Do You Want Redistribution Or Not?

This is a question I ask in all honesty.

It seems like there are who do not like selling. I have a feeling they are complainers but let us take a look at it.

From what I understand, and I admit I did not look it up myself, there is a Whale who is selling some STEEM. This person, for whatever reason, decided to power down.

Oh no, what does this person know? Steem must be dying; the price collapsing AND a Whale selling out.

A couple months back @ned powered down a fair portion of STEEM. This too was the beginning of the end. Surely he must know something bad is coming.

Of course, we have the usual mantra that the Whales have too much power, only care about themselves, just circle vote, and are only on Steem for a profit.

And this is a bad thing.

So which it is?

Is having a power distribution where the vast percentage of tokens in the hands of a few bad or is it when some of these power holders decide to sell out?

You cannot have it both ways.

Personally, I feel everyone should want a more equal distribution of STEEM. This is going to happen in two ways.

https://busy.org/@arcange/steemit-statistics-20181123-en

The first is through the reward pool. Each month I put up stats along with charts from @arcange depicting how the power breaking in MVests is changing. And it is changing.

Over time the Whales are getting less powerful while the other categories are gaining more. The drawback to this approach, even though it is happening, is the pace of change. It is very slow. We are talking a percent move down for the Whales along with a similar, although sometimes smaller, move up for the others.

In other words, we are looking at many years before we see the power spread out. Of course, by the time we are Bitcoin's age, you would see a radical difference even at this pace.

The other way that the power distribution can change is through the larger accounts selling.. This allows the holding they sell, presumably, to be spread over a number of different buyers on the open market.

For example, let us use a simple case. Suppose a Whale sells 200K STEEM on the open market that was powered down. If this STEEM is bought by 10 accounts and powered up, there are now 10 more Dolphins with 20K SP apiece. This is a much preferred system.

Obviously, we know real world, that does not happen. The 200K might be purchased by hundreds of different people and then traded by a number of them. Some will be powered up with a bunch sitting on exchanges. Nevertheless, some was used to make others stronger while strengthening the entire ecosystem.

The larger accounts selling helps the entire system because it changes the distribution. Couple with with a low price on STEEM and smaller accounts have a chance to improve their stake by powering up.

This is a desired outcome.

BUT...you cannot have it both ways. If you want a radically different distribution, people need to buy STEEM while larger accounts also sell. Certainly there can be some other Whales who power up as another is powering down but you get my point.

Larger sellers, while painful in the short-term, will provide a long-term advantage.

Of late, I started playing around with some of the STEEM holding stats on @steemitboard. One thing I started watching, and it is totally arbitrary, is the number of accounts with 1 SP in them. I did this because it is the starting point for greater distribution. It might take 1M accounts with 1 SP to have a chance of getting 20K accounts with 500 SP. The path to Minnow starts with that first payout (or purchase).

There are now 260,860 accounts with at least 1 SP in them. This was up from 260,801 yesterday, or an increase of 59. While there is a good chance many, if not most, of these accounts end up in the inactive bucket, there is the possibility that a few of them become dedicated Steemians posting on a daily basis.

I honestly have no idea how these numbers look since I just started following it. Are they up or down? Is it progressing with more people getting that first payout as compared to before? I have no clue. However, I do know if we had, right now, 1M accounts with at least 1 SP in them, we would have a better distribution. Alas, that is not the case but it is worth monitoring to see if the pace starts to accelerate.

I realize there are many out there who simply will never be happy and will complain no matter what takes place. You would think with all the blasting of the system throughout the year, about how it is unfair that the larger accounts were able to get STEEM cheap, that there would be a mad dash for Minnow. As I write this, STEEM is 33 cents. That means any account with 170 SP could become a Minnow for $100 (actually it take 496.49 SP to reach Minnow right now).

https://steemdb.com/

Alas, this is not the case.

What is taking place, based upon their posting is that many who believe in the long-term vision of STEEM, those who have a fair bit of SP in many cases, are adding to their positions. They are taking advantage of the opportunity to buy some STEEM at a price long thought gone.

These people are enhancing their own stake which will benefit their activity on the Steem blockchain going forward.

It also helps the distribution because the total MVests of the Dolphins and Orcas is increasing significantly. The "middle class" is getting stronger.

And this is good for all of us.

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The usual: this is not financial advice; do your own research; talk to the pros; etc...