RE: Steem Total Value Powered Up - $67 million - August 6, 2021
My opinion is that it's a mix of benefits and drawbacks, depending on whether you're a voter or an author.
I think the main reason people promote powering up is that when more STEEM is powered up, that means the supply of liquid STEEM is lower, which should drive up the price of STEEM on the exchanges.
I don't know if that has been empirically demonstrated, though, and it's a little like playing "musical chairs", because you don't benefit from the higher prices until you power down.
Additionally, I think a couple less favorable side-effects are that when more STEEM is powered up, the interest rate goes down and there is more competition for curation rewards.
On the other hand, for authors, I guess if more people power up more STEEM (and use it for voting), it's probably easier for your content to get found and rewarded.
Personally, I like to keep an eye on it because I think it reflects the confidence that people have in the blockchain.
This is the point that I reflect on the most. But it does seem that, for the most part, it is a question of individual benefit that drives the Powering Up. That said, however, the fact that so many people Power Up long-term is something that gives us an advantage over other tokens, because most other PoS token have no other use than to gain interest, but then people get anxious and withdraw the stake because of insecurity, whereas most Steemian stake for the purpose of engaging the platform and therefore don't look at the price as much. Steemit incentivizes long-term holding beyond just APR.
Oh no! I just realized that I didn't upvote your comments in time. Sorry!
I think this is the first time I missed an upvote before payout time, but I knew it would happen eventually. That's one of the biggest challenges of @penny4thoughts for authors. You have to be quick upvoting comments that come in after 4 or 5 days.
No worries, Bro! Yes, it can be a challenge but this is why I try to encourage Authors to use the tag in the first 5; this way, we can always go check to see if we missed some comments before payout. You missed my comment because I think I commented on the 6th day, but I was more interested in the many comments I saw and the subject of global Powering Up.
I like to use the tag to go back to the oldest post and either read the comments or hand out some small votes to further incentivize users to follow and contribute to the project.
Thanks for including me in the other post, I really look forward to the comments, and I may use that post in my next Tino Take.