Man, the price of steem is tanking. But, I think this is largely due to people wanting to sell off as much as they can for two reasons: ① I believe they recently changed the system such that a larger percentage of rewards go to steem. ② People are furiously trying to get money together to go to SteemFest.
I may be wrong though. Markets aren't my forté.
It's obvious the price is tanking, but one of the consequences could be that other people will buy at this price.
It's just normal to go down, in my opinion. I don't see how an ecosystem so small in terms of user base (probably 25.000 active accounts) will generate payouts in the $500-$1000 range, as many are expecting (or so I see many complaining about the reward falling down from that level). If we keep projecting such unrealistic expectations on the platform, it will eventually implode.
The value of reward per post can grow only in 2 situations: 1. user base is growing (more eyeballs) or 2. price of Steem going up (more dollars into Steem). The first is the one that counts because, in the long term, it will also push the market upward too.
Looking at XBC trends I notice it has been increasing pretty steadily in value. Perhaps that's a bigger factor than anything happening internally?