So there are some excellent posts trending, discussing the change to the reward structure after the hardfork; and it'll certainly be interesting to watch.
Austrian Economists talk about the concept of Diminishing Marginal Utility, which sounds complex, but is quite simple.
A glass of cold orange juice is lovely, another one is nice too. A third will just take up room on the table and get warm, the fourth will attract ants.
You might pay $5 for one glass, but only be willing to pay another $2 for the second, and straight out not want the third or fourth.
The value you place on an item is affected by how many of that item you already have. This difference depends largely on the nature of the asset.
Your 50th diamond is almost as good as the 1st, but your 50th glass of water is not.
Being easily transferrable, and taking up zero space, crypto currencies don't often come up in conversations about marginal utility, but it still has a very interesting role to play.
I bought some bitcoin in 2013, at $50 AUD. Assuming the price would eventually either grow immensely, or crash to zero, there was a point at which I judged buying an additional bitcoin would prove unlikely to have enough impact on my destiny either way, to justify the expenditure of another $50. I had bills to pay and mouths to feed, like anyone. I judged my first bitcoin was worth more to me than $50, but my 16th wasn't, so I only bought 15.
Up until now, Steempower has delivered voting power in an exponential fashion, which is something of an affront to the concept of marginal utility, since each new unit of steempower delivers more voting power than the one before it. As marginal utility reduces the value you personally place on each new unit of steem, the current model increases the usefulness of each additional unit by more than each previous unit.
Now I don't claim to know what motivates whales, but I'm sure they have mouths to feed and bills to pay, too.
They may have been unwilling to power down and cash out 50% of their steempower at the cost of 80% of their voting power, but they may be willing to do so at the cost of 50% of their voting power.
They may have been willing to buy up more steem at $2 when each new unit meant an exponential increase to their voting power, but are perhaps less likely to do so under the new, linear model.
I anticipate a reduction in whale demand for steem after the hardfork. Whether that is balanced by minnow demand is yet to be seen, but I believe unlikely.
With the recent influx of new users, and a lot of small dolphins enjoying some healthy balances, the future is certainly bright, but don't be surprised or panicked if we see a correction in the short term.
The ocean can be scary, and has waves, but it's vast and beautiful, and there's plenty of room for all of us.
