Not necessarily true if (and that is a big if) they can generate significant transaction volume from users per what I explained in the “Steem’s Funding Model” section.
The sustainable business model and valuation requires they generate features which will drive transaction volume. We are discussing this aspect in more detail at Bitcointalk.org.
If everyone is becoming a millionaire, everyone wants to cash out. All that insane sell pressure is going to crash your value. Not only that, if you are a millionaire and people are only investing $100,000 every month into STEEM, it's gonna take a real long time to cash out. Imagine if 1000's of millionaires try to do that. You need to stay realistic. Right now the it might look like becoming a millionaire with SteemIt might be doable, and it probably will happen for some people if the platform survives the next couple of years, but certainly not everyone will be able to do it. Maybe a few dozen people, but certainly not thousands or 10's of thousands.
It is frustrating for me when I see that readers have not comprehended the “Steem’s Funding Model” section. Please re-read that section and understand that if transactions can become very great, then the transactions can pay for those who want to cash out, the cost of the blog rewards, and the fees of the miners. Whether transactions can be scaled that high is another question that I didn’t discuss as it is out-of-scope of this blog post. I can’t put every possible issue about Steem in one blog post.
You are making the mistake of assuming that the only incoming¹ demand for STEEM is for investment. If there are compelling reasons to do transactions in STEEM and volume can be very great, then this demand for STEEM can fund everything given the fact that STEEM is debased 90% relative to STEEM POWER.
You readers really need to wrap your mind about this new way of structuring revenue. It seems some of you can only visualize the math from the simplest way, which is causing you to not grasp the paradigm-shift.
If Steem becomes a huge ecosystem, maybe they never want to cash out. Maybe Steem becomes their unit-of-account, life-long savings account, and they pay for everything from it.
I agree. It really could fail. Or it could possibly be magical.
¹ Include even internal demand originating from STEEM POWER powered down to STEEM and transacted.
It's not that i can't wrap my mind around it, i'm just not going to dream and first see how the next 6-24 months develop. Steem might fail at any moment now, you never know. If it survives the next couple of years, it's going to magical indeed :)
I dream for my main activity in life. So far, dreaming has led me to discovering the greatest people on earth in 2016 and they are all in Steemit. Dreaming pays in ways more than money alone.