Price overview
Steem price reflects value of the Steem platform. It went from about 14 million USD (~0.25 USD per one Steem) in July 2016 to over 600 million USD (~4USD per one Steem) in July 2016 to under 200 million USD now in August 2016 (~1.1 USD per one Steem).
Inflation and userbase growth
As there is strong inflation incorporated into Steem significant growth is necessary to keep price stable or growing.
Can we see it now? Definitely not. Although there are quite many new users every day (in absolute numbers), there are not as many to cover inflation.
What will be the price where the trend will change and and Steem price will go up long-term again? There is NONE. Why? Because current wealth distribution model doesn't bring conditions for enormous growth that is needed.
Why is that so?
It's quite simple. If Steem wants to provide professional content comparable with commercial sites, rewards for authors needs to be at least equal to the professional sites. My estimate is that 5 USD is minimal reward for an average article at commercial site or ads reward on good blogging platforms. If Steem cannot bring model rewarding most authors at least on this level it will not grow. Some articles can be worth 1 USD, some 10 USD and some even more. But once a good blogger or expert in some area earns significantly less than this on this site there will be no motivation. Of course steemit has no other budget that market price of newly generated Steems, resp. SD. And therefore reward cannot be absolute value. That is not problem, a real problem is a reward distribution, not absolute value of reward. There will still be also some cases where users will use Steem(it) regardless to reward value, though. But posts with the greatest value will go elsewhere.
So why I look forward to Steem price crash?
This is why: When it happens, people with huge investments in Steems, SP and SD will wake up from their sleep and will eventually change the distribution model to something that really supports platform growth up to hundreds millions of active users or more.
But thousands USD per post brings marketing attention
Yeah, this is often heard argument - making 1000 USD per post brings new users. It's true but this argument is over-valuated. Much more effective would be just to award random article from top 100 daily articles with extra bonus (like 1-10% of all daily rewards) and keep the rest of rewards to fair and more flat rather than "TOP 1% takes everything". This would keep or even increase "huge post award effect" and also bring "fair reward for good value".
One way or another Steem (and all the Steem holders) will finally find out, sooner or later, in easy or a hard way. Market will just take care of this. I'm just wondering if this happends with Steem price 1.0, 0.5 or 0.1 USD or less. What do you think is whale's wake-up price?