the price sure doesn't reflect it for some reason , the best guess i can give is people who had liquid 'lying around' or stuck on exchanges waiting for it to get back to $7 or up are using that to power up, mostly people who have plenty, which means nothing gets bought and that's why the price actually is down another cent on both steem and sbd (which in the end means the whole pool will be giving away MORE on curation without anyone having bought any significant amount ... despite that ... more up is better than more down ofcourse but i fear this will not end inflation and as you say, this won't last forever (and it shouldnt , the thing should oscillate as that would mean a constant fllux between buying and selling = trading = more volume which eventually should lead to bigger marketcap which seems to be SO important to the trader in-crowd ...

70k , that's nearly up there with steemmonsters ... but they use steemmonsters as a bidbot ofc. a perspective that was handed to me today by :
https://steemit.com/steemmonsters/@lordbutterfly/bring-back-bots-steem-engine-is-a-bigger-menace
i didnt even think of that when they announced it and i dont see it as good or bad, i see that as sound reasoning by people who want to make money and for all they do at least the game gets outside assets to the inside

There's a lot of misconception on the whole environment and system ... mainly because steemit is the primal dapp so to many its like steemit = steem but also

the fact that you get 'a share of the inflation' does mean you get a share in value as the value is relative and dependant on lots of factors. Inflation is the biggest problem for STEEM you can not keep expanding, they already cant follow up at the moment . The answer would be to cap it and i think maybe leave the bidbot owners to figure out how to translate that into money as they seem most adept at making it around here ... checking on the tracker i saw a lot of them dont promise less roi but MORE now (insane amounts that werent there before sometimes) ...

and so we eagerly await the moves of smartsteem in the #new world order :)