I edited my post on the prior page, because I am nearly certain I have deduced the business model plan for Steem:
The whitepaper contains perhaps a hint as to the long-term plan:
Solving the Cryptocurrency Liquidation Problem
A currency that is difficult to use or impossible to sell has little value. Someone who comes across $1.00 worth of Bitcoin will discover that it costs more than $1.00 to sell that Bitcoin. They have to create an account with an exchange, perform KYC validation, and pay fees. Small amounts of cryptocurrency are like small change that people are unwilling to bend over to pick up.
Merchants give users a way to quickly convert their cryptocurrency into tangible goods and services. Merchants need a currency pegged to their unit of account, normally dollars. Accepting a volatile currency introduces significant accounting overhead.
Merchants will accept any currency if it increases their sales. Having a large user base with a stable currency such as SMD lowers the barrier to entry for merchants. The presence of merchants improves the system by creating an off-ramp for users to exit the system without going to the trouble of using an exchange.
So it appears "Dan and Ned" (do they do anal?) want to try to amass enough users holding SP tokens (
because users are forced to receive 50% of their payouts in SP tokens which require 2 years to cash out), to incentivize merchants to sell to these users.
The flaw in their plan is network effects are inhibited/retarded with a closed, persmissioned block chain and ecosystem. Network effects are enabled by permissionless, trustless systems. Currency can't be built as a corporation.
Dan is a funny kook. He believes he can build a worldwide currency enclosed inside a proof-of-stake corporation with an 80% stealth mine for the insiders.
Dan seems to like jails. To be a full participant in his proof-of-stake playjailground, you are forced to lockup your investment for two years in SP tokens.
I hope jails are nice to Dan. He seems want them all around him.
Edit: I have figured out their business plan. They obviously are hoping that the commerce which must take place in STEEM (not Steem Power) tokens will pay for the costs of rewarding content creation, via the 9X greater debasement of STEEM vs. SP. This is how they hope that investors do not end up paying for the content ongoing. So the income producing model is apparently the commerce they expect to take place on STEEM once they have a large enough userbase who have plenty of Steem Power tokens to cash out every week to STEEM tokens.
The problem I see with this model in addition to the criticism I made above, is that the commerce won't be a large proportion of the Steem Power, because users will prefer to cash out to fiat or Bitcoin because the merchant ecosystem will be too small. Again my point is there is no way Dan can scale the currency to a diverse ecosystem with it being a corporate controlled block chain (DPoS) and where his company controls all the users. Ecosystems need very diverse network effects and unlimited degrees-of-freedom in order to maximize rate of diversification and scaling.