source: coingecko.com
Down Trending
For some time, we have seen new lows for STEEM / USD - and in fact this rate seems to have been accelerating. No longer does it even look like the bottom is rounding. The price basically just keeps following the rate of decline over the last 90 days.
Liquidity info on coingecko.com indicates 202 million STEEM coins in circulation, and about $60,000 worth of coins traded today. That's about 0.7 million coins (a tiny fraction of the total).
Is Price Just and Illusion?
Given the large supply of STEEM, and that only less than a half percent of the total is trading, who exactly is selling? Could it actually be a small group trading among themselves? Price in this case holds no value, because even at such low levels, there would be no market for a large sale. Someone looking to liquidate, would not be able to...conversely, as we can see from sharp spikes, there is very limited supply to buy.
Normally, scarcity would cause prices to be high (see Bitcoin, Zcash etc). Here we seem to have the opposite. We have a clear trend without a significant number of coins changing hands. Perhaps there is some auto trading algorithm - slowly looping a continuous trend.
Whatever the cause, in the housing market (another example of limited transactions), if a sell price is not viable, we simply see a slowdown in sales. You can't sell of tiny slivers of your house until the 'house' price value goes down indefinitely.
This makes me wonder if we actually have an accurate price - the market is not indicating a wider value...only a price set by a few trading algorithms and hobby traders. So what is the true value price of STEEM if they were only sold in larger chunks? Your guess is as good as mine, perhaps we can use recent IPO and ICO valuations for internet assets with potential wide scaling revenue streams...I have seen crowdsales generate millions, and I have seen IPOs generate billions....STEEM / USD.