinion, including me ; please understand 3 months ago I could not spell BITCOIN so I am no expert.
If you have ten whales will a million steem power they all have huge voting power. Plus a lot of money tied up in a prototype platform called steemit. Why would they not power down and turn unknown Steem into " real " BTC ?
If whales are selling someone must be buying? why would traders even be buying lots now while the downtrend has been so prolonged. So it must be Steemians and not traders who are buying Steem.
This means mega whales become only huge whales and some minnows become dolphins and new whales are made out of dolphins. But overall the power of steem power is evened out ever the platform. Every day there is a tiny re-balancing when some minnows like me get a slightly more powerful voting voice.
Thus instead of having just ten mega whales now you have hundreds of people who are financially invested in making steemit work. Instead of ten huge voters now you have hundreds of people sharing the love around with voting power.
Over time it will no longer be essential for a post to succeed by catching a whale. People will feel loved and respected. Anyways just my opinion and what would I know ! ! !
LOL :)
See you on the BlockChain ; )
There are always marketmakers on the exchanges who buy to facilitate trade. If you look at the poloniex wallet, they hold a huge amount of steem, which means they are acting as market makers rather than speculators (if speculators were buying, the steem would be in their account). See
https://steemit.com/@poloniex/transfers
You are correct that minnows and dolphins are accumulating steem and steempower - but this is from newly generated steem. I think about 800 steem are generated a minute, and of course voting distributes that new steem. The redistribution isn't enough to sustain the price, because you need new buyers to absorb the steem already generated - that is why we need speculators. All currencies depend on speculators even fiat!