Don't get confused with all the SBD that was printed (and worth 5$ each). It is just that the tokens are worth so much less right now that it seems unattractive. When you say reward pool you actually are talking about the worth of the tokens paid out (in Dollars).
No I'm not talking about the worth of the tokens paid out in dollars. That is exactly why you're missing my point. I'm talking about the worth of the tokens when sold or bought for BTC. This isn't about the dollar value for people who are all in on crypto (long term crypto investors).
And in terms of the worth in BTC the value doesn't grow. Yes you can say the value in USD went up only because Bitcoin went up but that doesn't show me there is demand for Steem independent of Bitcoin which is what I need to see to know the market is fairly valuing Steem.
The USD price is irrelevant because you can't buy Steem on Coinbase right now.
Token worth in camparison to BTC can only ever grow in a BTC bullmarket. That is because the percentage gains in "good" altcoins exceed the percentage gains of BTC by far.
And don't you see a problem if a token can only grow if BTC grows? That means the ecosystem as a whole is not sustainable and literally is merely an extension of the success of BTC.
The problem is Steem has a huge ecosystem (one of the biggest) yet the market cap isn't even top 15. Dogecoin and a bunch of others are higher in market cap in both USD and BTC terms (however you want to look at it).
So how can I ignore the market cap of Steem going down? If what I'm saying isn't a big deal explain a market cap of $263,671,229 USD (only 40,582 BTC !) for the most mainstream platform in the entire crypto ecosystem?
The market cap should be in the billions. Projects which just launched have a market cap in the billions and they don't even have 100k users.
have you heard about emotional vest?
something that has this much energy, innovation, leadership stake, holding duration, and many other factors including ego....has real lasting power
don't discount the emotional vest of steem users, even those who are in active have either 1. not powered down 2. powered down but not sold 3. powered down and sold only part and still check steem dapps periodically
and one of the strongest evidence, those who were given loads of free alt-social-media coins who were minnows or at best few dolphins that supposedly moved onto another crypto to become equivalent of large Orcas there....are still here! explain that...
Steem will likely be the continual goto case study and value mimic of BUIDL in the next 5 years, like it is silently now to the 6 competitors i'm following now