RE: Given a Billion Steemit Accounts, How Many Minnows Would There Be? How Many Dolphins? How Many Whales?

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

Starting with the network's 16th hard fork in December 2016, Steem began creating new tokens at a yearly inflation rate of 9.5%. The inflation rate decreases at a rate of 0.01% every 250,000 blocks, or about 0.5% per year. The inflation will continue decreasing at this pace until the overall inflation rate reaches 0.95%. This will take about 20.5 years from the time hard fork 16 went into effect.

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.