Today, we are on the verge of there being 1,000,000 Steemit accounts. (Edit: A few hours after posting this, we passed a million.) How many might there be at some point down the road? Facebook has over 2 billion accounts so it’s not totally insane to suggest that Steemit might someday have 1 billion. If you’re not that optimistic, pick a smaller number, 100 million or 50 million.
As of @arcange’s most recent analysis here’s how many accounts are tracked (for most of the discussion that follows, inactive accounts will be glossed over):
If you wanted to guesstimate how many minnows, whales, et cetera there might be down the road, simple extrapolation might seem like a logical choice. In that we now have 7977 minnows out of 1 million accounts, we might have something on the order of 7.9 million minnows when Steemit reached a billion accounts. Given that we have 1623 dolphins out of a million accounts, something on the order of 162,000 dolphins when we get to 100 million accounts. If we have 37 whales now, we’d stand to have about 1,850 of them when we get to 50 million accounts. All seems perfectly rational.
But once you head down the rabbit hole of crunching numbers, it quickly becomes clear that such guesstimates would be very, very wrong.
Before I dive too deeply into how many of each type of account might exist at some point in the future, let’s first look at how many could exist right now. Most of us think in terms of Steem Power but, under the hood as it were, it’s all about vests.
I recorded the number of Steem per 1 million vests exactly 24 hours apart:
9pm 14 May 2018
491.38668637498 Steem per MVests
so 2035.05717132 Vests per Steem.
9pm 15 May 2018
491.41228926227 Steem per MVests
so 2034.95114357 Vests per Steem.
We’ll come back to both of these in a bit, but let’s use May 15th for now and first crunch the numbers for dolphins. To be a dolphin, you need just over 4914 Steem Power to equal 10 MVests.
Right now, a bit over 190 million Steem are vested as Steem Power. But to find out the maximum number of dolphins that could exist today, let’s assume that all Steem was powered up. And let’s assume that all dolphins have exactly the minimum Steem needed to be a dolphin. Steem’s current_supply is liquid Steem plus Steem Power. Steem’s virtual_supply is that total plus the Steem that’s in the form of SBD’s.
The virtual_supply is 272936834.
Divide that by the number of Steem it takes to qualify as a dolphin,
272936834 / 4914 = 55542.7012617
As of today, the maximum number of dolphins that could exist is 55,542.
By extension, the maximum number of minnows that could exist today is 555,427.
The maximum numbers of orcas {{{hush}}} that could exist today is 5,554.
The maximum number of whales that could exist today is 555.
And of course, all of those maximum numbers are for that group alone. There could not for instance be 555,427 minnows and 55,542 dolphins. Each class ties up all Steem.
Those are the maximum numbers now. What do they tell us about future numbers?
Brace yourself.
They will be almost the same in the future as they are now.
Maybe not exact, but damn close. It’s all about vests, and the amount of Steem required to own those vests. A million vests to be a minnow. A billion to be a whale. There’s just not enough Steem out there, nor will there be in the future.
Back to those vest numbers.
9pm 14 May
491.38668637498 Steem per MVests
so 2035.05717132 Vests per Steem.
9pm 15 May
491.41228926227 Steem per MVests
so 2034.95114357 Vest per Steem.
Then crunch those numbers.
491.41228926227 / 491.38668637498 = 1.00005210334
1.00005210334 ^ 365 = 1.01919920259 indicating that the number of Steem it takes to equal 1 MVests is increasing by about 1.9% per year. My inner geek says the percentage is probably slightly less than that since it is almost certainly tied to Steem’s inflation rate which is constantly falling. And it probably is no coincidence that this that this number matches the rate at which you earn Steem Power because of the Steem Power you own. @lukestokes drew my attention to the fact that what you’re earning here isn’t really interest; I then went down the rabbit hole and parsed the difference between interest and inflation adjustment.
So the number of Steem needed to have X number of vests is increasing. And Steem’s inflation numbers are growing too. But still there will not be enough Steem in the future to support massively more accounts of the minnow or larger variety.
This post is a year or so old but shows approximately how many Steem will be created over the next two decades. The actual number will be a bit smaller since the chart treats each year as if the inflation rate is static within a year rather than slowly falling approximately 0.0000137% every day. We can see that 20 years from now, there will be a bit more than twice as much Steem as there is now. Twenty years to slightly more than double even though, right now, the number of accounts on Steemit is increasing at something like 10% per month. Looking ahead, Steem will become much harder to acquire. NOW Is The Time To Be Acquiring Steem!
Here’s where it gets really interesting. Take a look at the cumulative MVests graphic for today:
Compare it to the same chart from three months ago:
And to the same chart from six months ago:
I won’t bore you with a lot more number crunching, but there’s a trend worth noting. The distribution is flattening. And if you look at the relationships between any two groups, you can see hints of a powerful trend. I’ll show numbers for the minnow/dolphin relationship and leave it to you to experiment with the others.
16334 / 35208 = 0.4639
20476 / 41114 = 0.4980
23281 / 44783 = 0.5199
Over the last six months, minnows have as a group gone from having 46% as many vests as dolphins to having 52% as much. The same trends can be seen for other relationships. Expect these trends to continue, and to exceed 100%.
A while back, someone (possibly @penguinpablo?) predicted that at some point in the future, Redfish may collectively have more MVests than Minnows. And sometime later, Minnows could collectively have more MVests than Dolphins. And so on up the food chain. And as those bar charts flatten, the maximum number of accounts that can be a minnow or above falls for each class.
On the geek-nerd continuum, I am more nerd than geek. Maybe I’ve overlooked something. And I’m neither a witness here nor a developer. If you’re more of a geek than I am, please correct any glaring errors I’ve made in the comments below. But for now at least, I’m reasonably confident that the number of accounts minnow or larger in the future will be much smaller than what most people might guess. If I’m right, this means that becoming even a small minnow may become a very difficult aspiration for newbies who’d be signing up a few years from now.
(Back to the inactive accounts that I’ve glossed over. A Hard Fork will probably be needed to fix bandwidth issues. Right now when noobs signup through Steemit, they get 15 delegated SP. Given large numbers of new accounts, that can’t continue. There would not be enough Steem to go around.)
Disclaimer: This should not be construed as financial advice. I am not a registered financial advisor; I don't even play one on TV. Do your own due diligence. Batteries not included. Objects may be larger than they appear in mirror. Some assembly required. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
The one thing I don't get is why are these numbers for becoming Pl/Re/Mi/Do/Or/Wh always mentioned as static?
I mean, why not just a top-percentage?
Something like this:
Whale above top 0.01%
Orca above top 1%
Dolphin above top 10%
Minnow above top 50%
Red fish above top 80%
Plankton bottom 20%
This means all groups can grow bigger...
A minnow with 500SP will be a dolphin in the future with the same 500SP! Just like a Dolphin with 5.000SP will be an Orca in the future with 5.000SP! Etc. Etc.
Sure, if definitions change, the amount of SP/Vests needed to be considered X would be different. Just like a government could say anyone making more than X quatloos now classifies as wealthy.
But my premise is that 1MVest minnows will be elite, 10MVest dolphins will be wealthy, 100MVest orcas {{{hush}}} will be staggeringly rich, and 1000MVest whales will be Bill Gates.
Right now, today, minnows are already the top 1%.
Hmmm.... In keeping with the Powers of Ten theme, maybe at some point we’ll need a term for those who have 100,000 Vests (currently 49 SP) or even 10,000 Vests.
A really interesting post!
I do think that it will be harder and harder to rise above red fish status! I did start at the end of last year and continued to post during the falling steem price period! The best thing I could do!
Imaging that we would have 250K active users per day! How hard will it be for newcomers to get noticed. Extremely hard! When we would have reached that number the price of Steem also will have increased! Lets place the price tag at $10! You need 500 SP to surpass the red fish status, which would require an investment of $5000. Not lot of people are probably willing to do this. If we would like to reach Dolphin status it would require an investment of $50K.
Probably one or 2 persons are willing to invest so much money but then it ends!
So most growth will have to be organic and this will become extremely hard! For sure for the ones only signing up next year!
So for each extra million subscribers we could increase the numbers of the statuses above Red fish with maybe 5%!
I got lucky cuz I bought the majority of my STEEM under $1, got my initial investment back 3X and still have more than what I put in :-X
That is one of the advantages of being early on the platform. It was a good bet back them and that's why you did get rewarded! People are often complaining about it, but I on the other hand respect that brave decision, because without this the platform would be what it is right now!
A great post @preparedwombat.
This is exactly what the numbers I run each month state. The distribution is flattening out as time goes by. Collectively, the smaller accounts are gaining much more power.
Going back 6 months or a year really shows this. Give it another year with an increased sign up and, hopefully, participation rate, and we will see these numbers move even further.
The bottom line is there is not enough STEEM to go around meaning that it will go up in price since demand is there.
So, 100usd steem is probably off the table until usd are worth much less.
Those numbers are a sadly limiting reality.
Many moving parts to this game.
If I had to guess I would say at 2 million users/accounts we will be at $10 and at 10 million we would be at $100.
It's hard to estimate though. For all I know we could be at $100 when we hit 2 million.
All we can do is wait and see.
There are things we can do to try and make it happen.
My post doesn’t address the price of Steem per se but it does suggest that demand for a limited supply of Steem could accelerate. That alone would put upward pressure on Steem’s price. I would not at all rule out 100 USD.
If we hit 100 million I wouldn't be surprised if Steem was at $1,000.
I havent ruled it out, but do contend that demand for influence on a blogging site might not equal a dinner in a nice restaurant, and the price is limited by what folks find to be a fair use of their resources.
If steem goes to 100usd my grandkids will benefit, 10usd takes care of my worries, today, but inflation happens.
If steem influence is worth less than a night on the town, lets hope it never goes below a cup of coffee.
Another thing to consider is that there is no forced redistribution method like taxes on income or wealth that might exist in other real-world economic systems, combined with the fact that current whales dictate where future steem is distributed (themselves, mostly), and you have a system set up for failure that doesn't scale at all.
Whale greed will be the demise of steem.
Great stuff.
As the distribution of SP/MVESTS flattens the dream of steemit might actually come true that your minnow friends can help you earn.
The STEEM ecosystem still has issues to be resolved like new user retention, but I think your points about the inflation rates and floating supply will drive up price and attract more users.
So you're basically saying that the limited supply of STEEM will put an upward pressure on the price?
I would think that all of the STEEM that they have given out to new accounts that will probably never be used again would have some effect on supply too...
That could well be. When I joined a little over a year ago, I was given 0.5 Steem of my own along with the delegation. Not sure when it changed, but new signups through Steemit are now getting 0.1 Steem.
The number of Mvests for Minnow and Dolphins will increase at fast speed.
Your post is well detailed and is an indication of the immense time you put in. I concur with your position. 100%
The first chart shows over 800k inactive accounts (dead fish). Is anybody concerned that over 80% of the accounts are inactive?? Does this not mean that Steemit actually has only 200k users rather than 1million?
And most of those accounts have to be less than a year old, because the YoY retention rates are under 10%. Yes, everyone is concerned about the fact that hardly anyone stays, I add people to my own voting list and notice that most of them don't stay, so I can imagine how discouraged people who receive 0 on every single post they ever make can be.
Hey thanks love the number crunching type stuff. I'm nerdy like that too. Also great links to those older articles.
Great post... I notice you post a lot on equality issues, which is something that interests me also, so I just wanted to drop by and say hi.
On a related note, have you ever thought about what happens when steem stops getting 'printed'? In 20 years time or so?
As I understand it, there’s no plan to completely stop issuing Steem. The FAQ says
I read that as meaning that, once the inflation rate falls to 0.95% it will stay at that level so once we end that 20.5 year period Steem will continue to be created and in year 21 a bit over 6 million Steem will come into existence.
Of course that’s only how things stand right now. Back before I joined, the inflation rate was insanely at 100%. The Powers That Be changed that to a 9.5% falling to 0.95% system. In theory, they could change it again.
Ah, thanks so much, TBH I'd completely missed that!
But as you say, it can change...!
Karl.