I was preparing a lengthy explanation, but instead opted for a concise one. I realize that the average attention span of most people is not that high, but most of us are interested in what's going on with our beloved cryptosocial project (is that a new word?).
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Steem has inflation built right in, as there's no finite number of Steem. The more of a product, the less the demand and the lower its price.
The reason for not choosing a finite currency is that users would otherwise have to convert their own money into Steem (in order to upvote content), which very few will do and the project would fail at its very beginning. The downside of a "free" currency is that people are not responsible with it, which results in bot voting - in essence detaching users from the network and leaving only a few to curate for many (yes, that's one of the reasons why it's full of well paying origami and latte art posts).
So, it was decided that Seem will be printed non-stop.
The idea is that Steem is like shares in Steemit. Since there are no other as significant services using Steem at the moment, this is still true. But with each new printed share, the value of the rest declines.
The problem here is that Steem is printed faster than Steemit gains value. So unless we start offering something unique that people would like to exchange their money for Steem, its value will continue declining
Right now we offer our original content for free - anyone without a registration can read, and there isn't any advertising, the income from which to be redistributed as new Steem (in effect raising the value of Steem).
If you've noticed, you've started getting less payouts on your posts recently.
Whales decided to stop sharing Steem (as upvotes), as people exchange it for fiat money, which whales think reduces the value of Steem. However, since cryptocurrency traders know there is an unlimited supply of Steem, any new Steem on the market is sold cheap, as they are aware that there's more and more available in the system.
After all, if you are buying the only one company share available on the market, out of one hundred million owned by others, you won't pay high for it, even though the others are not currently for sale.
The White Paper talks about a reversal that happens every three years. It's not going to increase the value of Steem. That's a fancy word for removing a couple of zeroes to improve human readability.
So, in summary, don't ever expect Steem to increase in value, if things remain as they are.
p.s. As Steem's value continues to decline, the amount of Steem and Steem Power, awarded for posts and curation) will begin to reach infinity faster and faster. At this point of time the entire project would have failed. I certainly hope that the whales realize what they need to push the developers into rethinking and introducing some major changes to the system, of which cryptocurrency traders must be well informed about.