Depending on whose statistics you go by, there are something on the order of 2.5 billion to 3.5 billion ounces of “old” above ground silver in the world and a bit shy of 900 million “new” ounces pulled out of the ground every year. (Unlike gold, vast amounts of silver are consumed by industry and relatively little is recycled.)
There are 17.8 million existing Bitcoin (minus what’s inaccessible due to lost private keys). Roughly 657,000 “new” Bitcoin are mined per year (until 2020 when output will be halved).
There’s a bit over 318 million Steem (or just over 352 million if you count the SBD that could be converted to Steem), with something on the order of 27 million new Steem coming into existence during the next year.
Of course an “old” Steem spends just as well as a “new” Steem.
After excluding the Steem paid out to Witnesses and to hodlers of Steem Power, ballparkish 20 million Steem will go into the reward pool over the next year, to be split among authors and curators.
It’s not hard to project that going forward blogging, curating, and the like for the purpose of acquiring new Steem will be overall less and less the focus of economic activity on the Steem blockchain as the competition for delegated existing Steem Power intensifies. So even as the Steem ecosystem as a whole becomes more and more about the need that dApps will have for existing Steem Power (and, increasingly, the need to develop sources of funding outside of the Steemverse), authors and curators will continue to earn the majority of new Steem.
Let’s assume that the Steem ecosystem does well over the next few years (if it doesn’t, none of this discussion really matters). Are the ways that you’ve been earning (“new” or “old”) Steem up until now going to be viable going forward?
The main way of earning “old” Steem is by delegating some of your Steem Power to dApps or bidbots that pay you an income stream for the use of your SP. Of course some of that fungible Steem may have come into the accounts of those dApps or bidbots relatively recently, but since you’re not earning it directly from the reward pool, let’s think of it as “old” Steem.
The “new” Steem you’re earning directly from the reward pool consists of what comes from your curation activities (very much influenced by your level of Steem Power) as well as your author rewards which can derive from a variety of sources:
@silvergoldbotty or 
@upvotebuilders that you’ve delegated SP to.
@steembasicincome or a competing service based on units that you’ve purchased or have been purchased for you.But, going forward, some of those strategies will likely work better than others. It’s just a guess, but I would not be surprised if bidbots became less viable over time. Many of them are already struggling. They essentially function as middlemen, a function that is becoming less and less needed everywhere. And, assuming that the use cases for the Steem blockchain expand significantly over the next few years, bidbots may find themselves in a disadvantageous position if dApps vying for SP delegation are able to offer yields at higher rates of return compared to the bidbots.
And it’s quite possible that earning “new” Steem based on organic upvotes may get harder and harder if people start shifting more and more of their SP to higher-earning dApp delegation rather than curation.
Self-voting may on the surface seem to be an optimal strategy but you risk both the obvious flagging from those opposed to such a strategy and you greatly reduce your engagement with the community at large, slowly strangling your ability to earn organic upvotes.
Again just a guess, but it’s possible that using services such as
But remember that “new Steem” is a much smaller number than “old Steem” so it’s a mistake to be overly fixated on the Rewards Pool. In the great scheme of things, delegation decisions about which dApps we as a community choose to support might well be more important than infighting about distributions from the relatively insignificant Rewards Pool. (That said, please do use downvotes to combat some of the more flagrant abuse of the Rewards Pool system.)
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Those who are investors but not yet silver stackers may want to go back and read that second paragraph again. Existing stocks of silver work out to about one half ounce per each person on the planet. Demand for silver is rising due to its gazillion industrial applications (solar panels anyone? electric cars that typically contain a kilo of silver each?) at the same time that mine production has been falling.
Disclaimer: This should not be construed as financial advice. I am not a registered financial advisor; I don’t even play one on TV. Do your own due diligence. Batteries not included. Objects may be larger than the appear in mirror. Some assembly required. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
