When STEEM started, in May 2016, the term "hyperinflationary token" was somehow associated with it. It's also true that in the initial setup it did have certain characteristics that made that term appropriate, but starting HardFork 16, at the end of 2016, things changed a lot. Yet many people are left with this information, which is not entirely true.
As a matter of fact, STEEM has a decreasing inflation rate, that will stop, in 20 years at only 0.5%. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Let's Speak Some Numbers
Each day, around 43,000 STEEM tokens are printed. Out of them, 75% goes to content creators and curators, 15% goes to witnesses (the equivalent of miners in other blockchains) and 10% goes to Steem Power interest.
The current inflation rate for STEEM is 9.5%. This percentage will decrease every year with 0.5%, stoping in about 20 years at 0.5%.
Let's compare this with Bitcoin. At the current reward per block, which is 12.5 Bitcoin, the total number of Bitcoins issued each day is around 1800. Pretty much all of them are going to miners. The inflation rate of Bitcoin in 2017 is about 4% (after 8 years of existence). In 2014, after 5 years, Bitcoin had an issuance rate of 10%. Read more about this here.
Ethereum is having around 17,000 tokens printed every day. Likewise, all of them are going to miners. The issuance rate of ETH in 2017 is 14,75%. A good explanation of these numbers may be found here.
Let's try to put this in perspective with the current prices (approximate values based on Coinmarketcap statistics):
| Token | Daily supply | USD total value |
|---|---|---|
| STEEM | 43,000 | 43,000 x 3.8 = 163,000 |
| BTC | 1,800 | 1,800 x 17100 = 30,780,000 |
| ETH | 17,000 | 17,000 x 810 = 13,770,000 |
As you can see, the issuance rate of STEEM is comparable with major tokens like BTC and ETH, but, when you look deeper and see how much of this issuance is going to actual users (and not miners) the picture changes dramatically. Add to this the transaction speed and zero fees and you're suddenly in wonder land. Kidding you not.
A Little Projection
Now, what should happen for STEEM to reach the market cap of ETH or BTC? Well, simple:
- for STEEM to reach the market cap of ETH, STEEM should trade at 13,770,000 / 43,000 = 320 USD / STEEM (or 100 times higher than now)
- for STEEM to reach the market cap of BTC, STEEM should trade at 30,780,000 / 43,000 = 715 USD / STEEM (or 200 times higher than now)
This is a very simplistic approach, which doesn't take into account the current circulating supply of STEEM (around 292 million), nor the love and hate relationship it has with SBD.
But should make you think.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me 
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