Josh, I am glad you ask this question. This discussion is so convoluted that I can't wrap my head around it. But I will try and ask the right questions again. I appreciate that there are lot of educated people here with substantial knowledge of not only blockchain, but general knowledge about how capital markets function. So I am confused out of respect, and I am not mocking.
I am hearing the word "speculation" a lot. I am assuming people are using the word in a sense of financial terminology. As far as I know it is defined as such: investment in stocks, property, or other ventures in the hope of gain but with the risk of loss
I am very confused, do we want speculators in steem or we do not? I do not know how many of you actually speculate or did any kind of speculation in their professional life, but I do speculation for a living, and have done it all my life. To me it makes no difference what so ever, whether steem has a 4 week PD or a 13 week PD. Makes absolutely no difference at all.Also I don't know if you are familiar with Venture Capital lock down period, Company stock purchase lock down period, Employee stock option lock down period, or standard IPO lock down period. All these things I mentioned are considered standard financial instruments, and they all have 3 months to 1+ year lock down on cumulative capital measured in hundreds of million USD to several billion USD. Just for reference Steem's market cap in under 60 million USD. What is hell are we talking about here?! That is less than the daily trading volume at Goldman Sachs product desk for Sigma X(which is 69 million USD average, Dec 2019 data). Seriously why this is even a discussion topic?
You're not here to provide market liquidity, and I would argue that most people that bother to power up for any time frame are not either. They are expecting that there will be a meaningful change in sell side liquidity should the lock down period decrease by that margin. While I'm certain it may add something to the liquidity, I don't think it will be meaningful unless the lock down period is zero (which we know is untenable).
What about not burning steem and actually voting authors to add liquidity? I'm not sure if the act of burning supply is compatible with trying to increase liquidity. I suspect some people here are trying to have their cake and eat it to.
Agree on your first point. They expect liquidity will increase but I don’t think it will be significant either.
Not sure on the second. Recently you tried to find posts to push on trending.... but I say you were only marginally successful? ;) it’s mostly because they don’t exist
I agree whole heartedly that the liquidity of exceptional posts (for lack of a better term) has decreased to a slow trickle. But that is on us for not recognizing or rewarding them when they have come in the past (mostly for selfish reward curve reasons). On top of that, the only way to raise a bar, is to set one in the first place. To have something to point to in order to show potential authors, if you can do better than this, you will displace this. That means rewarding the best the platform has to offer at a given time (within reason), not waiting for unicorns trying to win the lottery. When a showcase exists, I now have the ability to actually recruit authors who are able to do a better job to get themselves into the showcase. When authors are consistently outcompeted by 'token preservation posts' and esoteric steem-centric posts, it's demoralizing. While I have no problem with technical solutions, it can't come at the cost of solutions that drive value in terms of IP on the platform.