I did however buy STEEM and power it up into STEEM power with the STEEM DOLLARS that I earned from said content creation and citation. Why you you ask?
To me it is play money, and it is inflating at about the same rate Bitcoin did for its first 8 years. Thus, if Bitcoin (and Litecoin, etc) can survive that then I think it is possible for Steem to survive it too. That gives Steem 8 years to figure out a more sustainable model. I think it is even more possible for Steem to sustain that ibflation, because I think it is growing exponentually faster than Bitcoin is. Or, at least recenttrends indicate that it will.
I agree with Smooth on this... no one can tell the future. Although the economics look bad now, there are ways that they can be improved. I previously mentioned paid advertising, but there are other ways as well. For one, Dan is currently developing a Steem marketplace which could also bring in lucrative profits to make the model more sustainable.
I think it has more of a chance to succeed than other decentralized markets, because the Steem social networking platform's usership is exploding. I don't see that explosion slowing down anytime soon, as even though Steem is getting beat up on Bitcointalk.. most of that usership has never heard of Bitcointalk (or cryptocurrencies for that matter).
This gives any other profitable features built on top of the Steen social network a huge advantage versus other blockchains. Take for instance Open Bazaar, they are simply a decentralized marketplace and nothing more. Once Steel's marketplace is up and running, it will start out with exponentially more users than any of its competitors. Ebay is so successful because of its usership. Users will be attracted to the markets with the most buyers and sellers.
This advantage can be applied to other profitable features as well. The social network can be seen as the marketing arm of a Steem conglomerate. Steen could become the Google or Apple of blockchains, and that is why I reinvested what I earned in SD into SP. I may be willing to invest speculate in more SP with my own money based on the off chance that happens IF I had extra disposable money I didn't mind losing (which I don't at the moment.)
I drilled a hole in that sort of fantasy already (see below). So you've confirmed that the business model I deduced for Steem (see below), is the one Dan is working on: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.