Steemit Inc. roughly has 60M Steem in 
There are large number of early founders, devs and investors who hold 20-25M Steem together. The founding investors are those who provided the seed money for initial developments for the Steem blockchain, most probably 
If we assume that the following accounts that were created between March and April, 2016 are the early stakeholders (e.g. early developers), then they still hold the largest amount of SP rather than the new stakeholders or investors. Together they have 25M Steem. An interesting fact is that exchanges only have 99.6M Steem that can be purchased.
(2.35M),
(1.75M, sold 1M Steem 20 days ago),
(1.635M),
(1.57M SP),
(0.84M SP),
(1.2M SP),
(1.12M SP),
(1M SP),
(934K SP),
(933K SP),
(847K SP),
(815K SP),
(583K SP),
(549K SP),
(470K SP),
(436K SP).
Therefore, we can assume at least 115M Steem were not purchased that were instamined before the launch of Steemit website. On the other hand, there are 357M total supply of Steem including SBD. You can find this total supply in steemd.com current supply section.
It is really hard to guess how much mined (or, created as inflation) Steem or SBD were never sold or bought. However, we can safely discard 130M Steem/SP from the early stakeholders that were instamined. If we take a wild guess that out of the remaining 227M SP/Steem/SBD, 150M of them were mined or earned from the inflation.
STINC, founders and early devs have sold lots of Steem. We will assume that their sold amount is roughly 40M (130-65-25=40M).
The big question is out of total newly mined (227M), how much is sold to the market. I will assume only 30%, since most earners and investors poweredup their Steem. Therefore, 70M Steem were sold. If we include the current sell and sell from early founders, devs and STINC, it is roughly 110M Steem in total. It is a wild, wild guess but it will serve our purpose.
There are 100M Steem that are traded between traders in exchanges. Out of them there could be large number of Steem that were sold or waiting for to be sold which means never sold.
It also means that 247M or, 69% of Steem has never been sold or purchased.
If we take another wild guess about the average sell price of those 110M Steem/SBD at 40 cents (Steem varied between $8.5 to 7 cents), then roughly $44M new money is used to purchase Steem or entered Steem blockchain ever.
Considering Steem's marketcap was once $2B at peak (@$8.5), these amount of money is just peanuts.
At current price of Steem at 17 cents roughly $21.6M is required for all the leftover liquid STEEM. This also put us in a perspective that less than one half of the money from the sold Steem ($44M) can be used to buy up all the liquid Steem, right now.
It is also shame that Steem has not attracted large investors. Only known large investors (guessed from their activity) are 
The overall analysis shows that a single or a group of investors can buy out large portion of liquid Steem and can have a great influence in the long run in Steem's development. If he or they work strategically they can make large profits too.
Steem is dying for Winklevoss Brother type investors. In fact, one with one-hundredth wealth of them (considering their initial wealth from FB lawsuit is in 100s of Millions and BTC fortunes in billions), can take big stakes in Steem. In fact, Steem is a revolutionary considering it is a decent competitor all the centralized social media Apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, Quora, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr etc. Steemit.com once ranked below 1000 in Alexa rating.
It could also mean that the world of investors do not know about Steem's potential. Also, there are lots of misinformation about Steem in the crypto-sphere. A single early BTC/ETH/XRP whale can take control of Steem or make big effect on how it works.
From my personal example, when I thirst thought about buying BTC it was $32 a piece in February, 2013. In last 6 years. I have invested $45K in cryptocurrency.
If miraculously I would have bought BTC with $45K on that time, then I could have 1400 BTC at my hand. With 1400 BTC, I could have buy 80M Steem or 80% of the liquid Steem from the exchange at current price of 17 cents. However, buying large amount of Steem from exchange will send Steem to a higher value. With strategy of sell walls, a large amount of Steem can be bought cheaply too.
It shows how an early BTC/ETH/XRP whale or multi-millionaire investor can change the direction of Steem and make himself/themselves very influential in Steem ecosystem. They can also make millions from their Steem crypto-fortune too. Moreover, they can also lead the upcoming DApp revolution through SMTs.
This analysis shows that Steem has not attracted big, filthy rich, or early BTC/ETH/XRP investors at all, since the largest investor Steem holder has only less than 2M Steem. It is quite possible that some big investors may hold more than 2M Steem in exchanges which is very unlikely but not impossible. It also means that at this ridiculous low price, we don't have a single USD millionaire except
Disclaimer: This opinion is not a financial advice, it my personal perspective and opinion. Please seek professionals for financial decisions. This opinion is only for educational purpose.
Image sources: Most images are open sourced (e.g. Pixabay, Wikimedia etc.) with Creative common license. Some images are used with due courtesy to respected owners.
Thanks for reading.
Cryptominer , occasional trader and tech blogger since 2013
Posted via Steemleo