Today, we are on the verge of there being 1,000,000 Steemit accounts. (Edit: A few hours after posting this, we passed a million.) How many might there be at some point down the road? Facebook has over 2 billion accounts so it’s not totally insane to suggest that Steemit might someday have 1 billion. If you’re not that optimistic, pick a smaller number, 100 million or 50 million.
As of 
If you wanted to guesstimate how many minnows, whales, et cetera there might be down the road, simple extrapolation might seem like a logical choice. In that we now have 7977 minnows out of 1 million accounts, we might have something on the order of 7.9 million minnows when Steemit reached a billion accounts. Given that we have 1623 dolphins out of a million accounts, something on the order of 162,000 dolphins when we get to 100 million accounts. If we have 37 whales now, we’d stand to have about 1,850 of them when we get to 50 million accounts. All seems perfectly rational.
But once you head down the rabbit hole of crunching numbers, it quickly becomes clear that such guesstimates would be very, very wrong.
Before I dive too deeply into how many of each type of account might exist at some point in the future, let’s first look at how many could exist right now. Most of us think in terms of Steem Power but, under the hood as it were, it’s all about vests.
I recorded the number of Steem per 1 million vests exactly 24 hours apart:
9pm 14 May 2018
491.38668637498 Steem per MVests
so 2035.05717132 Vests per Steem.
9pm 15 May 2018
491.41228926227 Steem per MVests
so 2034.95114357 Vests per Steem.
We’ll come back to both of these in a bit, but let’s use May 15th for now and first crunch the numbers for dolphins. To be a dolphin, you need just over 4914 Steem Power to equal 10 MVests.
Right now, a bit over 190 million Steem are vested as Steem Power. But to find out the maximum number of dolphins that could exist today, let’s assume that all Steem was powered up. And let’s assume that all dolphins have exactly the minimum Steem needed to be a dolphin. Steem’s current_supply is liquid Steem plus Steem Power. Steem’s virtual_supply is that total plus the Steem that’s in the form of SBD’s.
The virtual_supply is 272936834.
Divide that by the number of Steem it takes to qualify as a dolphin,
272936834 / 4914 = 55542.7012617
As of today, the maximum number of dolphins that could exist is 55,542.
By extension, the maximum number of minnows that could exist today is 555,427.
The maximum numbers of orcas {{{hush}}} that could exist today is 5,554.
The maximum number of whales that could exist today is 555.
And of course, all of those maximum numbers are for that group alone. There could not for instance be 555,427 minnows and 55,542 dolphins. Each class ties up all Steem.
Those are the maximum numbers now. What do they tell us about future numbers?
Brace yourself.
They will be almost the same in the future as they are now.
Maybe not exact, but damn close. It’s all about vests, and the amount of Steem required to own those vests. A million vests to be a minnow. A billion to be a whale. There’s just not enough Steem out there, nor will there be in the future.
Back to those vest numbers.
9pm 14 May
491.38668637498 Steem per MVests
so 2035.05717132 Vests per Steem.
9pm 15 May
491.41228926227 Steem per MVests
so 2034.95114357 Vest per Steem.
Then crunch those numbers.
491.41228926227 / 491.38668637498 = 1.00005210334
1.00005210334 ^ 365 = 1.01919920259 indicating that the number of Steem it takes to equal 1 MVests is increasing by about 1.9% per year. My inner geek says the percentage is probably slightly less than that since it is almost certainly tied to Steem’s inflation rate which is constantly falling. And it probably is no coincidence that this that this number matches the rate at which you earn Steem Power because of the Steem Power you own. 
So the number of Steem needed to have X number of vests is increasing. And Steem’s inflation numbers are growing too. But still there will not be enough Steem in the future to support massively more accounts of the minnow or larger variety.
This post is a year or so old but shows approximately how many Steem will be created over the next two decades. The actual number will be a bit smaller since the chart treats each year as if the inflation rate is static within a year rather than slowly falling approximately 0.0000137% every day. We can see that 20 years from now, there will be a bit more than twice as much Steem as there is now. Twenty years to slightly more than double even though, right now, the number of accounts on Steemit is increasing at something like 10% per month. Looking ahead, Steem will become much harder to acquire. NOW Is The Time To Be Acquiring Steem!
Here’s where it gets really interesting. Take a look at the cumulative MVests graphic for today:
Compare it to the same chart from three months ago:
And to the same chart from six months ago:
I won’t bore you with a lot more number crunching, but there’s a trend worth noting. The distribution is flattening. And if you look at the relationships between any two groups, you can see hints of a powerful trend. I’ll show numbers for the minnow/dolphin relationship and leave it to you to experiment with the others.
16334 / 35208 = 0.4639
20476 / 41114 = 0.4980
23281 / 44783 = 0.5199
Over the last six months, minnows have as a group gone from having 46% as many vests as dolphins to having 52% as much. The same trends can be seen for other relationships. Expect these trends to continue, and to exceed 100%.
A while back, someone (possibly 
On the geek-nerd continuum, I am more nerd than geek. Maybe I’ve overlooked something. And I’m neither a witness here nor a developer. If you’re more of a geek than I am, please correct any glaring errors I’ve made in the comments below. But for now at least, I’m reasonably confident that the number of accounts minnow or larger in the future will be much smaller than what most people might guess. If I’m right, this means that becoming even a small minnow may become a very difficult aspiration for newbies who’d be signing up a few years from now.
(Back to the inactive accounts that I’ve glossed over. A Hard Fork will probably be needed to fix bandwidth issues. Right now when noobs signup through Steemit, they get 15 delegated SP. Given large numbers of new accounts, that can’t continue. There would not be enough Steem to go around.)
Disclaimer: This should not be construed as financial advice. I am not a registered financial advisor; I don't even play one on TV. Do your own due diligence. Batteries not included. Objects may be larger than they appear in mirror. Some assembly required. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.