I guess the hypothesis is that less sell pressure will have an effect on the price. However, it seems to me, there is plenty of contrary evidence. Steemit, Inc. were selling 800k STEEM a month. When they stopped selling, it made no difference whatsoever to the price.

What about all those other projects (including Steem) that have so far less going for them than Hive does? Why is their token price better?

And what about the Hive price immediately jumping up around the forking away from Steem, and also going to $0.80 when there were major exchange listings with giveaways?

It seems to me the common factor in all those examples is hype. Nothing other than pure hype. How much is printed and how much is sold doesn't matter whatsoever, you can play with these parameters forever and it wouldn't make any difference for the price. But make a giveaway and see the price jump.